Views On American Indians
While travelling overland throughout the American West, Jedediah's policy with the Native Americans was to maintain friendly relations with gifts and exchanges. However, if Jedediah felt Indians were being hostile to his party, he would make a demonstration by having one or two Natives killed with a rifle. This was done to discourage any further tribal aggression against him and his party. Smith punished his men for indiscriminately shooting Indians without any perceived threat to his party. Smith's reluctance to kill American Indians was due to his Methodist faith and training. Smith held contemporary beliefs that Native Americans were for the most part intellectually inferior to whites and considered untrustworthy. Smith stated that Indians were "children of nature"; a link between animals and humans.
Read more about this topic: Jedediah Smith
Famous quotes containing the words views, american and/or indians:
“The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“This generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)