[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.]

Why is Thomas Jefferson’s Purchase of the Louisiana Territory significant?

Even Jefferson could not begin to comprehend what would happen in the next 30 years.

In their later years of life Jefferson wrote in a letter to his friend and political enemy, former President Adams:

“Concerning Indians . . . in the early part of my life, I was very familiar, and acquired impressions of attachment and commiseration for them which have never been obliterated. Before the Revolution, they were in the habit of coming often and in great numbers to the seat of government where I was very much with them. I knew much the great Ontassete, the warrior and orator of the Cherokees; he was always the guest of my father, on his journey’s to and from Williamsburg.

Although Jefferson referred to the Cherokee orator Ontassete being a guest on his trips to Williamsburg, Virginia, by 1790, Native Americans had long since moved from Virginia and most of North Carolina. The dominant region of Cherokee was Tennessee area and the adjacent area of northwest Georgia.

Tennessee became a state in 1796. Under the “common good” President John Adams, the Treaty of Tellico ceded Native American lands in Tennessee back to the government.

So, they were forced out again. Sequoyah’s uncle and mentor, Principal Chief of Chickamauga Cherokee, Young Tassel (John) Watts moved his clan to Willstown, Alabama Territory in the southwestern part of their Nation.

Other clans had recently moved to Tennessee from the PeeDee and Santee Rivers along the North and South Carolina border in 1796. Rather than backtrack with the Treaty of Tellico, records show they moved to Mississippi Territory by 1799.

President Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France opened-up a whole new chapter for them, other Native Americans, and settlers.

President Jefferson’s envoys brokered with France, to purchase the territory west of the Mississippi River on 30 April 1803, for $15 million ($450 million based on 2017 GDP). That is a tidy sum, but a bargain for the entire central U.S. More importantly, the treaty precluded war, with Napoleon in France and with Spain who had ruled the area and Florida for the previous forty years. Spain had ceded Louisiana back to France in a secret treaty two years before.

The Purchase dramatically extended US land size with the Territory west of the Mississippi River and New Orleans.

After Jefferson’s Purchase, the Native American migrators who had recently moved to Mississippi immediately crossed the Great River into Louisiana Territory, where children were born in 1804.

The west boundary of the Purchase was disputed, so a No Man’s Land was declared between Spanish Mexico and American Louisiana in 1806.

Before the 1810 Census, the Native Americans had already transitioned further to the area without a government. What could be better for them? Life was like the old days.

There was no enumeration of these, but court, land, and census records trace their migration. These were the people for which Sequoyah was searching, when he made the final journey to the next life.

Some maintained their cultural tradition that people could not own the earth. As recent as late twentieth century, they were called squatters. Louisiana has laws recognizing their rights.

The subsequent migrations progressed in destruction. The next decade saw the devastating effect of the forced relocation of Cherokee to Osage lands, then the ultimate travesty of total removal from east of the Mississippi.

Both these relocations to our neck of the woods in Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase are the next topics.

When a government coerces people to this extent, what would be the expected response? With the preacher-teacher settler-leaders like Samuel Worcester who came along with tribal leaders like Elias Boudinot, the response was acculturation rather than elimination of culture.

Think about the huge sequence of events from Jefferson’s Purchase. What would have been different without it?

Excerpts from our books:

Where Indians, Outlaws, and Oilmen Were Real, ISBN: 9781658834643.

No Man’s Land Pioneers, Louisiana’s Wild, Wild West, ISBN: 9781694632128.