Lewis & Clark From the Time the

Lewis & Clark From the time the Mayflower arrived, Manifest Destiny was etched onto the consciousness of European settlers. An immutable sense of entitlement, coupled with a belief in the spiritual purpose of the mission, is what permeated every decision made by colonial and later, American officials with regards to settlement patterns, land acquisitions, and relations with Native Americans. Native Americans may have had their own "manifest destiny," which was unfortunately to be driven off ancestral lands, massacred, and their cultures collectively and systematically decimated.

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery military expedition into Indian Lands, it was nothing but an expression of American intentions to seize all that was possible to seize. Americans felt entitled to the land, and did not value (or in many places even consider) the input, opinion, or needs of the Native Americans. Manifest Destiny had a dark side to nearly everyone but the victors, which Hoxie's collection of primary sources reveals well.

The collection of primary sources is largely comprised of written records from the American point-of-view. They indicate what perceptions of Indian Country were like prior to the expedition that began on 1804. The documents reveal that Manifest Destiny underwrote political decisions like the Louisiana Purchase. Granted, most of the political motivations for the Corps of Discovery was to disrupt the balance of powers in Europe and ensure acquisition of the western territories before the British, Spanish, or even the French.

Jefferson's leadership strengthened the backbone of the new United States of America, and consequently weakened the power of individual and collective tribes of Indian Nations. Interestingly, the readings in Hoxie's book Lewis and Clark and the Indian County also show that the Corps of Discovery mission was also undertaken for strategic and geographical surveying purposes. The documents do show that geographic surveying and the location of waterways was central to the expedition. Lewis and Clark were, however, sent to establish American presence in Indian Country.

The presence of the Americans was symbolic enough of American intentions. It would be a full half-century before pioneer settlements became a viable potential future for Americans, and indeed also before the term Manifest Destiny was coined. However, the seeds of Manifest Destiny had been sprouting for decades, perhaps centuries. Lewis and Clark represented the first real sprouts of Manifest Destiny emerging in Western soil. Documents directly related to Indian-American communications, negotiations, and political strategies show that the genocidal tactics that ultimately became part of American policy emerged gradually.

The documents from the Corps of Discovery era detail specific conversations between Native leaders and their American counterparts. Both sides hoped to gain strategic advantages: whether for economic or trade purposes, or for political purposes such as forging strategic alliances against common enemies. The reflections of Native American leaders and historians included in Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country show that the Native Americans could not have foreseen the sweeping changes that would take place after the Lewis and Clark expedition.

It was like the analogy of boiling a frog:.