Kinfolk, Neighbors, and Living in America

Change happens, which isn’t a new idea. At all.

“Everything changes and nothing stands still”
(“πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει”, quoted by Plato in “Cratylus” (ca. 360 B.C.))
(Heraclitus, Wikiquote)

This week I’ll be talking about — mentioning, actually — some of my relatives, what Thomas Jefferson said about settling central North America, and why I like being an American. On the whole.

• Indian Cemetery Field Trip
• Republic, Republican
• Thomas Jefferson, Change, and Using Our Brains
  • “Hundredth and Thousandth Generation”
  • Attitudes and “The Call of Cthulhu”
  • Words, Meanings, and Respect
  • “Crafty Individuals”
• Family and Neighbors
  • A Blanket
  • Marrying Into an Older Family
• I Like It Here

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Indian Cemetery Field Trip

A high school field trip brought my class to Minnesota’s Itasca State Park. One spot we walked through was what I’ll call an Indian cemetery. What the currently official term is, I don’t know. Moving along.

As our teacher talked about the customs associated with this particular burial ground, one of the students made the wawa-wawa sound associated with Indians in westerns.

This was the 1960s, so the act wasn’t as remarkable as it might be today. Our teacher, responding to the vocalization and other disrespectful behaviors, reminded us that this was someone’s grave and shouldn’t be mocked.

I didn’t say anything at the time, or later, but remember feeling startled and repelled by what a few of my fellow-students did. No virtue there. Mocking someone whose chief offense was being dead and not closely related just didn’t make sense.

Make that not very closely related. I’ll get back to that.

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Republic, Republican

Before getting to what Thomas Jefferson said about folks living in what had abruptly become part of the United States, I’d better clarify what he meant by “republican”.

Basically, it’s the idea that people have a right to choose their political officials. A related idea is that a government’s power comes from the folks being governed, not that everything folks at my level have comes from the state.

A “republic” and a “democracy” aren’t the same thing. In a democracy, citizens rule themselves directly. The United States Supreme Court paraphrased something Daniel Webster said about that, back in 1891.

“…Mr. Webster’s argument in that case took a wider sweep, and contained a masterly statement of the American system of government, as recognizing that the people are the source of all political power, but that as the exercise of governmental powers immediately by the people themselves is impracticable, they must be exercised by representatives of the people; that the basis of representation is suffrage; that the right of suffrage must be protected and its exercise prescribed by previous law, and the results ascertained by some certain rule; that through its regulated exercise each man’s power tells in the constitution….”
(In Re Duncan; No. 1174; United States Supreme Court; argued December 17, 1S90; Decided March 30, 1891) [emphasis mine]

Now, onward to stuff Thomas Jefferson said.

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Thomas Jefferson, Change, and Using Our Brains

My country’s 1800 presidential election was about as serene as any other. I think that’s why Jefferson strongly suggested less hand-wringing and more looking at what was actually happening.

I also think that’s good advice, no matter what period we’re in. Or which crisis du jour we’re told to face with blind panic.

This excerpt from Jefferson’s first Inaugural Speech, by the way, is chunkier than I’d like. I’m handling it this way for two reasons. First, I like to give at least a little context; second, I spent part of this week thoroughly enjoying a visit from our grandchild and don’t have time for summary.

“…If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that Some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe It is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the Standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of Others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

“Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own federal and republican principles, our attachment to our union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities….”
(Thomas Jefferson First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801); via PresidentialRhetoric.com; — Dr. Martin Medhurst Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Communication, Baylor University, Waco, Texas / Paul Stob, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication Studies, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee) [emphasis mine]

One of these days I may get back to that “hundredth and thousandth generation” snippet, the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark expedition, and 19th century American history. Or at least a manageable subset of those topics.

But this week I’ll skip ahead to Jefferson’s second inaugural address, and how he saw my homeland’s “aboriginal inhabitants”.

After, that is, a short — for me — look at how I found these transcripts.

“Hundredth and Thousandth Generation”

Earlier this week, I remembered hearing that Thomas Jefferson thought settling North America’s interior would take at least a few centuries.

After a fair amount of digging, I began wondering if this was another of those ‘famous things that never really happened’.

Then I got a break.

Google’s started putting an “AI Overview” at the top of search results. It’s a handy new feature, partly because the Overview often includes search terms I can use.

This time the AI Overview told me that the Thomas Jefferson quote I’d been looking for was in his second Inaugural Address. That, and a little checking, led me to a transcript.

But a quick glance through his second Inaugural Address didn’t show me what I was looking for. Neither did a careful paragraph-by-paragraph reading.

Turns out that Jefferson’s prediction was in his first Inaugural Address. He said that the recent Louisiana Purchase had “room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation”.

Actually, the first Jefferson transcripts I found (Thomas Jefferson First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801), Thomas Jefferson First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1805); via Avalon Project — Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy; Yale Law School) had him saying “thousandth and thousandth generation” .

I’m pretty sure what Jefferson actually said was “hundredth and thousandth” . But either way, the point is that he thought the process of folks setting up farms, towns, and cities in North America would be very lengthy.

I’m not sure why Google points me to Yale’s Avalon Project for both Jefferson’s first and second Inaugural Addresses. Whatever the reason, it shows why thinking is a good idea, and verifying results makes sense. No matter what technology a researcher uses.

Attitudes and “The Call of Cthulhu”

I’m not sure what the currently-official term for groups Jefferson called “aboriginal inhabitants” is.

Instead of Bowdlerizing or expressing revulsion, I’ll share another oversized excerpt and natter on about some of it.

“…The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with the faculties and the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population from other regions directed itself on these shores; without power to divert, or habits to contend against, they have been overwhelmed by the current, or driven before it; now reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter’s state, humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts; to encourage them to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain their place in existence, and to prepare them in time for that state of society, which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of the mind and morals. We have therefore liberally furnished them with the implements of husbandry and household use; we have placed among them instructors in the arts of first necessity; and they are covered with the aegis of the law against aggressors from among ourselves.

“But the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which awaits their present course of life, to induce them to exercise their reason, follow its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of circumstances, have powerful obstacles to encounter; they are combated by the habits of their bodies, prejudice of their minds, ignorance, pride, and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among them, who feel themselves something in the present order of things, and fear to become nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did, must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel, in their physical, moral, or political condition, is perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety, and knowledge full of danger; in short, my friends, among them is seen the action and counteraction of good sense and bigotry; they, too, have their anti-philosophers, who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency of habit over the duty of improving our reason, and obeying its mandates.…”
(Thomas Jefferson Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1805); via PresidentialRhetoric.com; — Dr. Martin Medhurst Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Communication, Baylor University, Waco, Texas / Paul Stob, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication Studies, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee) [emphasis mine]

I think this is an important point: Jefferson said that folks who’d been living in central North America were “endowed with the faculties and the rights of men”. That he needed to point this out is less than ideal, and I’ll leave it at that.

What he said about their “anti-philosophers” convincing others that “their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety, and knowledge full of danger” reminded me of something H. P. Lovecraft wrote.

“…The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. … The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age….”
(“The Call of Cthulhu,” H. P. Lovecraft (1929); via WikiQuote)

Words, Meanings, and Respect

Oi.

These days, I’d probably say something like “faculties and rights common to all humanity” instead of “faculties and the rights of men”.

In Jefferson’s day, and during my youth, “men” and “man” was synonymous with “humanity” in this context.

Many folks did not assume that using the male pronoun meant that women weren’t quite ‘human’.

Others — were another matter. I remember when ‘she’s smart as a man’ was supposed to be a compliment, I don’t miss ‘the good old days’, and I’m drifting off-topic.

I think it’s worth pointing out that Jefferson saw folks whose ancestors had been here long before the first English colonists as people. He also thought that they hadn’t gotten in on the ground floor with use of technologies used by English-Americans. I think he was right.

I also don’t feel shock and revulsion at Jefferson’s statement that making new technologies available to these non-English folks was a good idea. I’ll grant that ‘inducing them to exercise their reason’ wasn’t always done well.

“Crafty Individuals”

“…These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did, must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide….”
(Thomas Jefferson Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1805); via PresidentialRhetoric.com)

The last point I’ll make — the part with “crafty individuals” and “they, too, have their anti-philosophers” — is that I think a problem Jefferson saw affecting “the aboriginal inhabitants” is also part of today’s America.

I get the impression that folks at one edge of political spectra feel that what we need is a return to the ‘good old days’ of, say, the early 1950s. Meanwhile, folks along another edge — it’s as if they never got the memo that it’s no longer 1967.

Me? This isn’t the America I grew up in.

Some changes have very emphatically not been for the better, some are improvements, some are simply — changes.

Spotting “crafty individuals” who aren’t aiming their appeals at folks whose causes and principles I can sympathize with isn’t all that hard. Double negative: awkward, but I’ll let it stand.

When they’re tugging at my heartstrings, that’s another matter.

For me, at least, it helps that I think Heraclitus was right. Change happens. I also believe that reason makes sense and thinking is a good idea. Which should be obvious, but apparently isn’t.

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Family and Neighbors

Folks on my mother’s side of the family ended up in the Red River Valley, some of the planet’s best farmland that’s as flat as their homeland was mountainous.

We were among the first Euro-Americans living there, so meeting folks from the established families was pretty much inevitable.

A Blanket

One encounter wasn’t friendly. The homemaker noticed someone walking off with a blanket that she’d left to dry on a clothesline.

I’ve no idea why he thought this was a good idea, and she probably didn’t either. She did, however, know that this was her blanket and she wanted it back.

So she scurried after the blanket and its temporary bearer, expressing her views on the propriety of his action with many words and one broom. He kept walking.

This went on for some time until the man made an exasperated sound, threw down the blanket and resumed his hike toward the horizon.

Marrying Into an Older Family

Another encounter was rather more permanent.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that one of my aunts — great-aunt, actually, if memory serves — wasn’t happy about her appearance.

I hadn’t noticed anything odd, apart from her not being as long-faced as most. But I didn’t see anything odd about my very Norwegian relatives speaking English, so I’m arguably not all that observant.

When one of my cousins married, the ceremony followed norms of my great aunt’s ancestors. I appreciate the sentiments behind that decision. What I think of it is a bit more complicated, and far more than I have time or inclination to discuss this week.

None of this shows that we’re paragons of virtue or exemplars of tolerance.

From where I’m standing, someone on my mother’s side married someone from the area’s older families: and that’s about it.

On the other hand, being related by marriage to a particular subset of this continent’s “aboriginal inhabitants” does affect how I see my country finally sorting out the mess left by broken treaties in the 19th century.

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I Like It Here

On the whole, I like being an American.

Despite having started as thirteen English colonies, this country let my ancestors become citizens: even though many were Irish.

I like living in a country where following my faith is legal, and I can say what I think without first getting approval.

There’s more, but that’ll do for today.

I’ve talked about some of this before:

• “Independence Day, 250 Years Later” (July 3, 2026)
  • America, Two and a Half Centuries and Still Learning
• “My Dad, His Friends, and Free Roller Coaster Rides” (March 28, 2026)
  • Reasons, Uncertainty, and Good Ideas
• “Four Generations in America” (August 6, 2025)
• “Freedom of Speech: On the Whole, I Like It” (July 6, 2024)
  • Prepublication Censorship, a Near Miss
• “Curiosity and Science, Intent and Wisdom 11:22” (June 4, 2022)
  • Lovecraft’s “Placid Island of Ignorance”