When they stress Natives’ alleged unwillingness to acculturate, American
histories slip into the story line of the official seal of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. “Come Over and Help Us” is white settler propaganda, which grew
into an archetype of well-meaning Europeans and tragically different Indians.
The trouble is, it wasn’t like that. The problem was not Native failure to
acculturate. In reality, many European Americans did not really want Indians to
acculturate. It wasn’t in their interest. At times this was obvious, as when the
Massachusetts legislature in 1789 passed a law prohibiting teaching Native
Americans how to read and write “under penalty of death.”^109 President
Thomas Jefferson told a delegation of Cherokees in 1808, “Let me entreat you
therefore, on the lands now given [sic] you to begin every man a farm, let him
enclose it, cultivate it, build a warm house on it, and when he dies let it belong
to his wife and children after him.”^110 In reality, the Cherokees already were
farmers who were visiting Jefferson precisely to ask the president to assign
their lands to them in severalty (as individual farms) and to make them
citizens.^111 Jefferson put them off. The American Way asks students, “Why
were the Indians moved further west?” Its teachers’ edition provides the
answer: “They were moved so the settlers could use the land for growing
crops.” We might add this catechism: “What were the Indians doing on the
land?” “They were growing crops!” When Jefferson spoke to the Cherokees,