In all your intercourse with the natives, treat them in the most friendly and conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit . . . —Jefferson to Lewis & Clark, 1803, Panel 18, 1956, Inscription: [EXPLORATION?] WEST [LEWIS+?] CLARK — 1803–1806, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
This illustration was published in one of Lawrence’s sources. The caption declares “Historic Homecoming,” which describes the reunion between Sacajawea and the Lemhi Shoshone people. The scene itself is romanticized as a landscape painting, emphasizing America’s westward expansion into Native-occupied land as an idealistic subject.
This letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark inspired Lawrence to focus on Sacajawea, the Lemhi Shoshone translator who guided the Corps of Discovery through severe terrain and complicated encounters on its journey through the newly U.S.-seized territory west of the Mississippi River. The region was homeland to millions of Indigenous people, and Jefferson’s letter further instructed Lewis and Clark regarding the treatment of the native population.
Excerpt from Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, June 20, 1803, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Some account too of the path of the Canadian traders from the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Ouisconsing to where it strikes the Missouri, & of the soil and rivers in its course, is desirable. In all your intercourse with the natives, treat them in the most friendly & conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit; allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey, satisfy them of it's innocence, make them acquainted with the position, extent character, peaceable & commercial dispositions of the US. of our wish to be neighborly, friendly, & useful to them, & of our dispositions to a commercial intercourse with them; confer with them on the points most convenient as mutual emporiums, and the articles of most desireable interchange for them & us.