Jefferson/William Apess
...g the arrival of the puritans from the Native American¡¯s point of view. Thomas Jefferson, our icon of freedom and personal liberty, set the national policy toward Native Americans that would last for over one hundred years. He began the trail of tears that would destroy cultures and result in the reservation system. Thomas Jefferson admired and lauded the American Indian. As a man of the Romantic Era he saw them as unspoiled, the "noble savage". Also as a man of the Enlightenment, with its analytical detachment, he knew that the Indian way of life could no longer exist in an expanding United States. Captivity Narratives are described to test a person¡¯s faith and ability to survive. Many of these narratives show an up close and personal perspective of how these people were able to live and stay reasonable during their captivity. In Mary Rowlandson¡¯s ¡°A Narrative of Captivity,¡± she explains how she and her family were taken by a group of Indians during King Philip¡¯s War. In Olaudah Equiano¡¯s ¡°The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,¡± he describes hi...