I have to have 'Undaunted Courage' finished by Tuesday for book club. So I'm working hard on it. It's not fast reading.

Here's something I didn't know: Jefferson hoped that American pioneers already west of the Mississippi would accept land grants back east in Illinois. He would move them, then the land west would all be a reservation (in the best sense of the word) for the Indians. Ambrose picks up:

'This absurd notion showed how little Jefferson knew about Americans living west of the Appalachians. With the [Louisiana] Purchase, or even withou the Purchase, there was no force on earth that could stop the flow of American pioneers westward. Good, cheap land was a magnet that reached all the way back te Europe. The pioneers were the cutting edge of an irresistible force. Rough and wild though they were, they were the advance agents of millions of Europeans, mostly peasants or younger sons of small farmers, who constituted the greatest mass migration in history.'

It goes without saying that neither Jefferson nor any president after him would take up the Indian's cause against whites. It's too bad.