Julie Fenster recalls Jeffersonian era exploration of interior North America

Cougar Face
   The Louisiana purchase spelled doom for native Americans and expanded the territories and possibilities for American exploration in the  race to settle and annex the Northwest. Thomas Jefferson funded exploration which was crucial to map our the continent and develop routes for more settlers to make the move into what was considered unhibatable Indian lands and author Julie Fenster describes any of these explorers overshadowed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clarks dispatches out West. her book called "Jefferson's America" is filled with stories of these expeditions and their early contact with native Americans in these newly acquired territories called Louisiana. This book covers explorations including George Hinter's and William Dunbar's key ouchita river and all of these accounts by this writer are choc full of important early American history of western settlement and exploration. As one empire sold massive amounts of territory to another empire the displacement of Native Americans was speeded up as the sanctuary of Indian nations was ended as French rule was replaced by American for-profit desires of land use.  America in 1803 was a fluid land and the opportunities for coastal extension and connection was too much for Americans then one coastal elite to desire for the North American continent and the natives in fly-by country would face these greedy consequences. The author explains how Jefferson's world view of land ownership and how the owners of land shaped the future and shots of policy as being the aspects for his sudden desire to get these newly acquired lands drawn and mapped for future use of farming by Americans. A policy of opening up land of European immigration to farm these lands would soon be developed in much of these lands sometimes purchases and sometimes taken from native Americans.  Much of Julie's book centers on contact with the Arikara tribe of the Arkansas river valley and the tension with Spain as war was always a possibility and surprisingly would not occur between these two empires until ninety five years later. The author Julie Fenster does an excellent job recalling this cold war with Spain in America's early history and the contention these two empires eventually realized would spill several times in the century over whose flag to raise on certain sections of land that really belonged to the indigenous people of America.