" Yet when [Thomas Jefferson] discussed the effects of his policy toward Native Americans, about the violence heaped on them when various legal and market mechanisms failed to convince them to part with their land, he lapsed into passive voices and hapless tenses. Even after he gave precise instructions for how to lock Native Americans into predatory debt, followed by a threat of destruction, Jefferson, upon contemplating the consequences, acted as if he stood impotent before history, as if he and the government he brought into the world were not the means of the destruction. "
― Greg Grandin , The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
![Greg Grandin quote : Yet when [Thomas Jefferson] discussed the effects of his policy toward Native Americans, about the violence heaped on them when various legal and market mechanisms failed to convince them to part with their land, he lapsed into passive voices and hapless tenses. Even after he gave precise instructions for how to lock Native Americans into predatory debt, followed by a threat of destruction, Jefferson, upon contemplating the consequences, acted as if he stood impotent before history, as if he and the government he brought into the world were not the means of the destruction.](/image/2622655.jpg)