Much like the twins in the Iroquois creation story. "The World on the Turtle's Back," rhetoric can have
two sides - one used for good and one used for bad. Likewise, judgment of this divide depends on
which side you feel is the right side. During the early days of building America, the colonizers used loaded words like "savage" and rhetoric to justify the expansion of the US even though caused pain and suffering to the Native Americans who already occupied this land.

Directions: Read each justification, highlight use of rhetoric, and circle loaded words.
Thomas Jefferson 3rd
president of the United
States of America
Thomas Jefferson in a letter to David Bailie Warden, 29 December 1813

The undertaking fell of course on those of the Middle & Southern states, most remote from the scene of action, and our exclusion from the water still increased the delays, and have finally prevented our obtaining for the present all we might have obtained. Much however has been effected by
our insulating the British from their savage allies, to whom alone, and not at all to themselves they are indebted for every success they have obtained.This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious
barbarities justified extermination, and now await our decision on their fate. The Creeks too on our Southern border, for whom we had done more than for any other tribe, have acted the same part and have already paid their defection with the flower of their warriors. They will probably submit
on the condition of removing to such new settlements beyond the
Mississippi as we shall assign them.

Write a response to Jefferson's letter from the point-of-view of someone like Cabeza De Vaca who experienced life and exchanged culture with a tribe without trying to "save and civilize" them.