Thomas Jefferson sent copies of the first edition of his Notes on the State of Virginia to several friends in Europe, including the Marquis de Chastellux. In this book, he defended America against the claims of those who thought that human beings, plants, and animals degenerated in the New World. In a letter to the marquis, which is excerpted here, Jefferson repeats some of his arguments in the book, including his opinions about American Indians in relation to whites. He also hazards a tentative view about African Americans in relation to Indians.
AND I AM SAFE in affirming, that the proofs of genius given by the Indians of North America place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state. The North of Europe furnishes subjects enough for comparison with them, and for a proof of their equality. I have seen some thousands myself, and conversed much with them, and have found in them a masculine, sound understanding. I have had much information from men who had lived among them, and whose veracity and good sense were so far known to me, as to establish a reliance on their information. They have all agreed in bearing witness in favor of the genius of this people. As to their bodily strength, their manners rendering it disgraceful to labor, those muscles employed in labor will be weaker with them, than with the European laborer; but those which are exerted in the chase, and those faculties which are employed in the tracing an enemy or a wild beast, in contriving ambuscades [ambushes] for him, and in carrying them through their execution, are much stronger than with us, because they are more exercised. I believe the Indian, then, to be, in body and mind, equal to the white man. I have supposed the black man, in his present state, might not be so; but it would be hazardous to affirm, that, equally cultivated for a few generations, he would not become so.
Source: Willson Whitman, ed., Jefferson’s Letters(Eau Claire, WI: Hale, 1900), 23.