This is a little rant I put at the end of a history project I did. The project was about Lewis and Clark and there journy to the ocean… Enjoy:
After doing this project, I had a couple of thoughts and “what ifs” that I just wanted to right down. You can read this if your incredibly bored, but most likely you’ve already stopped reading…
Throughout the Lewis & Clark expedition, the Corps of Discovery met with several and many Native American groups, and they socialized and traded with all of them. They even had one of them, and her child, join them.
What if Jefferson had given them a prime directive of non-interference, not allowing them to interfere or contaminate any culture so that it could evolve naturally?
Most likely, they would have died. Without there Native American guide, Lewis & Clark would have been long lost, and without the lodging and food that the expedition received, they would have frozen and starved many times over.
They were able to interfere and trade with the native people because of Manifest Destiny, and idea stating that all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific would one day belong to the United States.
If this document did not exists, and instead, a document of non-interference, to allow cultures to evolve naturally and to bring up there own empires, the western United States would be much different then it is now.
Sure, interfering was needed for Lewis and Clark to survive, but perhaps something greater might have come about if there was a prime directive. Perhaps the Native Americans, in the fascination with nature, would have developed the most advanced form of biological science ever.
So we must ask ourselves, which is better? The destruction of cultures so that all people may share the same views and enjoy the same sciences, or allow for cultural diversity, so that new and different views and sciences can arise? Complete unity or complete diversity… the topic has been argued about for ages, and will probably be agrued for many more…