Notes on the State of Virginia

Jefferson lists and describes Virginia’s rivers, their dimensions, trajectories, and capacities for navigation. This chapter, like many that follow, shows Jefferson’s care for the meticulous recording of information and his scientific and practical temperament. The Notes’ early queries in particular are encyclopedic in style, aimed at factual precision rather than literary interest. At the same time, Jefferson occasionally slips into a more lyrical style of prose, as in his description of the Ohio River (10). Such passages show his aesthetic receptivity and strong feeling for his native country and state. The forging of extensive inroads in navigation of Virginia’s rivers shows the importance of transportation and trade in the emerging country.

Jefferson explains that this query was answered under the previous one. 

Virginia’s mountains are not “solitary and scattered” but instead proceed in an almost continuous chain of “ridges one behind another” (18) parallel to the sea coast. The Allegheny Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountain chain, divide the Atlantic Ocean from the Mississippi River. Most impressive to Jefferson is the mountain scene outside of the town of Frederic, with its natural bridge.

There is only one remarkable waterfall in Virginia: Falling Spring. Jefferson then turns to notable caverns: Madison’s Cave, Blowing Cave, and Natural Bridge. The latter he terms “the most sublime of Nature’s works” (24) and describes the sense of vertigo and “rapture” he once experienced at its summit. (See the Important Quotes section for further discussion.)

Jefferson gives a detailed account of the materials mined in Virginia: gold, lead, copper, iron, black lead, pit coal, marble, limestone, other precious stones, and salt. He also discusses various medicinal springs. Then he passes on to vegetables and animals.

The discussion of animals is lengthy and wide-ranging and takes in human beings as well, which again shows Jefferson’s strongly scientific mindset. Presenting a theory he disagrees with, Jefferson cites a French writer, the Count de Buffon, that animals (including humans) are smaller and have “degenerated” in the “New World” with respect to the “Old World”: “[N]ature is less active, less energetic on one side of the globe than she is on the other” (47). Jefferson dedicates a good deal of the chapter to refuting this theory, citing tables with evidence of animal size and weight.

The disagreement with de Buffon emblematizes the efforts of many American thinkers of this period to defend their country and traditions. The theory that America represented degeneracy was being extended to American people, too, by the critic Abbé Raynal. In response to this, Jefferson bolsters American accomplishments in different areas: Washington in war, Franklin in physics, and David Rittenhouse in astronomy, among many other “hopeful proofs of genius” produced by a country that is still “but a child of yesterday” (65).

Proceeding to consider the criticism as it applies to the Indigenous Americans, Jefferson takes it upon himself to refute Buffon’s negative comments. Buffon’s writings had attacked the Indigenous Americans as cold, harsh, degrading to women, and having “little sexual capacity” (59). Jefferson counters, from his personal observation and experience, that Indigenous Americans are brave, strong in mind and body, love their families with “ardor,” and have notable talent for eloquent oratory. Jefferson concedes that, in his estimation, Indigenous men do burden their women with “unjust drudgery” and that it is typical of “every barbarous people” (60) for the physically stronger to impose on the weaker. It is only “civilization” that grants women “their natural equality” (60). Whatever the accuracy of his characterization of gender roles within the tribes he observed, the discussion presents Jefferson’s assertion of women’s natural equality with men, and he was personally involved in the education of his daughters.

In his defense of Indigenous Americans, Jefferson emphasizes their strong talents for oratory and eloquent speech—equal to “the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero” (62). He cites the example of Logan, an Iroquois chief whose family was killed by white vigilantes. On being defeated in the war that ensued from the conflict, Logan delivered a speech to the Virginia governor, which Jefferson quotes in full (63). Jefferson’s citing of Logan is significant in that his speech reflects the plight of the Indigenous peoples at the hand of white settlers.

This discussion shows a high respect for the Indigenous Americans, rooted in Jefferson’s personal experience with Indigenous tribes growing up in Virginia. Jefferson once wrote to the French nobleman Chastellux, “I believe the Indian […] to be in mind and body equal to the whiteman [sic]” (“Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment and American Indians.” Monticello and the University of Virginia). However, Jefferson believed that Indigenous Americans, while possessing great natural virtues, lacked the polish of civilization (as possessed by white people) and that they would be improved as they acquired these new civilized ways. These “civilized” ways included assimilating into a more settled, less nomadic farming lifestyle. As with many of Jefferson’s attitudes, his view toward Indigenous Americans was complicated and not free of contradiction. Even with his ardent interest in America’s Native peoples, he ultimately engineered policies to either drive them from their homelands or assimilate them, primarily for the sake of westward expansion (which he suggested would benefit white Americans and Indigenous Americans alike). As president, Jefferson pushed for Indigenous Americans to adopt a lifestyle more consonant with modern “civilization”—i.e., an agrarian lifestyle. Among the advantages of this project, for Jefferson, was that farming required less land than hunting; as Jefferson’s governmental agents pressed the Indigenous Americans to embrace “civilization,” Indigenous Americans were asked to sell their territories to the government. Some Indigenous peoples complied, but “other Natives rejected the white road. For them, Jefferson had little patience. Given his principles, Indians had two choices: full assimilation or removal” (Hirsch, Mark. “Thomas Jefferson: Founding Father of Indian Removal.” Smithsonian Institution, 2009).