April 29

[In this letter, written on April 29, 1808, I am writing from Washington to General Henry Dearborn—my Secretary of War whose office oversees the administration of our western territories—to ask that he evaluate an enclosed proposal for a school in the young Michigan Territory. Written during a period when we seek to secure our western frontiers, I emphasize that the education of the common people around Detroit is a most desirable object, and I recommend that we support the plan to teach reading, writing, agriculture, and trades to indigenous children, utilizing federal bounties to sustain the institution while advancing our broader goals of native assimilation and border stability.]

Thomas Jefferson will thank General Dearborne to consider the enclosed. The writer appears to have that sincere enthusiasm for his undertaking which will ensure success. The education of the common people around Detroit is a most desirable object, and the proposition of extending their views to the teaching the Indian boys and girls to read and write, agriculture and mechanic trades to the former, spinning and weaving to the latter, may perhaps be acceded to by us advantageously for the Indians, and the bounties paid for them be an aid to the other objects of the institution.