Jefferson's Queries

I know that I've already done a post for this week's readings, but I could not resist bringing up a topic within the Jefferson piece that baffled the hell out of me. So Jefferson, in the beginning of Query 6, talks about how the Native Americans who were in America at the time were terribly misrepresented. He takes the side of the Indians by trying to explain that, they are not a backward and primitive culture as most Americans undoubtedly thought at this point in time. His main argument is that their natural surroundings, or "barbarism" has leant itself to develop traits within the Indians that differ greatly from those traits that one might find in a European. For instance, their need to scavanger food has led to the empowerment or dependency upon their women. Because of this dependency, women are forced to gather food as well as tend to many other tasks for the sake of their survival. This he explains, is why the Indian women tend not to produce as many children as Europeans do. Jefferson goes on about how nature has shaped their culture in many different ways, and that just because they are different does not mean they are inferior. Similarly, they cannot help that they are different because their dissimilarities are a product of an instinctual response. Jefferson even goes so far as to say that if Americans were reduced to live in the environment that Indians live in, that we could do no better than they have done for themselves. I have no problem with this argument until Jefferson later totally contradicts himself. And by contradicting himself, I mean he switches from being a protector of the Indian name to a defier of their very essence. Specifically, the bit where he talks about digging in their burial grounds to see how they positioned their dead. Plus his assertment that most of the land taken from Indians was not by force, but by contract. These two occurances, when propositioned with his argument that they are not a savage culture seems to me to only prove that the Europeans/Americans are the ones who are savages. I mean, who doesn't recognize that digging in a probably sacred burial ground and denying the obvious way in which Indians gave up their lands (by our force and threats) is a savage act?