ABSTRACT
Overwhelming numbers of native peoples lived in their traditional homelands in the spaces between and beyond the European settlements—e.g., the Iroquois, Wabanaki, and Creek confederacies in the East or the Comanche empire in the Southwest. Many of the more prominent critics of Buffon and his followers were affiliated with the American Philosophical Society, which had been founded at the urging of Benjamin Franklin in 1743 to promote "useful knowledge among the British plantations in America". In Jefferson's view, the Indians' level of social development resembled that of Europeans living north of the Alps at the time of the Roman Empire. As a result of the unwavering convictions about the truth and righteousness of Manifest Destiny, many North Americans assumed that slavery, social hierarchy, progress, and cultural differences were either products of divine will or rooted in Nature. Caldwell was a minor, relatively unimportant figure in the history of American science.
