Daily Inspiration Quote by Patrick Gordon

“Of their own free will” is the kind of phrase that does violence while pretending to be paperwork. Patrick Gordon, a professional soldier writing in the age of imperial land grabs, wraps coercion in the language of consent, then seals it with a shopping list. The effect is chillingly bureaucratic: land becomes a commodity, dispossession becomes a transaction, and conquest gets recast as commerce.

The inventory of “brass kettles, blankets, guns... tobacco, rum” does more than set the scene. It’s a rhetorical flex aimed at a European audience that already believes in a hierarchy of civilization. Each item carries a double meaning: “guns” and “rum” aren’t neutral goods but tools that can reshape power, dependency, and violence on the frontier. Gordon’s list implies fairness through abundance, as if quantity can stand in for justice, while quietly normalizing a conversion of Indigenous territory into European property regimes.

Then comes the most revealing tell: “their simple hearts delighted.” That patronizing sentiment isn’t incidental; it’s the moral alibi. By infantilizing Indigenous people, Gordon suggests they were incapable of understanding what was lost, which absolves the taker. The line performs a common colonial maneuver: if the other is “simple,” then exploitation can be framed as exchange, and theft can masquerade as mutual agreement.

Context matters here: 17th-century treaties and “purchases” often unfolded under asymmetrical pressure, language barriers, and incompatible concepts of land ownership. Gordon’s sentence isn’t just describing that world; it’s helping to launder it.