as marriage across cultural boundaries good or bad for these new nations? On the one hand, unions across colonizing boundaries were widely viewed as being against the tide of progress toward “modern white nations.” And yet, some prominent figures, such as Dolley Madison, and her close friend the former President Thomas Jefferson, envisioned a different future. They believed intermarriage between Indians and whites could be advantageous for the young nation. (However, they were thinking about white men marrying Native American women, not white women with Native American men.)