Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

Silverman, professor of history at George Washington University, ranges across the continent exploring the relationships between indigenous Americans and firearms, “an essential factor in the rise of some Native peoples and the fall of others.” From their earliest interactions with European colonists, indigenous Americans became aware of the advantages firearm possession offered not only in warfare but in hunting, trade, and diplomacy. Silverman structures his study by following the “gun frontier” from the 17th to the 19th century. Access to guns empowered individual groups of indigenous Americans, largely at the expense of tribal communities that lacked such weapons. In the Carolinas and Florida, for instance, indigenous groups with firearms took captives from rivals to sell as slaves to white plantation owners. Plains Indians peoples such as the Blackfeet succeeded in supplying themselves with guns and becoming expert in their use, but their inability to produce their own firearms led them into disastrously unbalanced trading arrangements with white Americans. This situation, in conjunction with disease epidemics, loss of grazing lands, and the ever-increasing spread of white settler colonists, would by the 1880s deprive even the best-armed Native Americans of their lands and sovereignty. Silverman tells this sad and bloody story with verve, making this an essential work for scholars of colonial encounters. [em](Oct.) [/em]