Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

by David J. Silverman

Overview

David Silverman argues against the notion that Indians prized flintlock muskets more for their pyrotechnics than for their efficiency as tools of war. Native peoples fully recognized the potential of firearms to assist them in their struggles against colonial forces, and mostly against one another, as arms races erupted across North America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674737471
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/10/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	539,846
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

David J. Silverman is Professor of History at George Washington University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

A Note on Terminology, Style, and Citation xi

Introduction: What Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull Knew 1

1 Launching the Indian Arms Race 21

2 A Vicious Commerce Slaves and Alliance for Guns 56

3 Recoil the Fatal Quest for Arms during King Philip's War 92

4 Indian Gunmen Against the British Empire 121

5 Otters for Arms 155

6 The Seminoles Resist Removal 190

7 Indian Gunrunners in a Wild West 221

8 The Rise and Fall of the centaur gunmen 249

Epilogue Aim Raises the Rifle 286

Abbreviations 297

Notes 301

Acknowledgments 353

Index 355

Editorial Reviews

A good measure of a work of history is whether it changes the way we understand its subject. By that measure, David J. Silverman succeeds admirably in Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

The New York Times Book Review - Thomas E. Ricks

08/29/2016
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. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Silverman’s compelling rediscovery of the ‘gun frontier,’ imaginatively conceived and deeply researched, is must reading. For nearly two centuries, indigenous peoples everywhere in North America waged devastating arms races with each other, enabled by, but seldom under the control of, Euro-Americans eager to sell their lethal wares in defiance of laws and their nations’ interests.
-- Daniel K. Richter, author of Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts

After reading Thundersticks, no one will ever be able to question that guns were fundamental to colonialism and that American Indians wanted them, used them with ferocity, and that they changed Native life forever. Silverman makes it all so obvious in his utterly convincing and transformative book. He has literally rewritten American history.
-- Robbie Ethridge, author of From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540–1715

Tracking the impact of firearms across different eras and areas as Native peoples incorporated them into their arsenals, economies, foreign policies, and cultures, David Silverman shows how guns shaped the colonial and indigenous history of the continent. No one has done anything quite like this before. A major achievement.
-- Colin G. Calloway, author of The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army

Silverman’s command of a vast literature and his attention to evidence will put to rest any remaining doubts about the Indian preference for guns over the bow and arrow.
-- Gregory Evans Dowd, author of Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier

Silverman tells this sad and bloody story with verve, making this an essential work for scholars of colonial encounters.
-- Publishers Weekly

A good measure of a work of history is whether it changes the way we understand its subject. By that measure, David J. Silverman succeeds admirably in Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America…In Silverman’s sober, sprawling account, America is a nation built on slaves and guns.
-- Thomas E. Ricks New York Times Book Review

Focusing on the military and political changes stemming from the spread of firearms in North America, this is a well-informed, clearly argued account of the significance of access to these guns…Silverman’s book is a significant contribution to a field that is important for American studies, for military history and work on western expansionism.
-- Jeremy Black History Today

Written in an accessible and at times swashbuckling style, the book is in many ways a retelling of the U.S.’ Indian Wars from the 17th to the 19th centuries, with a twist. It cracks the mystery of how Colonial-era Native American tribes came to master a continent-spanning, gun-running network in smoothbore flintlock muskets, often decades in advance of European settlement.
-- Casey Sanchez Los Angeles Times

David J. Silverman has accomplished the rarest of feats; he has breathed new life into a very familiar topic among scholars—conflict in Native North America…No other author has elucidated quite so clearly how guns changed the lives, cultures, and futures of American Indians…Thundersticks is a marvelous accomplishment. Silverman’s work is accessible for nonscholars while at the same time essential reading for historians of Native America, the United States, the Atlantic World, and more. This is how history should be written.
-- Jason Herbert Western Historical Review

Given that indigenous life across the continent was profoundly reshaped by guns and gunpowder—two things no Native society had the capacity to produce—it is remarkable that we had to wait until 2016 for a book that marries sophisticated indigenous history with a focus on the transformative effects of firearms over the long term. David J. Silverman’s Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America is worth the wait…The force of this book is in the details…Thundersticks is nonetheless the indispensable new work on an important and understudied topic. More than that, it presents an eloquent and penetrating new synthesis of Native American history before the reservation era.
-- Brian DeLay American Historical Review

Thundersticks powerfully extends the study of guns into early America and links such histories with the evolution of North America’s continental past. Silverman has offered a vital corrective to the historiography of firearms as well as to temporal and spatial frameworks that elide the enduring cycles of violence that have remade Native America.
-- Ned Blackhawk William and Mary Quarterly

From the Publisher

Focusing on the military and political changes stemming from the spread of firearms in North America, this is a well-informed, clearly argued account of the significance of access to these guns…Silverman’s book is a significant contribution to a field that is important for American studies, for military history and work on western expansionism.

History Today - Jeremy Black

David J. Silverman has accomplished the rarest of feats; he has breathed new life into a very familiar topic among scholars—conflict in Native North America…No other author has elucidated quite so clearly how guns changed the lives, cultures, and futures of American Indians…Thundersticks is a marvelous accomplishment. Silverman’s work is accessible for nonscholars while at the same time essential reading for historians of Native America, the United States, the Atlantic World, and more. This is how history should be written.

Western Historical Review - Jason Herbert

Silverman’s compelling rediscovery of the ‘gun frontier,’ imaginatively conceived and deeply researched, is must reading. For nearly two centuries, indigenous peoples everywhere in North America waged devastating arms races with each other, enabled by, but seldom under the control of, Euro-Americans eager to sell their lethal wares in defiance of laws and their nations’ interests.

Daniel K. Richter

Given that indigenous life across the continent was profoundly reshaped by guns and gunpowder—two things no Native society had the capacity to produce—it is remarkable that we had to wait until 2016 for a book that marries sophisticated indigenous history with a focus on the transformative effects of firearms over the long term. David J. Silverman’s Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America is worth the wait…The force of this book is in the details…Thundersticks is nonetheless the indispensable new work on an important and understudied topic. More than that, it presents an eloquent and penetrating new synthesis of Native American history before the reservation era.

Brian DeLayn Historical Review

After reading Thundersticks, no one will ever be able to question that guns were fundamental to colonialism and that American Indians wanted them, used them with ferocity, and that they changed Native life forever. Silverman makes it all so obvious in his utterly convincing and transformative book. He has literally rewritten American history.

Robbie Ethridge

Tracking the impact of firearms across different eras and areas as Native peoples incorporated them into their arsenals, economies, foreign policies, and cultures, David Silverman shows how guns shaped the colonial and indigenous history of the continent. No one has done anything quite like this before. A major achievement.

Colin G. Calloway

Silverman’s command of a vast literature and his attention to evidence will put to rest any remaining doubts about the Indian preference for guns over the bow and arrow.

Gregory Evans Dowd

A good measure of a work of history is whether it changes the way we understand its subject. By that measure, David J. Silverman succeeds admirably in Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America…In Silverman’s sober, sprawling account, America is a nation built on slaves and guns.

Thomas E. Ricks

Written in an accessible and at times swashbuckling style, the book is in many ways a retelling of the U.S.’ Indian Wars from the 17th to the 19th centuries, with a twist. It cracks the mystery of how Colonial-era Native American tribes came to master a continent-spanning, gun-running network in smoothbore flintlock muskets, often decades in advance of European settlement.

Los Angeles Times - Casey Sanchez

Thundersticks powerfully extends the study of guns into early America and links such histories with the evolution of North America’s continental past. Silverman has offered a vital corrective to the historiography of firearms as well as to temporal and spatial frameworks that elide the enduring cycles of violence that have remade Native America.

William and Mary Quarterly - Ned Blackhawk

Given that indigenous life across the continent was profoundly reshaped by guns and gunpowder—two things no Native society had the capacity to produce—it is remarkable that we had to wait until 2016 for a book that marries sophisticated indigenous history with a focus on the transformative effects of firearms over the long term. David J. Silverman’s Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America is worth the wait…The force of this book is in the details…Thundersticks is nonetheless the indispensable new work on an important and understudied topic. More than that, it presents an eloquent and penetrating new synthesis of Native American history before the reservation era.

American Historical Review - Brian DeLay

★ 09/01/2016
Rejecting the paradigm that American Indians were ignorant of the military possibilities provided by firearms, Silverman (history, George Washington Univ.; Red Bretheren) endeavors to demonstrate how native groups utilized access to "thundersticks" to expand their territories and victimize their neighbors. They chose to abandon traditional weaponry in favor of firearms because the latter delivered grievous wounds and could be shot from afar. European traders from England, France, the Netherlands, Russia, and Spain provided the weapons, either as a result of the fur trade or the desire to see them used against European rivals. American Indians came to view their guns as both a symbol of manhood and a religious relic, using trade not only to acquire ammunition but also to deny their enemies access to them. This tactic granted groups such as the Iroquois great power, curtailed only when neighboring peoples became similarly armed. By the 19th century, warriors among tribes such as the Comanche and Sioux were far more effective with rifles while on horseback than American soldiers, yet had become hopelessly outgunned by the U.S. military. VERDICT This thought-provoking work will appeal to all readers interested in the history of North America.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

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