This book provided me with intriguing new perspectives on the period from just before the French and Indian War, through the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. I'd give the book 2 out of four stars. The unfortunate loss of 2 stars was a result of insufficient organization, lack of clarity, and lack of balance. Yes, I understand that this book has received recognition from those far better versed than I, but this is just one layman's perspective. Also, the subtitle is very misleading. This book is not a treatment of how early America was transformed by Indian warfare. It is very limited in scope, covering only Pennsylvania. As a Midwesterner transplanted to Pennsylvania for about seven years, I was most gratified to learn more of the history of my adopted state. However, Peter Silver fell short of the goal stated in the subtitle. To do a complete job of that, he would have needed to look at how all regions of the Colonies/country were affected by Indian warfare.
What follows is a mostly negative review. I want to point out, however, that Silver raises issues I find most interesting and worthy of further investigation. To demonstrate that I do not reject the book out of hand, you should know that I read this book because it was loaned to me by a good friend. However, I found the book intriguing enough to purchase my own copy. I wanted it in my library. I had never considered how opposition to “Indian” groups would forge a national unity between white European Americans. How could such atrocities on both sides lead to any semblance of tolerance? I was also flummoxed to read that many leaders among the Colonists applied anti-Indian epithets to each other when the other side refused to side with them. How ignorant and slimy! Furthermore to consider that those invectives were used against the British forces to effectively cement animosity toward them--amazing! Silver presented his points in a well-written, captivating manner. His points are quite uncomfortable, but they demand consideration. So I appreciated the added understanding he brought to my favorite period of American history. Still, there were elements of it that bothered me, and that hurt the impact of the book as a whole.
The first difficulty I had with this book had to do with how the material was organized. In an attempt to trace the unfolding of rhetoric between early Americans and "Indians," Silver breaks events out of chronological order to suit his theme. That in itself is not so bad; I recently read Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency by Logan Beirne, which used the same mechanic, and did so very effectively. The difference was that Beirne did a much better job of reorienting the reader with the overall chronology each time he made a time jump. His reminders were succinct and effective; I hardly found myself lost at all.
By contrast, I'm afraid Silver didn't do as well. He hops around quite a lot, apparently trusting the reader to have memories as sharp as his. I admit it: I don't. Some memory joggers along the way would have been a big help. I kept reading people's names I knew he'd mentioned before, but I couldn't remember exactly where in the book I'd been introduced to them. He'd revisit events that he'd discussed so far back that I couldn't recall some of the important details. I felt lost quite a bit as I jumped backward, forward and sideways in time, with very few signposts to keep me oriented to the overall historical flow. His thesis was interesting enough that I kept pressing ahead, but the book was hard work to read and left me feeling disappointed in myself for not assimilating and compiling the scattered bits of information well enough. I'll own up to my own dimness as part of the blame, but Silver could have done much better in organizing his material. And may I say that I'm not sure that Silver's thesis really required all of that helter-skelter jumping about to effectively demonstrate.
Though the lack of organization in the book made the book difficult to read, the lack of clarity and balance made it really frustrating at times. Silver's main points, as I understand them, are 1) Much of the impetus for war against the "Indian" population was based upon fear and a system of fabricated atrocities, which he names the "anti-Indian sublime"; 2) Anti-Indian fear and hate was applied to smear and marginalize even European Americans who did not favor oppressing and eradicating them; and 3) Somehow, a sense pan-European American unity was forged as over and against the threat posed by "Indians." This fostered a sense of diversity and tolerance...so long as you weren't and "Indian" or an "Indian-lover," I presume.
Let me suggest, however, that in attempting to establish his point, he overdid it to the point of casting doubt on its credibility. Silver showed that to begin with, there were genuine, terroristic attacks upon white settlements which were calculated to spread such fear that the whites would leave. Slain whites were scalped, dismembered, and otherwise posed in genuinely disturbing ways. These attacks certainly made the impression they planned to make, but these barbaric tableaux backfired on the "Indians." The graphic images haunted the imaginations of white Americans so much that they became an obsession. The gory scenes were told and re-told in newspapers, pamphlets and broadsides, and the "anti-Indian sublime" became a literary sensation. These accounts sold like hotcakes.
Tragedy was in the making, however, as further "Indian" attacks were reported or completely fabricated. In the case of actual attacks, the details were promiscuously embellished to include all the macabre scenes that sold the most copy. Silver made it seem like each incident was an opportunity to cut and paste the very same sensational tropes, over and over again. As a result, the barbarity of attacks grew with the telling, generating an artificial fever pitch of fear and hatred for all "Indians." This hysteria would have horrible consequences as it provided an environment in which a great number of non-combatant "Indians" were wiped out to slake whites' appetite for retribution and bloodshed. The actual perpetrators of attacks (if the attacks really happened to begin with) conducted their strikes with lightning speed and disappeared without a trace. Pursuing white militias almost never caught up with them. Having no actual murderers to strike back against, the whites insisted upon a handier outlet for their vengeful impulses: the innocent, women, children, etc. The most heartrending account was toward the end of the book, with the massacre of approximately ninety Gnadenhutten and Salem Moravian "Indians," who were complete pacifists. As a result, some of these peaceful Native Americans forsook the Christian faith entirely and went back to warlike ways.
I cannot express how disgusted I was as I read these things. Blind, unthinking vengeance against the innocent, just because a person needs an outlet for their hatred is one of the worst evils I can think of. I felt newly ashamed at the depth of injustice perpetrated by some of my countrymen in the past. As I continued to read, however, something didn't seem right. The way that Silver portrayed our warfare against Native American groups made it seem like virtually all of the clashes were based on false information or sheer, undisciplined hatred on our part. Every now and then he would drop hints that some "Indian" attacks had actually happened, and that they were pretty bad. However, he played down the real strikes so far as to mention them in passing, mumbling through them and then getting right back to unjust attacks that we had mounted. I started, once again, to feel lost. I found myself repeatedly thinking, "Now wait a minute--was this one an actual attack or a fabricated one?" That is why I am charging Silver with a lack of clarity in his book: I kept wondering whether a particular account was true or trumped up. Silver really should have taken more pains to be clear in this area.
On the other hand, I suspect the lack of clarity might be chalked up to a lack of balance. The reader does not need to look very hard to understand the ideological place from which Silver is writing. His bias speaks loud and clear. I know that it is politically correct to blame America for everything, and politically incorrect to portray oppressed people as EVER having done anything wrong. Most, however, would agree with the common wisdom that in most conflicts, it is doubtful that the all of the blame can be assigned to one party. It is more likely that both parties contributed to the conflict in some way, even if one side deserves more of the blame than the other. In order to fully understand what led up to these horrible conflicts, I need to understand where both parties erred, and how things might have been done differently.
It is here that Silver missed out on the chance to write a truly great book. Early in the book, he states that some of the “Indians” staged terroristic attacks on white settlements, and promptly fled beyond the reach of militias. He documents at great length the unreasoning fear this stirred within the white population, and later relates how whites attacked a large number of innocents. Lamentably, Silver does not connect the dots between these developments! A useful and thorough analysis of these events demands asking some politically incorrect questions. Could it be said that more radical elements among the “Indian” nations, closing their minds to diplomacy and determining to attack in a shocking and graphic manner, actually cast a die which would doom their future as a people in the mid-Atlantic? Could those radical elements, with their hit-and-run tactics, be in some measure accountable for the deaths among their own innocent people? These questions are positively begged by the accounts related by Silver. Yet he seems so eager to press his own presuppositions that he never even entertains such questions. Surely his bias jeopardizes the effectiveness of his arguments.
I want to make one thing abundantly clear at this point: I do <i>not</i> come from the “America can do no wrong” camp. In fact, as I read this book, Silver was “preaching to the choir.” I embarked upon this reading with my own presupposition that for all the reasons we have to celebrate our national heritage, we have nonetheless behaved in shameful, dishonest, and dishonorable ways toward our Native American community over the years. Silver did not need to convince me of this.
Setting aside my basic agreement with that point, I also believe that one cannot allow one’s presuppositions to prevent a deeper understanding of events. If we are to grow and learn from our history, even our tragedies and injustices must be examined from all angles. Even if I am willing to assign the majority of the blame to European overreaction, I also need to understand how various “Indian” factions may have blundered and made things worse for themselves. Sadly, Silver allowed bias to prevent him from investigating the larger picture.
This leads to another major peril of a biased presentation of historical events: pressing so heavily on only one side of an issue tends to cast doubt on a perfectly valid point that is worthy of serious thought. When one refuses to even address alternate explanations, the audience notices the deficiency and begins to wonder if the author “protests too much.” There is a danger of having one’s perspective dismissed out-of-hand, assigned to the trash heap of biased, revisionist pieces of hack-work. I am perfectly willing to entertain alternate viewpoints, but I need to be shown that they arise from deep study of the whole picture.
To summarize, this book was exceedingly well-researched and well-written. The points brought forward are controversial but demand to be taken seriously. I will be thinking about them for years to come, and I am grateful for this. However, the disorganization, lack of clarity, and bias demonstrated by the author seriously undermine the cogency of his arguments. The flaws, however, do not give the reader any excuse to dismiss his efforts, or to fail in giving his arguments serious consideration. So perhaps he has the last word after all.
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