David Silverman

Areas of Expertise

• Native American
• Colonial and Revolutionary America
• Early Modern World
• Imperialism and Colonialism

David J. Silverman (Ph.D., Princeton, 2000) specializes in Native American, Colonial American, and American racial history. His most recent book is This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, published by Bloomsbury in 2019. He is also the author of Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge, MA., 2016); Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America (Ithaca, 2010), and Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600-1871 (New York, 2005), and co-author of Ninigret, the Niantic and Narragansett Sachem: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country (Ithaca, 2014). His essays have won major awards from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the New York Association of History.

Complete C.V. (PDF)

Education

Ph.D., Princeton University, 2000

Publications

Authored Books:

This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Co-author with Julie A. Fisher. Ninigret, the Niantic and Narragansett Sachem: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014.

Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010. Honorable mention as a finalist for the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize, American Society for Ethnohistory, 2011.

Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005; paperback edition, 2007.

Edited Books:

Co-editor with Denver Brunsman. The American Revolution Reader. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Co-editor with Denver Brunsman, Douglas Greenberg, Stanley Katz, and John M. Murrin. Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development. 6th ed. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Co-editor with Andrew Shankman and Ignacio Gallup-Diaz. Anglicizing Americans: Empire, Revolution, Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Refereed Journal Articles:

“The Curse of God: An Idea and its Origins among the Indians of New York’s Revolutionary Frontier.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 66 (2009): 495-534. Winner of the Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York History, New York Academy of History, 2012.

“‘Natural inhabitants, time out of Mind’: Sachem Rights and the Struggle for Wampanoag Land in Colonial New England.” Northeast Anthropology 70 (2005): 4-10.

“Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Martha’s Vineyard.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 62 (2005): 141-75. Winner, 2008, of the Douglass Adair Memorial Award, given biennially to the best article to have appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly in a six-year span, and Winner of the Lester J. Cappon Award for best article of 2005 in the William and Mary Quarterly.

• Reprinted in American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500-1850, 2d ed., edited by Peter Mancall and James Merrell. New York: Routledge, 2006.

“‘We chuse to be bounded’: Indian Animal Husbandry in Colonial New England.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 60 (2003): 511-48.

“The Impact of Indentured Servitude on Southern New England Indian Society and Culture, 1680-1810.” New England Quarterly 74 (2001): 622-66.

“Deposing the Sachem to Defend the Sachemship: Indian Land Sales and Political Structure on Martha’s Vineyard, 1680-1740.” Explorations in Early American Culture [now Early American Studies] 5 (2001): 9-44.

Book Chapters:

“Racial Walls: Race and the Emergence of American White Nationalism.” In Anglicizing Americans: Empire, Revolution, Republic, edited by Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

“Purgatory: Interpreting Christian Missions and North American Indians.” In Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America, edited by Louise A. Breen, 320-43. New York: Routledge, 2011.

“To Become a Chosen People: The Missionary Work and Missionary Spirit of the Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians, 1775-1835.” In Native Americans, Christian Missionaries, and the Reshaping of Early America’s Religious Landscape, edited by Joel W. Martin and Mark Nicholas, 250-75. Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press, 2010.

“‘We Chief Men Say This’: Wampanoag Memory, English Authority, and the Contest Over Mittark’s Will.” In Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology, edited by Kristina Bross and Hillary Wyss, 164-73. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.

“The Church in New England Indian Community Life: A View from the Islands and Cape Cod.” In Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience, edited by Colin G. Calloway and Neal Salisbury, 264-98. Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2003.

“Losing the Language: The Decline of Algonquian Tongues and the Challenge of Indian Identity in Southeastern New England.” In Papers of the 31st Annual Algonquian Conference, edited by John D. Nichols, 346-66. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2000.

Classes Taught

HIST 2305W: Race in Early America

HIST 3001: Indians and Warfare in North America

HIST 3301: American Indian History to 1890

HIST 3301: Colonial North America

HIST 3301W: King Philip's War

HIST 6301: Graduate Readings Colonial North America