The Chosen and the Damned - by David J Silverman (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A sweeping chronicle placing race at the center of Native American U.S. history, from the award-winning author of This Land Is Their Land.

When the colonial era began, Europeans did not consider themselves as "Whites," and Native Americans did not think of themselves as "Indians." Yet as a genocidal struggle for America unfolded over the course of generations, all that changed. Euro-Americans developed a sense of racial identity, superiority, and national mission-of being chosen. They contended that Indians were damned to disappear so Whites could spread Christian civilization. Native people countered that the Great Spirit had created Indians and Whites separately and intended America to belong to Indians alone.

In The Chosen and the Damned, acclaimed historian David J. Silverman traces Indian-White racial arguments across four centuries, from the bloody colonial wars for territory to the national wars of extermination justified as "Manifest Destiny"; from the creation of reservations and boarding schools to the rise of the Red Power movement and beyond. In this transformative retelling, Silverman shows how White identity, defined against Indians, became central to American nationhood. He also reveals how Indian identity contributed to Native Americans' resistance and resilience as modern tribal people, even as it has sometimes pit them against one another on the basis of race.

The epochal story of race in America is typically understood as a Black and White issue. The Chosen and the Damned restores the defining role Native people have played, and continue to play, in our national history.

Review Quotes

"A wide-ranging consideration of Indigenous people in a nation driven by white supremacist ideology . . . A charged argument for fully including Native Americans in America's racial history." --Kirkus Reviews

"I have taught Native American history for thirty years and have always maintained that despite the injustice and the horror of it, we are not looking at a case of attempted genocide. Silverman's book made me change my mind. It is a powerful work of the highest order." --Camilla Townsend, author of FIFTH SUN: A NEW HISTORY OF THE AZTECS

"Drawing on deep research, weighing evidence carefully, and refusing easy answers, Silverman places Indigenous peoples at the core of Americans ideas about race and national identity-and therefore at the core of the national story. Especially in these times when fundamental historical meanings are deeply contested, everyone should read this wise, humane, and disturbing book." --Daniel K. Richter, author of author of BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: AMERICA'S ANCIENT PAST

"From colonial times to present-day controversies about "Who is an Indian," David Silverman traces the central role of Native Americans in the ugly, messy, and violent history of race and racism in America. Euro-Americans developed a collective identity as "civilized Whites" that drove and justified the destruction and dispossession of "savage Indians"; Indigenous peoples adopted "Indian" as a shared identity that distinguished them from and bolstered resistance to their genocidal and land-hungry oppressors. Readers may be discomfited by this bold and sweeping history, or take issue with some of its interpretations, but no one should ignore it." --Colin G. Galloway, author of THE INDIAN WORLD OF GEORGE WASHINGTON: THE FIRST PRESIDENT, THE FIRST AMERICANS, AND THE BIRTH OF THE NATION

"An eye-opening and masterfully crafted book. David Silverman dismantles the myth that Native peoples were a doomed race, while insisting that their stories are the core of the American story." --Andrew Lipman, author of SQUANTO: A NATIVE ODYSSEY

"In this powerful and wide-ranging work, David J. Silverman weaves discussions of race formation and racism into a highly readable narrative history of North America's Indigenous peoples. A powerful, important and provocative book that will force considerations of the many paths not taken in American history." --Michael Oberg, author of NATIVE AMERICA: A HISTORY

"An ambitious and convincing book that lays bare the way White Europeans and Americans, for over 400 years, have used White constructs of race, white supremacy, and racism as ideological justifications for genocidal actions and policies against American Indians. Full of woe, violence, race-making, racism, and Native resilience, this is the story at the heart of America." --Robbie Ethridge, author of FROM CHICAZA TO CHICKASAW: THE EUROPEAN INVASION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MISSISSIPPIAN WORLD, 1540-1715

"An ambitious and convincing book that lays bare the way White Europeans and Americans, for over 400 years, have used White constructs of race, white supremacy, and racism as ideological justifications for genocidal actions and policies against American Indians. Full of woe, violence, race-making, racism, and Native resilience, this is the story at the heart of America." --Robbie Ethridge, author of FROM CHICAZA TO CHICKASAW: THE EUROPEAN INVASION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MISSISSIPPIAN WORLD, 1540-1715

"David Silverman writes with clarity and grace about complex, sensitive, and often sorrowful events. The Chosen and the Damned gives readers powerful new insights into the history of racialist and racist ideas in America." --James D. Rice, author of TALES FROM A REVOLUTION: BACON's REBELLION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EARLY AMERICA

About the Author