The adoption of firearms by American Indians between the 17th and 19th centuries marked a turning point in the history of North America's indigenous peoples. Author David Silverman will discuss this profound "cultural earthquake" and its impact with special focus on Pontiac's War.

David J. Silverman (Ph.D. Princeton, 2000) specializes in Native American, Colonial American, and American racial history. His most recent book is Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge, MA., 2016). He is also the author of 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. He is currently writing a Wampanoag-centered history of Plymouth Colony and the Thanksgiving holiday for Bloomsbury Press.