Our Savage Neighbors Chapter Summary

It might be easy to think of more miserable people than the unnamed group of people at this point of time in history, but surely their misery is certainly their undesirable kind. Brutality, distrust Horror is dispersed in the air, men breathe it in and die of it. The life of every man hung on a thin thread and the hope of being alive was tainted with convincing uncertainty. Trust and reliance sporadically gave way for mistrust and suspicion. It was certainly a world of no man’s life.

In Our savage neighbors written by Peter Silver, violence and terror characterized the relationship between the Indians and the Pennsylvanian colonists. The conspectus of Silver’s book resides on the notion that fear was the prime motivator that led to the rebirth

of the anti-Indian movement rather than racism as many historians claim and he presents a thrilling account of how this was often the case. As stated by Silver, the 18th century wars that marred the relationship between the Indians and the Europeans influenced myriad of other European ethnic groups that dwelled in Pennsylvania at that time. Fundamentally, Silver’s account can be classified into three main distinctive parts. Firstly, He branded the Indian wars with the Europeans as an act of terrorism and savagery that lead to the formation of the “Anti-Indian Sublime”. Next, he succinctly described the intra-white struggle and conflict. Lastly, he described how this terrorism and conflict led to the conception of race-consciousness that later defined the partition between the Indians and the Europeans in the modern day world.
In the middle colonies, notably the “back country” of Pennsylvania the colonists, precisely, the Germans and the Irish were at loggerheads with the Indians from the beginning of his account and the early part of his book is devoted to the description of the experiences of these European colonists. Their experiences with the Indians however, was different which progressively resulted in a red hot dispute among the communities. It is not a political dispute spearheaded by the leaders of their respective communities but a social dispute that describes the fears, actions horrific and heart-melting occurrences that befell common people. The social upheaval that made the colonists fear the Indians and ultimately led to the realization of their whiteness.
Unlike in Richard White’s Middle Ground, where Indians were celebrated for their “accommodation” of the whites, Silver’s book described the Indians with monstrosity and savagery while detailing the psychological repercussion on the colonists. Not prejudice, not racism as often thought drove the Indian-White association into the dungeon of brutality, it was fear and intense terror. He stated that “racial thinking had no coherent existence, let alone an independent ability to determine people’s beliefs and actions, before the scientific racialism of the nineteenth century.” With a matter of actuality, the concept of “redness” was first developed by the Indians in an effort to unify their neighboring tribes to war against the Europeans and this, according to Silver, led to the development of race-consciousness in the subsequent years. Although, the Indians wanted the Europeans out of their territory, but Silver doesn’t state what their motivation were, so assumedly it could be economically driven.
The Indians were the terrorist and the Europeans were the victims, which is how the tale of the Indian-European relation is often portrayed. However, this was more amplified as the Indians emotionally-oppressed and continuously terrorized the whites into submission. As reported by Silver, the white settlements were often raided at night resulting in the destruction of lives and its sanctity. Farmers, traders and regular villagers were ambushed, killed and mutilated to effect the maximum shock value on every eye that beheld them. The bodies of their victims were dismembered, scalped and hung in crude positions on trees or houses. It was a dreary and dismal sight for everyone, fury and rage coupled with fear and gloom terrified the European colonists for years. Rather than this settlers to put in an act of valor and seek for revenge, they often sat back in fright and shock. They were at the mercy of random Indian invasion throughout the 1740s. Fear as motivating factor, these Europeans would even prosecute any of their member community who they thought enraged the Indians. They inefficiently and cowardly planned a retaliation war against the Indians and they were made to pay for their incompetence. As described by Silver, it was a “bleeding America”.
Fear grew and frustration endured, this lead to the creation of the “Anti-Indian Sublime” according to Silver. The psychological scar and physical terror from the mutilated and disjointed bodies of European comrades recurrently persisted. Warriors hid in their forts, soaked with tension awaiting the arrival of another surprise Indian raid. Men are not to be trusted, “friendly Indians” became a tool of potential attack. Brutality grew arms embracing lives of soldiers and common people, the whites retaliated by ruthlessly slayed the Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten. They tried to avenge the death of their families, the destruction of their farms but not to the full magnitude.
While violence loomed on the outside, the Pennsylvanian whites turned against each other in response to the publicized wars. Indian-haters and the “Anti-Indian Sublime” was still in the developmental stages, the Europeans became disunited as conflicts arose one after the other. They started killing themselves even when while the Indians were attacking. They would do the Indian by scalping their victims and attest it as an Indian attack. The Quakers were convicted, lands and buildings were burned and vehement brutality led to dilapidation of many communities. An example of this extreme disunity was the idea that “the best solution was to cut out all German participation from the public sphere.” Some were insiders and some were considered “outsiders”, every ethnicity had their own description of the neighboring Europeans. Whites determined this by examining the reaction of the community in question to Indian attack. Anti-Indian attitude was producing anti-German sentiment. Ethno-stereotypes became another main turning point as “Europeans would fall out among themselves further, looking inward at a supposedly Indian-tainted elite for traces of guilt instead of outward at more obvious enemies.”
Contrary to orthodox opinion, the whites in Pennsylvania did not live peaceably with each other. The suffering of the Germans were ignored, the Irish were accused of irking the Indians and the inter-white conflict reached a fever pitch. Instead of merging and wielding themselves to launch a blow on their common enemy, they continued distrusting each other even when they lived in close proximity. No middle ground with the Indians, no go-betweens among their communities, it was hostility that darkened the sky. They had power to overcome their crises, but they never realized it.
The third aspect of Silver’s account deals with the creation of the Whiteness theory.

Still, the Germans are neglected and the Irish exploited, language barrier continued to cause strife and distrust. However, when English news was subsequently translated into German, sentiments of exploitation and desertion became a backdrop and they started seeing other in a new way. Democracy was birthed as more power was shared among ethnicities in the “back country”. The increased intensity of the Indian savagery opened the eyes to the whites and they sought to put their previous irreconcilable differences in the shade. To a degree, they consciously realized that they have a common enemy and they could wield their communities to attack the “red race”. There was a significant shift in their belief, the creator created differently so that they could live distinctly. Familiarity does not necessarily arise from living in close proximity with each other, and Silver constantly argued this throughout his book. The idea of White’s middle ground never came into existence at this point in history in Pennsylvania, as racial consciousness emerged and developed. The Irish, Germans and other Europeans saw themselves whites and the Indians as red, they built inter-white middle ground here, not Indian-white. They did not actually forget or bury their differences and ignore its existence, but they, to a certain extent found tolerance and little “accommodation” between their other white

counterparts.

Horrendous deeds characterized Silver’s account just as Merrell’s Into the American woods, although the victimization of the whites is more pronounced here. The development of the “Anti-Indian Sublime” and the inter-white crises replaced accommodation or gifts giving in White’s account. This disparity ultimately gave way for recognition of their similarities, but not until it potentially ruined them. They created a unified identity from the awareness of their common enemy and fear.
All in all, although Silver’s account was often one-sided on the experiences of the whites, it is a compelling account that retells the tale of the Indian brutality. Physical savagery evolved into Psychological warfare, fear developed into hate and inter-white division which later resulted into the birth of physical awareness by the turn of the century and ultimately racism as we know it today. The “Our” in Our Savage Neighbors is not inclusive, it is the irony of characterization of the events that occurred. The Indians remained enemies, the colonists became whites.