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{{Short description|Stock character}}{{For|broader usage of the word "savage"|Savage (pejorative term)}}{{other uses|Noble Savage (disambiguation)}}

In Western [[anthropology]], [[Western philosophy|philosophy]], and [[European literature|literature]], the '''Myth of the Noble savage''' refers to a [[stock character]] who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the "noble" savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with nature.<ref>"The noble savage", ''Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory'' Third Edition (1991) J.A. Cudon, Ed. pp. 588–589.</ref> In the [[heroic drama]] of the stageplay ''[[The Conquest of Granada|The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards]]'' (1672), [[John Dryden]] represents the ''noble savage'' as an archetype of Man-as-Creature-of-Nature.<ref>{{Citation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27Av0zEmlqkC&pg=PA106 |first=Earl |last=Miner |contribution=The Wild Man Through the Looking Glass |editor1-first=Edward |editor1-last=Dudley |editor2-first=Maximillian E |editor2-last=Novak |title=The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press |year=1972 |page=106|isbn=9780822975991 }}</ref>

The intellectual politics of the [[Stuart Restoration]] (1660–1688) expanded Dryden's playwright usage of ''savage'' to denote a human ''wild beast'' and a ''wild man''.<ref>OED s.v. "savage" B.3.a.</ref> Concerning civility and incivility, in the ''Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit'' (1699), the philosopher [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury]], said that men and women possess an innate [[morality]], a sense of right and wrong conduct, which is based upon the [[intellect]] and the emotions, and not based upon religious doctrine.<ref name="Harrison, Ross 2003 p. 70">{{Cite book |last=Harrison |first=Ross |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9780511613968/type/book |title=Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political Philosophy |date=2002-12-16 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-81700-4 |edition=1 |pages=70 |doi=10.1017/cbo9780511613968}}</ref>

In 18th-century anthropology, the term ''noble savage'' then denoted ''nature's gentleman'', an ideal man born from the sentimentalism of [[moral sense theory]]. In the 19th century, in the essay "The Noble Savage" (1853) Charles Dickens rendered the noble savage into a rhetorical [[oxymoron]] by satirizing the British [[Romanticism|romanticisation]] of [[Primitivism]] in philosophy and in the arts made possible by moral sentimentalism.<ref>Moore, Grace "Reappraising Dickens's 'Noble Savage'", ''The Dickensian'' 98:458 (2002): 236–243.</ref>

In many ways, the myth of the noble savage entails fantasies about the non-West that cut to the core of the conversation in the social sciences about Orientalism, colonialism and exoticism. One question that emerges is whether an admiration of "the Other" as noble undermines or reproduces the dominant hierarchy, whereby the Other is subjugated by Western powers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kalantzis |first=Konstantinos |date=2023-12-01 |title=The Indigenous Sublime: Rethinking Orientalism and Desire from documenta 14 to Highland Crete |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728171 |journal=Current Anthropology |language=en |volume=64 |issue=6 |pages=640–669 |doi=10.1086/728171 |issn=0011-3204|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

==Origins==
[[File:Gaius Cornelius Tacitus mirror.jpg|thumb|Roman historian [[Tacitus]] introduced the idea of the ''noble savage'' in his historical work ''[[Germania (book)|Germania]]'', describes the [[Germanic peoples|ancient Germanic people]] in terms that precede the notion.]]
The first century [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] work ''[[Germania (book)|De origine et situ Germanorum]]'' (''On the Origin and Situation of the Germans'') by [[Tacitus|Publius Cornelius Tacitus]] introduced the idea of the ''noble savage'' to the [[Western world|Western World]] in 98 AD, describing the [[Germanic peoples|ancient Germanic people]] as aligned with [[Ancient Roman philosophy|ancient Roman virtues]], such as bravery and honesty.<ref>''Paradies auf Erden?: Mythenbildung als Form von Fremdwahrnehmung : der Südsee-Mythos in Schlüsselphasen der deutschen Literatur'' (2008) Anja Hall Königshausen & Neumann, p. 0000.</ref>
{{Blockquote
|text=Thus with their virtue protected they live uncorrupted by the allurements of public shows or the stimulant of feastings. Clandestine correspondence is equally unknown to men and women. Very rare for so numerous a population is adultery [...] No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
|author=Tacitus
|source=''Germania'' (c. 98 AD)
}}
The 12th-century [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] allegorical novel ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan]]'' developed the idea through its ''noble savage'' titular protagonist understanding [[natural theology]] in a ''[[tabula rasa]]'' existence without any education or contact with the outside world,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Özalp |first1=N. Ahmet |title=Hay bin Yakzan |date=1996 |publisher=Yapı Kredi Yayınları |isbn=975-363-475-7}}</ref> inspiring later Western philosophy and literature during [[Age of Enlightenment]].
The [[stock character]] of the ''noble savage'' appears in the essay "[[Of Cannibals]]" (1580), about the [[Tupinambá people]] of Brazil, wherein the philosopher [[Michel de Montaigne]] presents "Nature's Gentleman", the ''bon sauvage'' counterpart to civilized Europeans in the 16th century.[[File:John Dryden by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt.jpg|thumb|right|250px|The playwright John Dryden coined the term "noble savage" in the stageplay ''The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards'' (1672).]]
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The first usage of the term ''noble savage'' in [[English literature]] occurs in John Dryden's stageplay ''[[The Conquest of Granada|The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards]]'' (1672), about the troubled love of the hero Almanzor and the Moorish beauty Almahide, in which the protagonist defends his life as a free man by denying a prince's right to put him to death, because he is not a subject of the prince:

{{poemquote|
I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.<ref>Noble savage, ''The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory'' Third Edition (1991) J.A. Cuddon, Ed. pp.588–589.</ref>}}

[[File:Alexander Pope circa 1736.jpeg|thumb|right|250px|In the poem "An Essay on Man" (1734), the poet Alexander Pope developed the noble savage into the non-European [[Other (philosophy)|Other]]. ([[Jonathan Richardson]], c. 1736)]]
By the 18th century, Montaigne's predecessor to the noble savage, ''nature's gentleman'' was a stock character usual to the [[Sentimentalism (literature)|sentimental literature]] of the time, for which a type of non-European Other became a background character for European stories about adventurous Europeans in the strange lands beyond continental Europe. For the novels, the opera, and the stageplays, the stock of characters included the "Virtuous Milkmaid" and the "Servant-More-Clever-Than-the-Master" (e.g. [[Sancho Panza]] and [[Figaro (character in operas and plays)|Figaro]]), literary characters who personify the moral superiority of working-class people in the fictional world of the story.

In English literature, [[British North America]] was the geographic ''locus classicus'' for adventure and exploration stories about European encounters with the noble savage natives, such as the historical novel ''[[The Last of the Mohicans|The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757]]'' (1826), by [[James Fenimore Cooper]], and the epic poem ''[[The Song of Hiawatha]]'' (1855), by [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], both literary works presented the [[primitivism]] (geographic, cultural, political) of North America as an ideal place for the European man to commune with Nature, far from the artifice of civilisation; yet in the poem “[[An Essay on Man]]” (1734), the English poet [[Alexander Pope]] portrays the American Indian thus:

{{poemquote|
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, a humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.}}

To Pope, the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|American Indian]] was an abstract [[Person|being]] unlike his insular European self; thus, from the Western perspective of "An Essay on Man", Pope's metaphoric usage of ''poor'' means "uneducated and a heathen", but also denotes a savage who is happy with his rustic life in harmony with Nature, and who believes in [[deism]], a form of [[natural religion]] — the [[idealization and devaluation]] of the non-European Other derived from the mirror logic of the Enlightenment belief that "men, everywhere and in all times, are the same".

[[File:Royal coat of arms of Denmark (2024).svg|thumb|right|250px|'''The Noble savage:''' In the royal coat of arms of Denmark, the [[Wild man|wild men]] (woodwose) who [[Supporter|support]] the royal house date from the early reign of the Oldenburg dynasty.]]

;
Like Dryden's ''noble savage'' term, Pope's phrase "Lo, the Poor Indian!" was used to dehumanize the natives of North America for European purposes, and so justified white settlers' conflicts with the local Indians for possession of the land. In the mid-19th century, the journalist-editor [[Horace Greeley]] published the essay "Lo! The Poor Indian!" (1859), about the social condition of the American Indian in the modern United States:

{{blockquote|text=I have learned to appreciate better than hitherto, and to make more allowance for the dislike, aversion, contempt wherewith Indians are usually regarded by their white neighbors, and have been since the days of the Puritans. It needs but little familiarity with the actual, palpable aborigines to convince anyone that the poetic Indian — the Indian of [[James Fenimore Cooper|Cooper]] and [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow|Longfellow]] — is only visible to the poet's eye. To the prosaic observer, the average Indian of the woods and prairies is a being who does little credit to human nature — a slave of appetite and sloth, never emancipated from the tyranny of one animal passion, save by the more ravenous demands of another.<br><br>

As I passed over those magnificent bottoms of the Kansas, which form the reservations of the [[Delaware Tribe of Indians|Delawares]], [[Potawatomi|Potawatamies]], etc., constituting the very best corn-lands on Earth, and saw their owners sitting around the doors of their lodges at the height of the planting season, and in as good, bright planting weather as sun and soil ever made, I could not help saying: "These people must die out — there is no help for them. God has given this earth to those who will subdue and cultivate it, and it is vain to struggle against His righteous decree."<ref>''An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859'' (1860), by Horace Greeley. {{Cite web | url=http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/greeley/indians.html | title=An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859, "Lo! The Poor Indian!", by Horace Greeley}}</ref>}}

Moreover, during the [[American Indian Wars]] (1609–1924) for possession of the land, European white settlers considered the Indians "an inferior breed of men" and mocked them by using the terms "Lo" and "Mr. Lo" as disrespectful forms of address. In the Western U.S., those terms of address also referred to East Coast humanitarians whose conception of the mythical noble-savage American Indian was unlike the warrior who confronted and fought the frontiersman. Concerning the story of the settler Thomas Alderdice, whose wife was captured and killed by [[Cheyenne|Cheyenne Indians]], ''The Leavenworth, Kansas, Times and Conservative'' newspaper said: "We wish some philanthropists, who talk about civilizing the Indians, could have heard this unfortunate and almost broken-hearted man tell his story. We think [that the philanthropists] would at least have wavered a little in their [high] opinion of the Lo family."<ref>Barnett, Louise, in ''Touched by Fire: the Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer'' (University of Nebraska Press [1986], 2006), pp. 107–108.</ref>

==Cultural stereotype==
===The Roman Empire===
In Western literature, the Roman book ''[[Germania (book)|De origine et situ Germanorum]]'' (''On the Origin and Situation of the Germans'', 98 [[Common Era|CE]]), by the historian [[Tacitus|Publius Cornelius Tacitus]], introduced the anthropologic concept of the ''noble savage'' to the Western World; later a [[cultural stereotype]] who featured in the exotic-place tourism reported in the European [[travel literature]] of the 17th and the 18th centuries.<ref>''Paradies auf Erden?: Mythenbildung als Form von Fremdwahrnehmung : der Südsee-Mythos in Schlüsselphasen der deutschen Literatur'' (2008) Anja Hall Königshausen & Neumann, p. 0000.</ref>

===Al-Andalus===
The 12th-century [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] novel ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan|The Living Son of the Vigilant]]'' (''Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān'', 1160), by the polymath [[Ibn Tufail]], explores the subject of [[natural theology]] as a means to understand the material world. The protagonist is a ''wild man'' isolated from his society, whose trials and tribulations lead him to knowledge of Allah by living a rustic life in harmony with Mother Nature.<ref name=Attar>[[Samar Attar|Attar, Samar]], ''The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl's Influence on Modern Western Thought'' (1989), Lexington Books, {{ISBN|0-7391-1989-3}}.</ref>

===Kingdom of Spain===
In the 15th century, soon after [[Discovery of America|arriving to the Americas]] in 1492, the Europeans employed the term ''savage'' to dehumanise the ''indigènes'' (noble-savage natives) of the newly discovered "[[New World]]" as ideological justification for the [[European colonization of the Americas]], called the Age of Discovery (1492–1800); thus with the [[Dehumanization|dehumanizing]] stereotypes of the ''noble savage'' and the ''indigène'', the ''savage'' and the ''wild man'' the Europeans granted themselves the right to colonize the natives inhabiting the islands and the continental lands of the northern, the central, and the southern Americas.<ref>Borsboom, Ad. ''The Savage in European Social Thought: A Prelude to the Conceptualization of the Divergent Peoples and Cultures of Australia and Oceania'' (1988) KILTV, p. 419.</ref>

The [[conquistador]] mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the [[New Spain|Viceroyalty of New Spain]] (1521–1821) eventually produced bad-conscience recriminations amongst the European intelligentsias for and against colonialism.<ref>Anthony Pagden, ''The Fall of the Natural Man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology. Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies.''(Cambridge University Press, 1982)</ref> As the Roman Catholic Bishop of [[Chiapas]], the priest [[Bartolomé de las Casas]] witnessed the enslavement of the ''indigènes'' of New Spain, yet idealized them into morally innocent noble savages living a simple life in harmony with Mother Nature. At the [[Valladolid debate]] (1550–1551) of the moral philosophy of enslaving the native peoples of the Spanish colonies, Bishop de las Casas reported the noble-savage culture of the natives, especially noting their plain-manner [[Etiquette|social etiquette]] and that they did not have the social custom of telling lies.

===Kingdom of France===
In the intellectual debates of the late 16th and 17th centuries, philosophers used the racist stereotypes of the ''savage'' and the ''good savage'' as moral reproaches of the European monarchies fighting the [[Thirty Years' War]] (1618–1648) and the [[French Wars of Religion]] (1562–1598). In the essay "[[Of Cannibals]]" (1580), Michel de Montaigne reported that the [[Tupinambá people]] of Brazil ceremoniously eat the bodies of their dead enemies, as a matter of honour, whilst reminding the European reader that such ''wild man'' behavior was analogous to the religious barbarism of [[Death by burning|burning at the stake]]: "One calls ‘barbarism’ whatever he is not accustomed to."<ref>[http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/montaigne.html Essay "Of Cannibals"]</ref> The academic [[Terence Cave]] further explains Montaigne's point of [[moral philosophy]]:

{{blockquote|text=The cannibal practices are admitted [by Montaigne] but presented as part of a complex and balanced set of customs and beliefs which "make sense" in their own right. They are attached to a powerfully positive morality of valor and pride, one that would have been likely to appeal to early modern codes of honor, and they are contrasted with modes of behavior in the France of the wars of religion, which appear as distinctly less attractive, such as [[torture]] and barbarous methods of execution.<ref>Cave, Terence. ''How to Read Montaigne'' (London: Granta Books, 2007), pp. 81–82.</ref>}}

As philosophic reportage, "Of Cannibals" applies [[cultural relativism]] to compare the civilized European to the uncivilized noble savage. Montaigne's anthropological report about [[Human cannibalism|cannibalism]] in Brazil indicated that the Tupinambá people were neither a noble nor an exceptionally good [[People|folk]], yet neither were the Tupinambá culturally or morally inferior to his contemporary, 16th-century European civilization. From the perspective of [[Classical liberalism]] of Montaigne's humanist portrayal of the [[Convention (norm)|customs]] of honor of the Tupinambá people indicates [[Western philosophy|Western philosophic]] recognition that people are people, despite their different customs, traditions, and codes of honor. The academic David El Kenz explicates Montaigne's background concerning the violence of customary morality:

{{blockquote|In his ''Essais'' {{omission}} Montaigne discussed the first three wars of religion (1562–63; 1567–68; 1568–70) quite specifically; he had personally participated in [the wars], on the side of the [French] royal army, in southwestern France. The [anti-Protestant] [[St. Bartholomew's Day massacre]] [1572] led him to retire to his lands in the Périgord region, and remain silent on all public affairs until the 1580s. Thus, it seems that he was traumatized by the massacre. To him, cruelty was a criterion that differentiated the Wars of Religion [1562–1598] from previous conflicts, which he idealized. Montaigne considered that three factors accounted for the shift from regular war to the carnage of civil war: popular intervention, religious demagogy, and the never-ending aspect of the conflict. {{omission}}

He chose to depict cruelty through the image of hunting, which fitted with the tradition of condemning hunting for its association with blood and death, but it was still quite surprising, to the extent that this practice was part of the [[Aristocracy|aristocratic]] way of life. Montaigne reviled hunting by describing it as an urban massacre scene. In addition, the man–animal relationship allowed him to define [[virtue]], which he presented as the opposite of cruelty. {{omission}} [As] a sort of natural benevolence based on {{omission}} personal feelings.

Montaigne associated the [human] propensity to cruelty toward animals, with that exercised toward men. After all, following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the invented image of Charles IX shooting Huguenots from the [[Louvre Palace]] window did combine the established reputation of the King as a hunter, with a stigmatization of hunting, a cruel and perverted custom, did it not?<ref>El Kenz, David. ''Massacres During the Wars of Religion'' (2007)[https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/massacres-during-wars-religion?cs=print David El Kenz,"Massacres During the Wars of Religion", 2007]</ref>}}

===Literature===
[[File:Southerne Oroonoko 1776 performance.jpg|thumb|upright|right|alt=Illustration of a 1776 performance of Oroonoko.|200px|In the stageplay ''Oroonoko: A Tragedy'' (1696), by Thomas Southerne, plot complications lead the protagonist Oroonoko to kill his beloved Imoinda.]]

The themes about the person and ''[[persona]]'' of the mythical noble savage are the subjects of the novel ''[[Oroonoko|Oroonoko: Or the Royal Slave]]'' (1688), by [[Aphra Behn]], which is the tragic love story between Oroonoko and the beautiful Imoinda, an African king and queen respectively. At [[Fort Amsterdam, Ghana|Coramantien]], Ghana, the protagonist is deceived and delivered into the [[Atlantic slave trade]] (16th–19th centuries), and Oroonoko becomes a slave of [[Plantation economy|plantation colonists]] in [[Surinam (Dutch colony)|Surinam]] (Dutch Guiana, 1667–1954). In the course of his enslavement, Oroonoko meets the woman who narrates to the reader the life and love of Prince Oroonoko, his enslavement, his leading a [[slave rebellion]] against the Dutch planters of Surinam, and his consequent execution by the Dutch colonialists.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Benítez-Rojo|first=Antonio|date=2018|title=The Caribbean: From a Sea Basin to an Atlantic Network|journal=The Southern Quarterly|volume=55|pages=196–206}}</ref>

Despite Behn having written the [[Popular culture|popular novel]] for money, ''Oroonoko'' proved to be political-protest literature against [[slavery]], because the story, plot, and characters followed the [[Narrative|narrative conventions]] of the European [[romance novel]]. In the event, the Irish playwright [[Thomas Southerne]] adapted the novel ''Oroonoko'' into the [[stage play]] ''Oroonoko: A Tragedy'' (1696) that stressed the [[pathos]] of the love story, the circumstances, and the characters, which consequently gave political importance to the play and the novel for the candid [[Representation (arts)|cultural representation]] of slave-powered European colonialism.

==Uses of the stereotype==
===Romantic primitivism===
In the 1st century CE, in the book ''[[Germania (book)|Germania]]'', Tacitus ascribed to the Germans the cultural superiority of the ''noble savage'' way of life, because Rome was too civilized, unlike the savage Germans.<ref>Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G. ''Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity'', Baltimore, I, 1935. pp. 0000.</ref> The art historian [[Erwin Panofsky]] explains that:

{{blockquote|text=There had been, from the beginning of Classical speculation, two contrasting opinions about the [[state of nature|natural state of man]], each of them, of course, a "Gegen-Konstruktion" to the conditions under which it was formed. One view, termed "soft" primitivism in an illuminating book by Lovejoy and Boas, conceives of primitive life as a golden age of plenty, innocence, and happiness — in other words, as civilized life purged of its vices. The other, "hard" form of primitivism conceives of primitive life as an almost subhuman existence full of terrible hardships and devoid of all comforts — in other words, as civilized life stripped of its virtues.<ref>Erwin Panofsky, "Et in Arcadia Ego", in ''Meaning in the Visual Arts'' (New York: Doubleday, 1955).</ref>|author=Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition (1936)}}

In the novel ''[[The Adventures of Telemachus|The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses]]'' (1699), in the “Encounter with the Mandurians” (Chapter IX), the theologian [[François Fénelon]] presented the ''noble savage'' stock character in conversation with civilized men from Europe about possession and ownership of [[Nature]]:

{{blockquote|text=On our arrival upon this coast we found there a savage race who {{omission}} lived by hunting and by the fruits which the trees spontaneously produced. These people {{omission}} were greatly surprised and alarmed by the sight of our ships and arms and retired to the mountains. But since our soldiers were curious to see the country and hunt deer, they were met by some of these savage fugitives.<br>

The leaders of the savages accosted them thus: “We abandoned for you, the pleasant sea-coast, so that we have nothing left, but these almost inaccessible mountains: at least, it is just that you leave us in peace and liberty. Go, and never forget that you owe your lives to our feeling of humanity. Never forget that it was from a people whom you call rude and savage that you receive this lesson in gentleness and generosity. {{omission}} We abhor that brutality which, under the gaudy names of ambition and glory, {{omission}} sheds the blood of men who are all brothers. {{omission}} We value health, frugality, liberty, and vigor of body and mind: the love of virtue, the fear of the gods, a natural goodness toward our neighbors, attachment to our friends, fidelity to all the world, moderation in prosperity, fortitude in adversity, courage always bold to speak the truth, and abhorrence of flattery. {{omission}}<br>

If the offended gods so far blind you as to make you reject peace, you will find, when it is too late, that the people who are moderate and lovers of peace are the most formidable in war.”|author=Encounter with the Mandurians|source=''The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses'' (1699)<ref>François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Encounter with the Mandurians, in Chapter IX of ''Telemachus, Son of Ulysses'', Patrick Riley, translator (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 130–131; Riley's translation is based on the translation by Tobias Smollett, 1776 (op. cit. p. xvii).</ref>}}

In the Kingdom of France, critics of the Crown and Church risked censorship and summary imprisonment without trial, and primitivism was political protest against the repressive imperial règimes of [[Louis XIV]] and [[Louis XV]]. In his travelogue of North America, the writer [[Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce de Lahontan, Baron de Lahontan]], who had lived with the Huron Indians ([[Wyandot people]]), ascribed [[deist]] and [[Egalitarianism|egalitarian]] politics to Adario, a Canadian Indian who played the role of noble savage for French explorers:

{{blockquote|text=Adario sings the praises of [[natural religion|Natural Religion]]. {{omission}} As against society, he puts forward a sort of [[primitive Communism]], of which the certain fruits are Justice and a happy life. {{omission}} [The Savage] looks with compassion on poor civilized man — no courage, no strength, incapable of providing himself with food and shelter: a degenerate, a moral ''cretin'', a figure of fun in his blue coat, his red hose, his black hat, his white plume and his green ribands. He never really lives, because he is always torturing the life out of himself to clutch at wealth and honors, which, even if he wins them, will prove to be but glittering illusions. {{omission}} For science and the arts are but the parents of corruption. The Savage obeys the will of Nature, his kindly mother, therefore he is happy. It is civilized folk who are the real barbarians.|author=Paul Hazard|source=''The European Mind''<ref>See Paul Hazard, ''The European Mind (1680–1715)'' ([1937], 1969), pp. 13–14, and passim.</ref>}}

{{blockquote|text=Interest in the remote peoples of the Earth, in the unfamiliar civilizations of the East, in the untutored races of America and Africa, was vivid in France in the 18th century. Everyone knows how [[Voltaire]] and [[Montesquieu]] used Hurons or Persians to hold up the [looking] glass to Western manners and morals, as Tacitus used the Germans to criticize the society of Rome. But very few ever look into the seven volumes of the [[Abbé Raynal]]'s ''History of the Two Indies'', which appeared in 1772. It is however one of the most remarkable books of the century. Its immediate practical importance lay in the array of facts which it furnished to the friends of humanity in the movement against [[Atlantic slave trade|negro slavery]]. But it was also an effective attack on the Church and the sacerdotal system. {{omission}} Raynal brought home to the conscience of Europeans the miseries which had befallen the natives of the New World through the Christian conquerors and their priests. He was not indeed an enthusiastic preacher of Progress. He was unable to decide between the comparative advantages of the [[state of nature|savage state of nature]] and the most highly cultivated society. But he observes that "the human race is what we wish to make it", that the felicity of Man depends entirely on the improvement of legislation, and {{omission}} his view is generally optimistic.|author=J.B. Bury|source=''The Idea of Progress: an Inquiry into its Origins and Growth''<ref name="theideofprogress">{{cite book |title=The Idea of Progress: an Inquiry into its Origins and Growth|author=J.B. Bury |location=New York |edition=second |publisher=Cosimo Press |year=2008 |page=111}}</ref>}}

===Benjamin Franklin===
[[Benjamin Franklin]] was critical of government indifference to the [[Paxton Boys]] massacre of the [[Susquehannock]] in [[Lancaster County, Pennsylvania]] in December 1763. Within weeks of the murders, he published ''A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County'', in which he referred to the Paxton Boys as "Christian white savages" and called for judicial punishment of those who carried the Bible in one hand and a hatchet in the other.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Narrative of the Late Massacres |url=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-11-02-0012 |website=Founders Online |publisher=National Archives |access-date=3 July 2023}}</ref>

When the Paxton Boys led an armed march on [[Philadelphia]] in February 1764, with the intent of killing the [[Moravian Church|Moravian]] [[Lenape]] and [[Mohicans|Mohican]] who had been given shelter there, Franklin recruited [[associators]] including [[Quakers]] to defend the city and led a delegation that met with the Paxton leaders at [[Germantown, Philadelphia|Germantown]] outside Philadelphia. The marchers dispersed after Franklin convinced them to submit their grievances in writing to the government.<ref name="Kenny">{{cite book |last1=Kenny |first1=Kevin |title=Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment |date=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |isbn=9780199753949 |url=https://archive.org/details/peaceablekingdom0000kenn |url-access=registration}}</ref>

In his 1784 pamphlet ''Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America'', Franklin especially noted the racism inherent to the colonists using the word ''savage'' as a synonym for indigenous people:

{{blockquote|text="Savages" we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.<ref>{{cite web |title=Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America |url=https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0280 |website=Founders Online |publisher=National Archives |access-date=3 July 2023}}</ref>}}

Franklin praised the way of life of indigenous people, their customs of hospitality, their councils of government, and acknowledged that while some Europeans had foregone civilization to live like a "savage", the opposite rarely occurred, because few indigenous people chose "civilization" over "savagery".<ref name="ForgottenFoundersCh5">{{cite book |title=Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois, and the Rationale for the American Revolution |publisher=Gambit, Inc. |location=Ipswich, Massachusetts |isbn=9780876451113 |year=1982 |chapter=Chapter 5: The Philosopher as Savage|first=Bruce E. |last=Johansen |chapter-url=http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/FFchp5.html|author-link=Bruce E. Johansen}}</ref>

===Jean-Jacques Rousseau===
[[File:Allan Ramsay - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) by [[Allan Ramsay (artist)|Allan Ramsay]] (1766) ]]
{{wikiquote|Jean-Jacques Rousseau and noble savage}}
Like the Earl of Shaftesbury in the ''Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit'' (1699), [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] likewise believed that Man is innately good, and that urban civilization, characterized by jealousy, envy, and self-consciousness, has made men bad in character. In ''[[Discourse on Inequality|Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men]]'' (1754), Rousseau said that in the primordial [[state of nature]], man was a solitary creature who was not ''méchant'' (bad), but was possessed of an "innate repugnance to see others of his kind suffer."<ref>Lovejoy (1923, 1948) p. 21.</ref>

Moreover, as the ''[[philosophe]]'' of the [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobin radicals]] of the French Revolution (1789–1799), ideologues accused Rousseau of claiming that the mythical ''noble savage'' was a real type of man, despite the term not appearing in work written by Rousseau;<ref>Ellingson, Ter. (2001).</ref> in addressing ''The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality'' (1923), the academic Arthur O. Lovejoy said that:

{{blockquote|text=The notion that Rousseau’s ''Discourse on Inequality'' was essentially a glorification of the State of Nature, and that its influence tended to wholly or chiefly to promote “Primitivism” is one of the most persistent historical errors.<ref>Lovejoy, A.O. ''The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality'' (1923) in ''Modern Philology'', Vol. 21, No. 2 (Nov. 1923):165–186, Lovejoy's essay was reprinted in ''Essays in the History of Ideas''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, [1948, 1955, and 1960], at [https://www.jstor.org/stable/433742 JSTOR].</ref>}}

In the ''Discourse on the Origins of Inequality'', Rousseau said that the rise of humanity began a "formidable struggle for existence" between the species man and the other animal species of Nature.<ref>(Lovejoy (1960), p. 23)</ref> That under the pressure of survival emerged ''le caractère spécifique de l'espèce humaine'', the specific quality of character, which distinguishes man from beast, such as [[intelligence]] capable of "almost unlimited development", and the ''faculté de se perfectionner'', the capability of perfecting himself.<ref>Lovejoy (1960), p. 24.</ref>

Having invented tools, discovered fire, and transcended the state of nature, Rousseau said that "it is easy to see. . . . that all our labors are directed upon two objects only, namely, for oneself, the commodities of life, and consideration on the part of others"; thus ''amour propre'' (self-regard) is a "factitious feeling arising, only in society, which leads a man to think more highly of himself than of any other." Therefore, "it is this desire for reputation, honors, and preferment which devours us all . . . this rage to be distinguished, that we own what is best and worst in men — our virtues and our vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers — in short, a vast number of evil things and a small number of good [things]"; that is the aspect of character "which inspires men to all the evils which they inflict upon one another."<ref>Rousseau, ''Discourse on the Origins of Inequality'' quoted in Lovejoy (1960), p. 27.</ref>

Men become men only in a civil society based upon law, and only a reformed system of education can make men good; the academic Lovejoy explains that:

{{blockquote|text=For Rousseau, man's good lay in departing from his "natural" state — but not too much; "perfectability", up to a certain point, was desirable, though beyond that point an evil. Not its infancy but its ''jeunesse'' [youth] was the best age of the human race. The distinction may seem to us slight enough; but in the mid-eighteenth century it amounted to an abandonment of the stronghold of the [[Primitivism|primitivistic]] position. Nor was this the whole of the difference. As compared with the then-conventional pictures of the savage state, Rousseau's account, even of this third stage, is far less idyllic; and it is so because of his fundamentally unfavorable view of human nature ''quâ'' human. {{omission}} [Rousseau's] savages are quite unlike Dryden's Indians: "Guiltless men, that danced away their time, / Fresh as the groves and happy as their clime" or Mrs. [[Aphra Behn]]'s natives of [[Surinam (Dutch colony)|Surinam]], who represented an absolute idea of the first state of innocence "before men knew how to sin." The men in Rousseau's "nascent society" already had 'bien des querelles et des combats" [many quarrels and fights]; ''l'amour propre'' was already manifest in them {{omission}} and slights or affronts were consequently visited with ''vengeances terribles.''<ref>See Lovejoy (1960), p. 31.</ref>}}

Rousseau proposes reorganizing society with a [[social contract]] that will "draw from the very evil from which we suffer the remedy which shall cure it"; Lovejoy notes that in the ''Discourse on the Origins of Inequality'', Rousseau:

{{blockquote|text=...declares that there is a dual process going on through history; on the one hand, an indefinite progress in all those powers and achievements which express merely the potency of man's [[intellect]]; on the other hand, an increasing estrangement of men from one another, an intensification of ill-will and mutual fear, culminating in a monstrous epoch of universal conflict and mutual destruction. And the chief cause of the latter process Rousseau, following Hobbes and [Bernard] [[Bernard Mandeville|Mandeville]], found, as we have seen, in that unique passion of the self-conscious animal — pride, self esteem, ''le besoin de se mettre au dessus des autres'' [the need to put oneself above others]. A large survey of history does not belie these generalizations, and the history of the period since Rousseau wrote lends them a melancholy verisimilitude. Precisely the two processes, which he described have {{omission}} been going on upon a scale beyond all precedent: immense progress in man's knowledge and in his powers over nature, and, at the same time, a steady increase of rivalries, distrust, hatred and, at last, "the most horrible state of war" {{omission}} [Moreover, Rousseau] failed to realize fully how strongly ''amour propre'' tended to assume a collective form {{omission}} in pride of [[Race (biology)|race]], of [[nationality]], of [[Social class|class]].<ref>Lovejoy (1960), p. 36.</ref>}}

===Charles Dickens===
In 1853, in the weekly magazine ''[[Household Words]]'', Charles Dickens published a negative review of the Indian Gallery cultural program, by the portraitist [[George Catlin]], which then was touring England. About Catlin's oil paintings of the North American natives, the poet and critic [[Charles Baudelaire]] said that "He [Catlin] has brought back alive the proud and free characters of these chiefs; both their [[nobility]] and manliness."<ref>Eisler, ''The Red Man's Bones'' (0000), p. 326.</ref>
[[File:William Fisk - George Catlin - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|right|250px| For European art collectors, the American portraitist ''George Catlin'' painted idealized representations of the North American noble savage. ([[William Fisk (painter)|William Fisk]], 1849)]]
[[File:George Catlin - Sha-có-pay, The Six, Chief of the Plains Ojibwa - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|right|250px|The Noble Savage as stereotype: [[Sha-có-pay]], Chief of the Ojibwa Indians of the Great Plains. (George Catlin, 1832)]]

Despite European idealization of the mythical noble savage as a type of morally superior man, in the essay “The Noble Savage” (1853), Dickens expressed repugnance for the American Indians and their way of life, because they were dirty and cruel and continually quarrelled among themselves.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20100521073634/http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2529/ "The Noble Savage"]</ref> In the satire of [[Primitivism|romanticised primitivism]] Dickens showed that the painter Catlin, the Indian Gallery of portraits and landscapes, and the white people who admire the idealized American Indians or the [[San people|bushmen]] of Africa are examples of the term ''noble savage'' used as a means of [[Other (philosophy)|Othering]] a person into a [[Racialism|racialist stereotype]].<ref name="ReappraisingDickens'sNobleSavage">Moore, "Reappraising Dickens's 'Noble Savage'"(2002): 236–243.</ref> Dickens begins by dismissing the mythical noble savage as not being a distinct human being:

{{blockquote|text=To come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance and an enormous superstition. . . .<ref>Dickens, Charles. "The Noble Savage" (1853) p. 000.</ref><br>

I don't care what he calls me. I call him a savage, and I call a savage a something highly desirable to be civilized off the face of the Earth. . . .<ref>Dickens, Charles. "The Noble Savage" (1853) p. 000.</ref><br>

The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he submits his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and whose whole life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations and friends the moment a grey hair appears on his head. All the noble savage's wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermination — which is the best thing I know of him, and the most comfortable to my mind when I look at him. He has no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and his "mission" may be summed up as simply diabolical.<ref>Dickens, Charles. "The Noble Savage" (1853) p. 000.</ref>}}

Dickens ends his cultural criticism by reiterating his argument against the romanticized ''[[persona]]'' of the mythical noble savage:

{{blockquote|text=To conclude as I began. My position is that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense. We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an ISAAC NEWTON; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher power than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when this place [Earth] knows him no more.<ref>Dickens, Charles. "The Noble Savage" (1853) p. 000.</ref>}}

===Theories of racialism===
In 1860, the physician [[John Crawfurd]] and the anthropologist [[James Hunt (speech therapist)|James Hunt]] identified the racial stereotype of ''the noble savage'' as an example of [[scientific racism]],<ref>Ellingson (2001), pp. 249–323.</ref> yet, as advocates of [[polygenism]] — that each [[Race (human categorization)|race]] is a distinct species of Man — Crawfurd and Hunt dismissed the arguments of their opponents by accusing them of being proponents of "Rousseau's Noble Savage". Later in his career, Crawfurd re-introduced the ''noble savage'' term to modern [[anthropology]] and deliberately ascribed coinage of the term to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://epress.anu.edu.au/foreign_bodies/mobile_devices/ch03s02.html |title=John Crawfurd – 'two separate races' | publisher=Epress.anu.edu.au |date= October 2008|doi=10.22459/FB.11.2008 |access-date=2009-02-23|isbn=9781921536007 |editor1-last=Douglas |editor1-first=Bronwen |editor2-first=Chris |editor2-last=Ballard |doi-access=free }}</ref>

==Modern perspectives==
=== Supporters of primitivism ===
In "The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography" (2006), the researchers Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli challenged the idea that the human species is innately disposed towards being aggressive or is inclined to engage in violent conflict and propose rather that warfare is an occasional activity by a society and is not an inherent part of human culture.<ref name="Haas2013">See: {{cite book|first1=Jonathan|last1=Haas|url=https://www.academia.edu/2968441|title=War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views|first2=Matthew|last2=Piscitelli|date=2013|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0190232467|editor-first=Douglas P.|editor-last=Fry|location=New York|pages=168–190|entry=The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography}}</ref> Moreover, the [[UNESCO]]'s [[Seville Statement on Violence]] (1986) specifically rejects claims that the human propensity towards violence has a genetic basis.<ref>{{cite web|last=Johnson|first=Eric Michael|date=19 June 2012|title=The Better Bonobos of Our Nature|url=https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/the-better-bonobos-of-our-nature/|access-date=22 June 2021|website=Scientific American}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Baldwin|first=Melinda|date=16 June 2019|title=The Search for What Makes Us Human: The Killer Ape Account of the Mid-20th Century|url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-search-for-what-makes-us-human-the-killer-ape-account-of-the-mid-20th-century/|access-date=22 June 2021|website=Los Angeles Review of Books}}</ref>

[[Anarcho-primitivism|Anarcho-primitivists]], such as the philosopher [[John Zerzan]], rely upon a strong [[ethical dualism]] between Anarcho-primitivism and [[civilization]]; hence, "life before domestication [and] agriculture was, in fact, largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health."<ref name="FuturePrimitive">{{cite web|title=John Zerzan – Future Primitive|url=http://www.primitivism.com/future-primitive.htm|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090402072021/http://www.primitivism.com/future-primitive.htm|archive-date=2 April 2009|access-date=13 November 2011|publisher=Primitivism.com}}</ref> Zerzan's claims about the moral superiority of primitive societies are based on a certain reading of the works of anthropologists, such as [[Marshall Sahlins]] and [[Richard Borshay Lee]], wherein the anthropologic category of ''[[Urgesellschaft|primitive society]]'' is restricted to hunter-gatherer societies who have no domesticated animals or agriculture, e.g. the stable [[social hierarchy]] of the American Indians of the north-west North America, who live from fishing and foraging, is attributed to having domesticated dogs and the cultivation of tobacco, that animal husbandry and agriculture equal civilization.<ref name="FuturePrimitive" /><ref name="RunningOnEmptiness">{{cite web|title=John Zerzan – Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought|url=http://www.primitivism.com/emptiness.htm|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090131081232/http://primitivism.com/emptiness.htm|archive-date=31 January 2009|access-date=13 November 2011|publisher=Primitivism.com}}</ref>

In anthropology, the argument has been made that key tenets of the myth of the noble savage idea inform cultural investments in places seemingly removed from the Tropics, such as the Mediterranean and specifically Greece, during the debt crisis by European institutions (such as documenta)<!-- What is "documenta"? Is this a typo? Clarification is needed. --> and by various commentators who found Greece to be a positive inspiration for resistance to austerity policies and the neoliberalism of the EU<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kalantzis |first1=Konstantinos |title=The Indigenous Sublime Rethinking Orientalism and Desire from documenta 14 to Highland Crete |journal=Current Anthropology |doi=10.1086/728171 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/728171?journalCode=ca|url-access=subscription }}</ref> These commentators' positive embrace of the periphery (their mythical noble savage ideal) is the other side of the mainstream views, also dominant during that period, that stereotyped Greece and the South as lazy and corrupt.

=== Opponents of primitivism ===
In ''[[War Before Civilization|War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage]]'' (1996), the archaeologist [[Lawrence H. Keeley]] said that the "widespread myth" that "civilized humans have fallen from grace from a simple, primeval happiness, a peaceful [[Golden Age|golden age]]" is contradicted and refuted by archeologic evidence that indicates that violence was common practice in early human societies. That the ''noble savage'' paradigm has warped anthropological literature to political ends.<ref>Keely, Lawrence H.  ''War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage'' (Oxford, University Press, 1996), p. 5.</ref> Moreover, the anthropologist [[Roger Sandall]] likewise accused anthropologists of exalting the mythical noble savage above civilized man,<ref>See: Patrick Wolfe's opinion of Roger Sandall in'' The Anthropological Book Review'', September 2001.</ref> by way of ''designer tribalism'', a form of [[Romanticism|romanticised]] primitivism that dehumanises Indigenous peoples into the cultural stereotype of the ''indigène'' peoples who live a primitive way of life demarcated and limited by [[tradition]], which discouraged Indigenous peoples from [[cultural assimilation]] into the dominant Western culture.<ref>Peacock, Janice (2006) “Culture Cult Clan 2001: Comments on the Survival of Torres Strait Culture”, ''Aboriginal History'' 30:138–155. Retrieved 21 July 2022.</ref><ref>Malcolm, Ian (2002). ''Coming to Terms with Diversity: Educational Responses to Linguistic Plurality in Australia'' (PDF). Zeitschrift für Australienstudien. 16: 17–30. doi:10.35515/zfa/asj.16/2002.04. Retrieved 21 July 2022.</ref>

In the 2003 book, ''[[Constant Battles: Why we fight]]'' written by [[Steven A. LeBlanc|Steven LeBlanc]], a [[professor]] of [[archaeology]] at [[Harvard University]] who specializes in the [[American Southwest]], LeBlanc further documents the mythical notion of primitive non-violence against foreign tribal peoples, internal strife and internecine violence, as well as violence against animals and wildlife. In many of these instances the homicide rate even rose to substantially higher levels than any seen in modernity on a proportionate basis.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Shermer |first=Michael |date=2016-01-01 |title=Did This Extinct Human Species Commit Homicide? |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-this-extinct-human-species-commit-homicide1/ |access-date=2024-09-04 |website=Scientific American |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=LeBlanc's Book Explores Warfare Through the Ages {{!}} Arts {{!}} The Harvard Crimson |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/4/11/leblancs-book-explores-warfare-through-the/ |access-date=2024-09-04 |website=www.thecrimson.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2006-05-25 |title=Ignoble Savages |url=https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ignoble-savages-john-j-miller/ |access-date=2024-09-04 |website=National Review |language=en-US}}</ref>

== See also ==
<!--all of this needs to be incorporated in main text, then removed from here-->

{{col-begin}}{{col-break}}
* [[Anti-racism]]
* [[Essays (Montaigne)|''Essays'' (Montaigne)]]
* [[Exoticism]]
* [[Native Americans in German popular culture]]
* [[Native American hobbyism in Germany]]
* [[Neotribalism]]
* [[Objectification]]
* [[Orientalism]]
* [[Pelagianism]]
* [[Positive stereotype]]
* [[Stereotypes about indigenous peoples of North America]]
* [[Racial fetishism]]
* [[Racism in the work of Charles Dickens]]
* [[Romantic racism]]
* [[Virtuous pagan]]
* [[Feral child]]
* [[Wild man]]
* [[Human zoo]]
* [[Uncontacted peoples]]
{{col-break}}
'''Concepts:'''
* [[Alterity]]
* [[Cultural relativism]]
* [[Golden Age]]
* [[Master-slave dialectic]]
* [[Primitive Communism]]
* [[Social progress]]
* [[State of nature]]
* [[Xenocentrism]]
{{col-break}}
'''Cultural examples:'''
* [[The Blue Lagoon (novel)|''The Blue Lagoon'' (novel)]]
* ''[[Brave New World]]''
* [[A High Wind in Jamaica (novel)|''A High Wind in Jamaica'' (novel)]]
* [[Legend of the Rainbow Warriors]]
* ''[[Lord of the Flies]]''
* [[Magical Negro]]
* [[Plastic shaman]]
{{col-end}}

==References==
'''Informational notes'''
{{notelist}}

'''Citations'''
{{reflist}}

'''Further reading'''
{{refbegin|30em}}
* Barnett, Louise. ''Touched by Fire: the Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer''. University of Nebraska Press [1986], 2006.
* [[Jacques Barzun|Barzun, Jacques]] (2000). ''[[From Dawn to Decadence]]: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present''. New York: HarperCollins. pp.&nbsp;282–294, and passim.
* Bataille, Gretchen, M. and Silet Charles L., editors. Introduction by Vine Deloria, Jr. ''The Pretend Indian: Images of Native Americans in the Movies''. Iowa State University Press, 1980*[[Robert F. Berkhofer|Berkhofer, Robert F]]. "The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present"
* Boas, George ([1933] 1966). '' The Happy Beast in French Thought in the Seventeenth Century.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Reprinted by Octagon Press in 1966.
* Boas, George ([1948] 1997). ''Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
* Bordewich, Fergus M.  "Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century"
* [[J.B. Bury|Bury, J.B.]] (1920). [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4557  ''The Idea of Progress: an Inquiry into its Origins and Growth'']. (Reprint) New York: Cosimo Press, 2008.
* Edgerton, Robert (1992). ''Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony.'' New York: Free Press. {{ISBN|978-0-02-908925-5}}
* Edwards, Brendan Frederick R. (2008) [http://scaa.sk.ca/ourlegacy/exhibit_popularculture  "'He Scarcely Resembles the Real Man': images of the Indian in popular culture".] Website: [http://scaa.sk.ca/ourlegacy/  ''Our Legacy'']. Material relating to First Nations, Metis, and Inuit, found in Saskatchewan cultural and heritage collections.
* Ellingson, Ter. (2001). ''The Myth of the Noble Savage'' (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press).
* Fabian, Johannes. ''Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object''
* Fairchild, Hoxie Neale (1928). ''The Noble Savage: A Study in Romantic Naturalism'' (New York)
* Fitzgerald, Margaret Mary ([1947] 1976). ''First Follow Nature: Primitivism in English Poetry 1725–1750''. New York: Kings Crown Press. Reprinted New York: Octagon Press.
* {{cite journal
  |title = Rereading the Indian in Benjamin West's "Death of General Wolfe"
  |last = Fryd
  |first = Vivien Green
  |journal = [[American Art (journal)|American Art]]
  |publisher = [[University of Chicago Press]]
  |issn = 1549-6503
  |volume = 9
  |issue = 1
  |year = 1995
  |pages = 72–85
  |doi =10.1086/424234
  |jstor = 3109196
  |s2cid = 162205173
 }}
* [[Paul Hazard|Hazard, Paul]] ([1937] 1947). ''The European Mind (1690–1715)''. Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books.
* Keeley, Lawrence H. (1996) '' [[War Before Civilization]]: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage''. Oxford: University Press.
* Krech, Shepard (2000). ''The Ecological Indian: Myth and History.'' New York: Norton. {{ISBN|978-0-393-32100-5}}
* LeBlanc, Steven (2003). ''Constant battles: the myth of the peaceful, noble savage''. New York : St Martin's Press {{ISBN|0-312-31089-7}}
* [[Arthur O. Lovejoy|Lovejoy, Arthur O.]] (1923, 1943). "The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, " Modern Philology Vol. 21, No. 2 (Nov., 1923):165–186. Reprinted in ''Essays in the History of Ideas''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948 and 1960.
* Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, George ([1935] 1965). ''Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Reprinted by Octagon Books, 1965. {{ISBN|0-374-95130-6}}
* Lovejoy, Arthur O. and George Boas. (1935). ''A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas'', vol. 1. Baltimore.
* Moore, Grace (2004). ''Dickens And Empire: Discourses Of Class, Race And Colonialism In The Works Of Charles Dickens (Nineteenth Century Series)''. Ashgate.
* Olupọna, Jacob Obafẹmi Kẹhinde, Editor. (2003) ''Beyond primitivism: indigenous religious traditions and modernity''. New York and London: [[Routledge]]. {{ISBN|0-415-27319-6}}, {{ISBN|978-0-415-27319-0}}
* [[Anthony Pagden|Pagden, Anthony]] (1982). ''The Fall of the Natural Man: The American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* [[Steven Pinker|Pinker, Steven]] (2002). ''[[The Blank Slate|The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature]]''. Viking {{ISBN|0-670-03151-8}}
* [[Roger Sandall|Sandall, Roger]] (2001). ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays'' {{ISBN|0-8133-3863-8}}
* Reinhardt, Leslie Kaye. [https://web.archive.org/web/20160304113620/http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=%2Fjournals%2Feighteenth-century_studies%2Fv031%2F31.3reinhardt.html  "British and Indian Identities in a Picture by Benjamin West"]. ''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' 31: 3 (Spring 1998): 283–305
* Rollins, Peter C. and John E. O'Connor, editors (1998). ''Hollywood's Indian : the Portrayal of the Native American in Film.'' Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press.
* Tinker, Chaunchy Brewster (1922). ''Nature's Simple Plan: a phase of radical thought in the mid-eighteenth century''. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
* Torgovnick, Marianna (1991). ''Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives'' (Chicago)
* Whitney, Lois Payne (1934). ''Primitivism and the Idea of Progress in English Popular Literature of the Eighteenth Century''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press
* Wolf, Eric R.(1982). ''Europe and the People without History''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
{{refend}}

==External links==
* [http://www.massviolence.org/Massacres-during-the-Wars-of-Religion?cs=print Massacres during the Wars of Religion: The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre: a foundational event]
* [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-naturally-2 Louis Menand. "What Comes Naturally". A review of Steven Pinker's ''The Blank Slate'' from ''The New Yorker'']
* [https://www.bookforum.com/print/1601/-3519 Peter Gay. "Breeding is Fundamental". ''Book Forum''. April / May 2009]

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