LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Research Project Submissions 2013 research post 2

Ryan Harold

The Myth of the Noble Savage

            In my previous post I wrote about how the treatment of Indians by Westerners has been unfairly exaggerated and unjustified.  I learned that in many cases, Westerners had no choice but to fight the Indians and engage in brutal warfare.  In this post I am going to further talk about the issue.

I learned that in a way, what we are teaching in school is following the remnants of the Noble Savage concept.  This theory has existed in many ways throughout the dawn of time.  This idea came up in America during the age of Romanticism, during the last half of the 18^th century.   The idea suggests that all of this savagery is really just being closer to nature.  By inference this means closer to God the Creator.  The Indians are less tainted by civilized negatives such as lying and stealing.  The term was made on the belief that human beings are good.  What causes their evil behavior is caused by society.  Although this idea has faded to a degree, it can still be seen in the curriculum.  Westerners or you could call them society, came into the Indians land and corrupted the Indians.   This concept forgives the barbaric element of Indians.  It doesn’t waste any time condemning the misdeeds of the West however.

"So many authors have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle than him in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the pernicious good sense of civilized man..."  This is a quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher who believed in the noble savage concept before it came to be known as that.

I feel that the noble savage concept hides the true nature of Indians.  This concept was actually made to romanticize the Indians and make them easier to write about.  Some examples of the noble savage appearing in popular literature include  James Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Winnetou in novels by Karl May.

I found it interesting learning about the noble savage because of how it relates to the course.  In this course we learned about how Indians are sometimes falsely represented in society.  Many times an Indian is shown riding a horse.  They may also have an elaborate Mohawk.  This may be the case for a specific tribe, but not for all Indians.  Indians tribes are all culturally different.

Overall, I think it is important to learn more about the Indian culture of the past and present to have a better understanding of them.  Textbooks may not be the ideal source because of the traces of the noble savage in them.  To truly learn about the non-biased facts about Indians, one must do research and find out for themselves.

"Myth of the Noble Savage Quotes." Intellectual Takeout. N.p.. Web. 25 Apr 2013. <http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/content/myth-noble-savage-quotes>.

"NOBLE SAVAGE." Discover The Networks.Org. N.p., 14 Feb 2005. Web. 25 Apr 2013. <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=720>.

"THE BIBLE vs. THE NOBLE SAVAGE." Tripod. N.p.. Web. 25 Apr 2013. <http://ed5015.tripod.com/BNobleSavage128.html>.

"The Noble Savage." Wikipedia. N.p.. Web. 25 Apr 2013.