Noble savage
Topic: Settler Colonialism: Native Peoples of America and Australia · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 6 "Displacing Indigenous Peoples"
Meaning
The 'noble savage' was an eighteenth-century European idea linked to the French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He admired people such as Native Americans because he believed they lived simply, close to nature, untouched by the corruptions of 'civilisation'. This was still an outsider's picture. Rousseau had never met a native. Most Europeans at the time called natives 'uncivilised' because they lacked writing, organised religion and towns.
Example
Rousseau praised the 'noble savage'. The English poet William Wordsworth also wrote about natives without ever meeting one, but he gave them only limited imagination and feeling. Washington Irving, who had actually met natives, gave a more realistic account. He wrote that 'white men… are prone to treat the poor Indians as little better than animals'.
Don't confuse with
- Jefferson's view: Thomas Jefferson did not admire natives. He saw them as 'uncivilised' and spoke of their 'extermination' as justified.