The Myth of the Noble Savage
Recently arrived Europeans meet the Indigenous. The modern myth of the noble savage is most commonly attributed to the 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. He believed the original “man” was free from sin, appetite or the concept of right and wrong , and that those deemed “savages” were not brutal but noble. But “he” became diseased and degenerated, obsessed with the things of the world. James Cook said; A "noble savage" showing colonizers fruits. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household-stuff, they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholesome Air, so that they have very little need of Clothing … They were, Cook famously declared in his Endeavour journals, “far more happier than we Europeans”. Through the 19th century, as empires swallowe