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Appendix essays from The Encyclopedia of American Indian History Four Arrows I requested and received permission to publish my three submissions for the Encyclopedia of American Indian History (2006) as an appendix to this volume. The first essay, “The Myth of the Noble Savage,” will hopefully deflect allegations that our text overly glorifies Indigenous perspectives in the same way that Rousseau and others romanticized them. The second piece, on social control, is offered to emphasize the seemingly intentional role of public education in the language of conquest, a topic not sufficiently addressed in this text and deserving of a book unto itself. This snapshot illustrates how the language of conquest is woven into schools. The third submission is a brief overview of what the concept of Indigenous worldview means. Throughout this text we have challenged the forces that have tried to suppress it, but only marginally have actually defined it. Ending with this essay may inspire the next step in the right direction, now that the reader understands that such worldview concepts have been suppressed for centuries. All pieces are reprinted with permission from The Encylopedia of American Indian History, ABC-CLIO, 2006. the myth of the noble savage One of the most enduring, ironic and perhaps damaging of the concepts used to describe American Indians is represented both by the idea of a “noble savage” and by the phrase, “myth of the noble savage.” In the first instance, the oxymoronic pairing of words and the myth that has surrounded them puts First Nations People in an untenable social position. In the second instance, the “myth” idea has been used to dismiss legitimate contributions, worldviews, and qualities of Indigenous People. Christopher Columbus may have started the concept of the noble savage with his first reports about the islanders he “discovered” in the new world. He described them as being generous, innocent, peaceful, and easy to make servile while rationalizing his treatment of them because they were nonetheless “savages .” Throughout European and American literature, poetry, paintings and film, the noble savage was painted as being totally innocent, physically perfect, always fearless, highly instinctive (without thinking or emotional skills), peaceful, free of four arrows 2 7 6 social restraints, and a part of nature that is extremely brutish when provoked. In literature, such attributes made for good fantasy. They also played to European audiences as they set the stage for showing how the stronger, more realistic characteristics of Europeans could be used to conquer the weaker, “outdated” primitives. Historically and politically, such images of Indigenous People may have helped rationalize genocidal atrocities on the one hand, and assuage guilt for such crimes on the other. Although the phrase, “noble savage,” was first used to describe the Natives of Mexico in the fictional writings of John Dryden around 1672, Jean-Jacque Rousseau and others gave significance to the idea in political discourse. Rousseau used it to criticize dominant European political and educational assumptions, and as a backdrop for his own political agenda in the mid-1700s. In so doing, he mentioned authentic ideas about Indigenous approaches to democracy and equality that would later be used by the founding fathers of the United States to develop its constitution. However, like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, he also dehumanized and disenfranchised the American Indians by placing them in a state of evolution to which “civilized” humans could not return. These writers wrongly promoted the idea that Indigenous People merely wandered freely in nature and did not have social institutions that might otherwise cause them to be less equitable in their lifestyles and culture. The Jesuit missionaries also contributed to the noble savage myth. Wanting to achieve martyrdom, they described the danger and savagery of the Indigenous People. Wanting to rationalize their Christian missions, they also had to convey that the People were nonetheless children of God and deserving of being saved by their missionary agenda. Thus, they gave them the noble attributes of innocent children, as were favored in the noble savage myth, simultaneously with those of the brute savage with whom they took great risks for God’s work. After the conquest and submission of American Indians, many people subscribed to the ideas about their nobility and strengths to legitimize their own right to the land and to challenge new immigrant “invaders.” The settlers could claim to be a native of the land themselves now. By so doing they could rationalize their right to resist the migration of new...

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