Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan, is chiefly remembered for his contribution to the Enlightenment ideology of "the noble savage." While the notions promoted by Lahontan do not originate with him, the currency that his sometimes inventive writings enjoyed throughout eighteenth-century Europe assures him of a place in cultural history. His accounts of the New World continue to find a sympathetic readership among ethnologists and historiographers of a mind with Jules Michelet. According to Maurice Roelens, Lahontan's privileging of "la vie sauvage" (the untamed life), over a life of artificial constraint, advances "la fraternelle identité de l'homme" (the brotherly identity of man).

Born on 9 June 1666 in Mont-de-Marsan, France, in the Basses-Pyrénées, Lahontan was the only child of Isaac de Lom d'Arce, second Baron de Lahontan, and Jeanne-Françoise née Le Fascheux de Couttes, the sister of a curate well...