SOURCE: Dickason, Olive Patricia. “L'Homme Sauvage.” In The Myth of the Savage: And the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas, pp. 61-84. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 1984.

In the following essay, Dickason traces the development of the European view of Amerindians, arguing that the European view of Native Americans as savages discounts their cultural and political systems.

Europe's discovery of the Amerindian is usually represented as affording her the first large-scale encounter with man living in a state of nature.¹ According to this view, that discovery was largely responsible for the development of the European idea of l'homme sauvage, the savage who could be either noble or debased, but who in any event was not civilized. Such achievements as the city-states of Mexico, Central America, or Peru were either overlooked or else were dismissed as being, at best, barbarous. An examination of the concept of savagery...