The Myth Of The Noble Savage

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32050, 26 July 1969, Page 4

The Myth Of The Noble Savage

Man's Rise To Civilisation. As shown by the Indians of North America, from primeval times to the coming of the industrial state. By Peter Farh. Seeker and Warburg. 332 pp. Illusrated.

Mr Farb ends his book with the persistent plea throughout that “Little is being done to preserve the numerous cultures that have so much to tell modern man. Our imaginations have been unable to devise anything better than the treatment to-day of the hundred or so Kalapalo Indians of the Amazon Basin, who still remain on earth. They have been herded on to a State Reserve where they are kept like rare whooping cranes or big-horned sheep. To do nothing now is to let our children lament that they never knew the magnificent diversity of mankind because our generation let disappear those who might have taught them."

Not only in reserves are the few sad remnants of Indian tribes preserved but also in the mythology of American Indianna as portrayed in numerous books and films. The Indian has been, since his discovery by the white man, a canvas on which to project the frustrations of civilised life ranging from seeing him as the pure noble savage of Rousseau to the vile brute of the unhappy American Pioneer, treated with respect and humility when introduced at a Royal Court, or mutiliated with maidens’ breasts used as basketballs by the very real Kit Carson. This account Is highly ambitiously titled. To fulfil its promise would take many volumes, as the author is only too well aware. What he has done, however, is to give us a potted anthropology of the Indian from Alaska to Mexico with fascinating snippets of their religion, social organisation and way of life from earliest times to the present day, which will whet the appetite for further reading of a more specialised type on the subject.

“To many people, the typical Indian was the Plains Indian, a painted brave in full regalia, trailing a war bonnet, astride a horse which he rode bareback, sweeping down upon a waggon train, in glorious technicolour. In actual fact, the picturesque culture of the Plains Indian was artificial, not aboriginal, and it did not last very long. The amalgam known as the Plains culture was not fully accomplished until the early eighteen hundreds—and like the spring grass of the high plains, it withered quickly.” The avid observer of this mythical culture is brought up with round turn by sueh statements as that when the Paiute Tribe of the Great Basin obtained horses, instead of riding them and being enabled to hunt bison more efficiently, they ate them for survival.

The book is at its most fascinating when Mr Farb draws comparisons between Indian customs and the pre-sent-day observances in our society. For example, the similarity of the Indian clan and the secret societies we now have such as the Masons, with its totemic symbols, paralleling each other.

Some of the other cultural customs which we can study with great benefit are the attitude toward the Eskimo shaman who is a thoughtful introverted person, liable to have fits and fainting spells and frequently suffering from hallucination and hysterical symptoms. In our society we would regard him , as severely neurotic, possibly borderline schizophrenic, but in the Eskimo culture it is concluded that he needs his extraordinary abilities' in his traffic with the supernatural and being accepted he sur-

vives without his illness developing to a debilitating extent The Eskimo shaman when he himself feels that he needs help, like our psychiatrist goes to a fellow practitioner to administer bis treatment

The theories of communism, as put forward by Engels, similarly were based to some extent on the League of the Iroquois as described by Lewis Henry Morgan in 1884. “No soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects or judges, no prisons, no law suits.” Engels considered that this is the Ideal society. “In this there eannot be any poor or needy ... all are equal and free the women Included.” The myth of the noble savage was therefore enshrined in a modern political system. Some of the early anthropologists, such as Ruth Benedict, in 1934 similarly lauded the Zuni Indian as having an ideal human society of non-competitive-ness, but this was based, to a very large extent, on hearsay without sufficient field work and later writers, in fact, found the Zuni to be anxiety - ridden, suspicious, hostile, fearful and very ambitious.

The early explorers were convinced that the Indians belonged to the nations of human kind but uncertain where they fitted in. Pope Julius II solemnly declared the Indians were descended from Adam and Eve. One popular theory held the Indians were Instead the children of Babel cast into a primitive existence because of their sins. The belief that the Indians were descended from the 10 lost tribes of Israel had Its vogue and then fell into disrepute, although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) believes It to this day. Cotton Mather, the puritan divine, attributed the Indian’s arrival in America, as he attributed so much else, to the devil who wilfully led them there to prevent their salvation.

One fascinating description will stay very much with the reviewer; that of the Chinook “Potlatch,” which started off by showing neighbours how goods could be accumulated

in large quantities and over the decades degenerated into an orgy of destruction of the goods, with the person destroying the most valuable gaining the most prestige. This Is reminiscent of some of the expensive parties and balls that are given by individuals in our civilisation with an Increasingly accelerating pressure to impoverish the host in the process.

All in all, this is an absorbing book, strongly recommended especially for those who have not read a great deal of anthropology previously, with the guarantee that they will do so after this introduction.