Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind

by Roy Harvey Pearce

In this study of the concept of "savigism" as reflected in American writings on the Indian that appeared in political pamphlets, missionaries' reports, drama, poetry, novels, and anthropologists' accounts, Roy Harvey Pearce traces the conflct between the idea of the "noble savage" and the neeed to Christianize the heathen which ended with the rejection and virtual extermination of Indian culture.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Christopher Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dated but quite useful history of the concept of the savage. The author seems almost completely unaware of the importance of biological race as a separate or subsidiary concept. He also uses too much value-laden language. But those things are to be expected from a work this old, and in any case the period covered is mostly the period before race became the dominant analytical category in the 1850s.

In fact, the author's disregard for race is almost a useful corrective to the tendency of modern scholars to characterize all ethnic prejudice as racist in the biological sense. Pearce studies a time when “race” still mostly meant peoplehood, and “Indian character” was thought to be a changeable product of the Indian's environment and his “savage” stage of civilization. In the early republic the Indian was mostly deprecated as the negative image of American Christianity and progress; only gradually did he come to be deprecated also as a negative image of the biological superiority of the white race. (Then again, there were some early references deprecating Indian skin color, though they were perhaps more symbolic than biological. There were also some early prohibitions against intermarriage, perhaps rooted in biblical injunctions not to marry the Canaanites. The preoccupation with skin color and tacit racial essentialism are there long before a real concept of biological race.)

[Brent Ranalli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really valuable insights. Impressive breadth of source material. Amusing how the author starts by saying we shouldn't be too hasty to judge authors of an earlier era... and then offers snarky commentary on much of the "second-rate" material he has set himself to review.