ABSTRACT
P erhaps no aspect of American Studies has given rise to moremisinformation and misunderstanding than the history, culture, and place of Native Americans in American society. It is a subject on
which contrasting assumptions have clouded both public consciousness and
academia. Most date back to earlier centuries and yet they still have a cur-
rency in modern America. European philosophers of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries popularised the image of the noble savage: brave, stoic and
honourable, who lived harmoniously in an Eden-like America untainted
by the contaminating influences of civilisation. This European construct
served as a foil against which whites could criticise their own society, a strat-
egy that has persisted throughout the centuries. A fear of becoming over-
civilised in the 1890s encouraged a renewed love affair with noble savages,
as demonstrated, for example, by the formation of the Boy Scouts move-
ment. In the 1970s concern over pollution led white Americans to appro-
priate the image of the American Indian as the face of environmentalism.
