Noble savage

“ He who breaks a custom is an outlaw.
The noble savage may also wander out-of-doors, it is true, and within a certain range, within which he and his ancestors have bought, with their sufferings and blood, a knowledge of nature; but though he understands the forces of nature very well, outside of that certain range everything in nature is a terror to him. ”

“ For the first time, the savage’s sullen face brightened, and assumed a higher and more human expression than it had yet worn.
“Thou art a true man, whoever thou be’st!” said he, in a tone of grim and half-unwilling admiration; “and thou hast spoken such words as no man ever spake to me yet. ’Tis pity of my vow to spare neither knight nor noble, else would I spare thee!” ”

“ The eighteenth century, which liked to praise the virtues of the savage and contrast them with the gilded corruption of courts, nevertheless had no scruple in thrusting the noble savage out from his North American hunting grounds. ”

“ It is my opinion that if we retained in us anything of the noble savage, we could not get rid of it too soon. But the fact is clearly otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry question, substituting coin for cows, we have assuredly nothing of the Zulu Kaffir left. The endurance of despotism is one great distinguishing mark of a savage always. The improving world has quite got the better of that too. In like manner, Paris is a civilised city, and the Theatre Francais a highly civilised theatre ”

“ The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian corn, and the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief has sometimes the condescension to come forth, and lighten the labour by looking at it. ”

“ In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the utmost possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him to some civilised account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism is one of the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civilised man can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the interchange of ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we should soon have no listeners, and must be all yelling and screeching at once on our own separate accounts: making society hideous. ”

“ When war is afoot among the noble savages - which is always - the chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion of his brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be exterminated. ”

“ Herman Melville tells us in his Typee that the Polynesians, being aware of the horror which Europeans feel for anthropophagy, “invariably deny its existence, and, with the craft peculiar to savages, endeavour to conceal every trace of it.” The existence of flesh-eating cannot be denied; but do we not see a savage’s craft in the shifty and far-fetched reasons alleged for its continuance?
It is only fair to “the noble savage” to draw this distinction between the natural barbarism and the sophisticated, between the real necessity for killing for food and the pretended necessity. ”

“ I believe—though I must confess I haven't seen any pioneers who share my belief—that the savage has a beautiful side to his character. I know of many noble deeds done by them, and I believe, if they are honestly dealt with, they will return good for good. ”

“ When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage, called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. ”

“ We sit down upon the summit of Battle Island, after a zigzag scramble up its craggy side, and talk and sketch and scribble, as we rest and look upon the blue, barren sea, and the brown and more barren continent, with its mountains of desert rock. With all this desolateness, the approaching sunset and the warm skies, the stern headlands, the white icebergs and bleak islands, and the bay with its rays and points of water, like a vast spangle on the savage landscape, all compose a picture of singular novelty and grandeur ”

“ The noble figure of the missionary, with his fine features lighted up with the fire of holy enthusiasm, surrounded by a crowd of dusky savages, armed with spears and war-clubs, and partly clothed with feathers, in their features showing traces of unusual excitement, and every now and then joining in a wild chorus, expressive of their wonder, could not have been witnessed by any Christian, without emotion. ”

“ Into the yawning portal of this savage chasm plunge the big waves of the Atlantic. In an easterly gale, there is performed in this gloomy theatre no farce of the surges, but the grandest tragedy. In fact, this whole coast, a thousand miles or more, is built up, rather torn down, on the most stupendous scale—vast and shattered—terrifically rough—tumult and storm all in horrid stone. It would well pay the painter of coast scenery to spend a fall and winter upon these shores. The breaking of the waves upon such rocks as these must be an astonishing spectacle of power and fury. ”

“ More frequent, though, than headlands and perpendicular sea-fronts are the sea-slopes, often bald, tame, and wearisome to the eye, now and then the perfection of all that is picturesque and rough, a precipice gone to pieces, its softer portions dissolved down to its roots, its flinty bones left standing, a savage scene that scares away all thoughts of order and design in nature. ”

“ Yielding to whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, he is a savage - cruel, false, thievish, murderous; addicted more or less to grease, entrails, and beastly customs; a wild animal with the questionable gift of boasting ”

“ No apple, peach or rose is more within one network of sweet, living grace, than the round world. How wonderful and precious a thing must this beauty be, that it is thus all-pervading, and universal! Here on these bleak and barren shores, so rocky, rough and savage, is a rich and delicate splendor that amazes. The pure azure of the skies, and the deeply blue waters, one would think were sufficient for rude and fruitless regions such as these. But look, how they shine and scintillate! The iron cheeks of yonder headland blush with glory, and the west is all magnificent. ”

“ Several gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to the orator, that illustrious person is rather in the position of an orator in an Irish House of Commons. But, several of these scenes of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish election, and I think would be extremely well received and understood at Cork. ”

“ It might have been hoped that the cruelty which characterized the days of their military aggression would be softened down when they had become the acknowledged rulers of the world. Luxury itself, it might be thought, would be inconsistent with the sight of blood. But in this utterly detestable race the two extremes of human society seemed to have the same result. The brutal, half-clothed savage of an early age conveyed his tastes as well as his conquests to the enervated voluptuary of the empire. ”

“ The tale which I have based upon several such historical instances in real life endeavours briefly to hint at the modes of feeling likely to accompany such a relapse into barbarism in an essentially fine and sensitive savage nature. To most European readers, no doubt, such a sheer fall from the pinnacle of civilization to the nethermost abysses of savagery, would seem to call for the display of no other emotion than pure disgust and aversion ”

“ You may thank God, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age. Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still as pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, would Anglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me nauseate with horror. ”

“ The perils, I grant, are many and great, but greater still are those that lie in wait for an armed traveller. The savage may be terrified and overpowered by the massacres with which civilization asserts its tyrannical superiority but the venom of hatred has entered his soul and he meditates and prepares an ambush which sooner or later, without fail, will give him his revenge. ”

“ Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk about him, as they talk about the good old times; how they will regret his disappearance, in the course of this world's development, from such and such lands where his absence is a blessed relief and an indispensable preparation for the sowing of the very first seeds of any influence that can exalt humanity; how, even with the evidence of himself before them, they will either be determined to believe, or will suffer themselves to be persuaded into believing, that he is something which their five senses tell them he is not. ”

“ Whose fierce and mortal rage doth yield
Thy subjects dire annoy.
'Mong ruthless bears he sure was bred;
He lurks within their den:
With bears he lives, with bears he feeds,
And drinks the blood of men.
[Pg 193] To more than savage strength he joins
A more than human skill:
For arms, no cunning may suffice
His cruel rage to still:
Up then rose sir Valentine,
And claim'd that arduous deed.
Go forth and conquer, said the king,
And great shall be thy meed.
Well mounted on a milk-white steed,
His armour white as snow;
As well beseem'd a virgin knight,
Who ne'er had fought a foe ”

“ To give you, Madam, a summary sketch of the character of the savages in this country, I am to observe to you, that under a savage appearance, with manners and customs, that favor entirely of barbarism, may be found a society exempt from almost all the faults that so often vitiate the happiness of ours.
They appear to be without passion, but they are in cold blood, and sometimes even from principle, all that the most violent and most unbridled passion can inspire into those, who no longer listen to reason. ”

“ Many an armed man, fully capable of defending himself, has thus been thrown off his guard, and sent suddenly into eternity. The cunning savage, seeing his foe prepared, approaches with signs of friendship, and cries of "How, how?"—Indian and short for "How are you?" Their extended hands meet, and as the palms touch, the pale-face shakes hands with death; for, while his fingers are held fast in that treacherous clasp, some other savage brains him from behind, or sheaths a knife in his heart, and the betrayed white, jerked forward with a fiendish laugh, kisses the grass with bloody lips. ”

“ Look back through the telescope of anthropology at our ancestors in their naked savagery after a death, and we see them daub themselves with soot mingled with tallow. When the savage assumed clothes and became a civilised man, he replaced the fat and lampblack with black cloth, and this black cloth has descended to us in the nineteenth century as the customary and intelligible trappings of woe. ”

“ Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in which the Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged in hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing is mutual. The definition of the true savage does not concern itself even with how much more he hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes of men. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you ”

“ Then was every dirk plucked from the board by the right hand of its owner, and the clash which was thus made among the beakers and flagons was terrific; and the savage looks which each man darted upon his neighbour, in his apprehension of treachery, where each almost fancied that the saving of his own life might depend on the quick dispatching of him who sat next to him, presented a spectacle which might have frozen the blood of the stoutest heart that witnessed it. ”

“ Really I do not see that an Indian warrior, flourishing his tomahawk, and smeared with his enemy's blood, is so very much a greater savage than the pipe-clayed, padded, embroidered personage, who, without cause or motive, has sold himself to slay or be slain: one scalps his enemy, the other rips him open with a sabre ”

“ You ought not to have provoked that Indian; don’t you know that a savage never forgets an injury? He may wander around the fort for a year, spying all of your movements, watching your footsteps, tracking you everywhere, hiding in the woods and among the rushes in the river, until an opportunity offers, and he will approach with all the finesse and cunning of a serpent, spring upon you like a tiger, and strike you a death-blow, when you least expect it. ”

“ The priest knew the temper of his savage audience and told of the King’s warriors covered with the blood of his enemies, of the rivers of blood which flowed from their wounds, of the King’s countless prisoners, of his riches and his power, so great that all the world obeyed him. The savages gave delighted shouts at the strange ceremony, but of its real meaning they knew nothing. What they understood was that the French seemed to be good friends who brought them muskets, hatchets, cloth, and especially the loved but destructive firewater which the savage palate ever craved. ”

“ I tell you, sir, that, besides its being forbidden, both by law and gospel, it's an idiotical and totally absurd practice, that of duelling. An honest savage has more sense than to practise it—he takes his bow or his gun, as the thing may be, and shoots his enemy from behind a bush. ”

“ We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an ISAAC NEWTON; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher power than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when his place knows him no more. ”