Noble Savage or Savage Beast: How Rulers Rule

To Europeans, natives of the two
Americas were either
Noble Savages, or
Savage Beasts.
Depending on the need.

At first the Spanish tried to fashion them
As inhabitants of Earthly Paradise:
“They all go naked, men and women,” so
Columbus wrote. “Well-built people, handsome
Stature…very keen intelligence,
Know neither sect nor idolatry. They’re
Artless, free with all that they possess,
That no one could believe it without seeing.”
Vespucci praised them even higher still:
“They have no laws and no religious faith,
They live according to the laws of nature…
There is no private property among them,
Everything is held in common….They
Have no king, and no one to obey,
Each one being his own master….They mate
With whom they wish, without much ceremony….
They are all of great longevity
And do not suffer from infirmity
Or pestilence or from unhealthy air.”

And sitting in the Spanish court and hearing
Tales from all the mariners whom Spain
Had sent across the seas, Peter Martyr
Wrote:  “Among these simple souls, a few
Small strips of cloth do serve the naked;
Weights and measures are not needful to such
As know not skill or craft or are deceitful.
They have not the use of noxious money,
The seed of many mischiefs….It is certain
That among them land is just as common
As the sun and water; Mine and Thine
(The seeds of mischief) have no place among them.
They seem to live in that golden world of which
The ancients speak, without toil, in open
Gardens not entrenched with dikes, divided
Up with hedges, defended ‘round with walls.
They deal with one another truly, without
Laws, or books, or judges.  They hold him for
An evil and mischievous man who pleasure
Takes in doing hurt to other men.”

For Europe, then, at least at first, the natives
Of America were noble beings,
Savage, yes, but good in ways that Europe
Never knew.  The books depicting ideal
Worlds that followed then—Thomas More’s
Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis,
Campanella’s City of the Sun—
They all were set in what for Europe was
The New World.

But then as time went on,
And natives proved to be less easy to
Control, less willing to be subjugated,
They turned out to be the Savage Beast
In dire need of being civilized.
Columbus now discovered they were “very
Wild” and “savage people,” and when he lived
Among them for a year, depending on
Their kindness for his food, he wrote that he
Was “surrounded by a million savages
Replete with cruelty.” Other Spaniards,
Too, in years when natives were
Resisting European settlement
And conquest, saw that they were evil:
A kindly cleric wrote that “they are brutal…
They have no respect for truth….They become
like brutal beasts. I therefore say that God
Has never made a race more full of vice,
Without the least amalgamation of kindness
Or of culture.”  A noted humanist
Would add, “In these men you’ll scarcely find
The traces of humanity, who have
No science and also have a need of writing.
Neither do they have encoded laws,
But customs and associations most
Barbaric. They do not even fathom private
Property.…How can we doubt these people—
Uncivilized, barbaric, rotten with
Impieties, obscenities—have been
Legitimately conquered?….Indians
Are as different from us Spanish as
Cruel people are from kind, as monkeys
Are from men.” Other Spanish voices:
“They live like proper beasts….Stupid, wild,
Insensate asses…Only wild beasts.”

The truth of all this is, the only way
That Europe could explain and justify
Its conquest and despoliation of
These simple people and their lands was by
Turning Noble Savages, who lived
In what would seem to be the Golden World,
Into Savage Beasts who occupied
A hideous and untamed wilderness.

And thus it happened then, as the times decreed,
“Terrorists” or not, depending on the need.

The post Noble Savage or Savage Beast: How Rulers Rule appeared first on CounterPunch.org.