noble savage

plural noble savages

1. literatureA stock character embodying the concept of an idealized indigene or outsider who has not been corrupted by civilization and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness.

   It is written that the noble savage must never express surprise in the presence of the white.

   1911, J[ames] M[atthew] Barrie, “The Children are Carried Off”, in Peter and Wendy, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, pages 179–180

   4 more examples

   It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 34, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 167

   The Isángú, or Ingwánba, the craving felt after a short abstinence from animal food, does not spare the white traveller more than it does his dark guides; and, though the moral courage of the former may resist the "gastronomic practice" of breaking fast upon a fat young slave, one does not expect so much from the untutored appetite of the noble savage.

   1876, Richard F[rancis] Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo. […], part I (The Gaboon River and Gorilla Land), London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, […], →OCLC

   This is like one of those Red-skin stories where the noble savages carry off a girl and the honest backwoodsman with his incomparable knowledge follows the track and reads the signs of her fate in a footprint here, a broken twig there, a trinket dropped by the way.

   1914, Joseph Conrad, Chance, London: Methuen, →OCLC, page 283

   Here the problem is aggravated by the mutually reinforcing influences of the ‘black legend’ of Spanish greed and cruelty, and the contrasting myth of the American Indian as ‘noble savage’.

   1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin history of Latin America, London; New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 84