Folklorist Wayland Hand once called Mary Alicia Owen “the most famous American Woman Folklorist of her time.” Drawing on primary sources, such as maps, census records, court documents, personal letter
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC MEMOIRS OF OUR TIME When Napoleon Chagnon arrived in Venezuela’s Amazon region in 1964 to study the Yanomamo Indians, one of the last large tribal groups still liv
The renowned anthropologist author of the best-selling Yanomamo describes his controversial life-long research among the Yanomamo Indians, describing how his beliefs in the evolutionary advantages of
When the English settlers arrived in Virginia in 1607 they carried with them a fully developed mythology about native Indian cultures. This mythology was built around the body of English writing about America that began to appear in the 1550s, prior to any significant contact between the English and the native groups, and was founded upon the assumption of the savagism of the Indian and the civility of European culture. Professor Sheehan argues that English commitment to this myth was at the root of the violence that broke out almost immediately between the settlers and the Indians. On the one hand, the Indians were seen as noble savages, free from and innocent of the deficiencies of European society. But as ignoble savages they were seen as immature, even bestial, lacking the civilising and ordering social structure that characterised European culture. Whichever perspective was adopted, this mythology was a product of the white man's world, developed without accurate information about
The Polynesian island of Tahiti is in the imagination an island paradise, an idyllic world inhabited by noble savages, carefree and uncomplicated. Tahiti separates myth from reality. Finney describes
Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist uncritically preoccupied with "noble savages" and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade.Fugitive Rou
The Polynesian island of Tahiti is in the imagination an island paradise, an idyllic world inhabited by noble savages, carefree and uncomplicated. Tahiti separates myth from reality. Finney describes
"Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with "noble savages" and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade. Fugitive Rousseau de
