Note

Of Savages, or Voyage of Samuel Champlain . . . (1603)

Hurons, 1615
Engraving
Champlain, The Voyages, 1632
Photo: National Library of Canada
This is the title of Champlain’s first work about Canada, written in 1603. In the seventeenth century, the word "savage" was used to refer to Indians. It appears in the excerpts from Champlain’s works used in this exhibition.

When Europeans first learned of the existence of the Americas and its peoples, thinkers and philosophers adopted one of two views about the Indians. Some saw them as harmless savages or wild people. The French writer Montaigne (1533-1592) wrote: "They are wild in the sense we call wild those fruits that nature, of itself and its ordinary progress, has produced . . . those we have altered through our artifice and diverted from the normal order, we should call less wild" (Michel de Montaigne, Essais, 1588). Others, like Champlain, saw the Indians as nature’s children, at the first stage of evolution, as yet fearing neither God nor man, and lacking in culture. Champlain believed they needed to be watched over and guided.

Today, we realize that Native peoples had - and still have - distinct and complex cultures. Each group adapted its lifestyle to its environment. In light of our understanding, the term "savage" is no longer considered appropriate or acceptable.