In the second chapter of his book the writers already discuss heavily this noble savage myth and deconstruct it. I really recommend the book, it's an amazing re

In the second chapter of his book the writers already discuss heavily this noble savage myth and deconstruct it. I really recommend the book, it's an amazing read. “The racist denigration of the savage, and naive celebration of savage innocence, are always treated as two sides of the same imperialist coin.56 Yet originally this was an explicitly right-wing position, as explained by Ter Ellingson, the contemporary anthropologist who has reviewed the subject most comprehensively. Ellingson concluded there never was a ‘noble savage’ myth; at least not in the sense of a stereotype of simple societies living in an age of happy primordial innocence. Rather, travellers’ accounts tend to supply a much more ambivalent picture, describing alien societies as a complicated, sometimes (to them) incoherent, mix of virtues and vices. What needs to be investigated, instead, might better be called the ‘myth of the myth of the noble savage’: why is it that certain Europeans began attributing such a naive position to others?”