Savage (pejorative term)

Savage is a derogatory term to describe a person or people the speaker regards as primitive and uncivilized. It has predominantly been used to refer to indigenous, tribal, and nomadic peoples.

Taiwanese indigenous peoples in Japanese Taiwan, from a 1926 book titled The Savage Tribes of Formosa

Sometimes a legal, military, and ethnic term, it has shifted in meaning since its first usages in the 16th century.^{[by whom?]}

Since 1776, American politicians have used the term savage to refer to uncivilized peoples as well as those affiliated with Nazism, Communism, and terrorism.

According to the National Museum of the American Indian, the word "served to justify the taking of Native lands, sometimes by treaty and other times through coercion or conquest".

During the 16th century, the noble savage, a romanticized literary archetype, emerged in Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature. The stock character symbolizes the mythical innate goodness and moral superiority of a character in tune with nature and uncorrupted by civilization.

English usage

British usage

An 1874 passage from Ecce Veritas epitomizes the overlap between the use of "savage" and eugenicist, white supremacist, and Social Darwinist views:

...the prevailing [natural] law seems to be — "once a savage always a savage." Like the Red Indians and nomads generally, we may extirpate but can never civilise them. Science declares, as does Mr. Darwin, that the earlier races of mankind were barbarous; ... it is the superior races that have thrust out the older and inferior, supplanting them as if by uniform law.

The 1884 English pamphlet titled Can the independent chiefs of savage tribes cede to any private individual the whole or a part of their states...? counterposes "European" and "Christian" nations with "nomads and savages" from "feeble races", including Native North Americans, Syrian Bedouins, Iraqi Turkmen, and Central Africans including the Kongo people.

1812 American propaganda poster, poeticizing the British alliance with the "savage Indian" during the War of 1812 and demonstrating scalping

American usage

In the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson describes Native Americans as "merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions".

The 1873 Reports of the Committee of Investigation sent by the Mexican Government to the Frontier of Texas contains 76 uses of the term "savages", possibly in reference to Tejanos.

The 1899 book The Dark Continent...At Our Doors by Christian evangelist Emilio Dolsson compares the continent of South America with the continent of Africa under the heading "Among the Savage Tribes."

American territories

In 1901, the US Supreme Court described inhabitants of its recently acquired territories — Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines — as "savage tribes" as part of the Insular Cases' DeLima v. Bidwell ruling. In 2023, the ACLU condemned this language, stating it was a method of denying "millions of people...certain constitutional rights and protections", which "showed obvious contempt for the predominately Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Pacific Islander residents of these territories". The ACLU claimed this continues to contribute to systemic racism today.

During the Vietnam War

The American military used the term used to describe Viet Cong soldiers. During a 1971 court hearing, American airborne ranger Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. stated, "It is like there are savages out there, there are gooks out there. In the same way we slaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter the water buffalo in Vietnam". He claimed soldiers also used the term "Indian country" to refer to free-fire zones in South Vietnam.

War on Terror

The day after the 9/11 attacks on September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush declared a war on terror.

On an address to the Judiciary Committee on September 24, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft reiterated the description of the US as "the civil" and terrorists as "the savage":

[The] attacks of September 11 drew a bright line of demarcation between the civil and the savage, and our nation will never be the same...Today I call upon Congress to act to strengthen our ability to fight this evil wherever it exists, and to ensure that the line between the civil and the savage, so brightly drawn on September 11, is never crossed again.

In 2020, Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle drew a correlation between "The Evil Savage Other as Enemy in Modern U.S. Presidential Discourse", claiming the "savage Other" has been defined as "American Indians of the Frontier, the British during the American Revolution, the immigrants in the early 20th century, the Nazis, the Communists, and more recently...terrorists". Viala-Gaudefroy claims this same strategy was employed to prepare the American public for the Iraq War and to increase support for Trumpism.

In 2023, the National Park System's Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names stated their belief that "all instances of 'savage' should be removed from lands, including geographic features". The committee wrote that the term "has a historic derogatory association with Native Americans".

In popular culture

Citing 1922 Wild West Weekly illustrations, Bowling Green State University claims that, "Historically and today, representations of Native American men have frequently relied on stereotypes of violence, savagery, or primitivism".

Beginning in about 2008, the term became an American slang term meaning "bad-ass, cool, and violent".^{[citation needed]}

In 2019, while browsing orange shirts to honor Native victims of residential schools for Canada's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a teacher at Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton came across an orange shirt which read "Savage est. 1998". Sold by retailer Urban Planet, the orange shirt's text was framed by a white-and-black circular design. This paralleled the NDTR's Every Child Matters shirt, designed by artist Andy Everson of the K'ómoks First Nation. The Every Child Matters shirt was designed for nonprofits, to honor "the thousands of children who died in the federally funded, church-run boarding schools", but was frequently misappropriated by non-charitable groups. Douglas Stewart, a teacher of the Sylix/Okanagan Nation, pointed out the similarities and told CBC News, "It's important to understand that for Indigenous people, this word is our N-word". The assistant manager of the Fredericton Urban Planet agreed that the word should be removed from its clothing, stating, "It's affected Indigenous people for hundreds of years; it still affects them. It would be the same as any other racial slurs printed and then sold in stores".

In 2020, a clothing company and a restaurant changed its name along with public apologies regarding their usages of the term. VII Apparel Company, formerly Savage Apparel, wrote:

It feels as if the word has been completely separated from its racist past — and that belief made us feel justified...But despite its origins, it is an indisputable fact that the word savage was used as a racial slur to describe Native American and Indigenous people...And recognizing that fact is what ultimately brought us to the decision to change our name.

The restaurant SHIFT (formerly named Savage) in St. Louis, Missouri issued an apology the same year, stating the term has "a troubled history and it was a mistake to celebrate that" and described themselves as "truly sorry".

International usage

In 2004, Pakistani al-Qaeda CEO Mohammad Hasan Khalil al-Hakim published Management of Savagery (also translated as Administration of Savagery) which described a strategy for Islamic extremists to create a new Islamic caliphate.

In 2015, the European Union funded a "Savage Warfare" project, using the term to apply to British and American colonial campaigns between 1885 and 1914. Funded for €269 857,80, the project aimed to "reconfigure how historians debate Europe’s colonial past, as well as influence current popular interpretations of this crucial period of world history".

See also

• Indian giver

References

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3. "Words Matter Case Study". nmai.si.edu. Retrieved 2024-03-13.
4. Ecce Veritas. An Ultra-Unitarian Review of the life and character of Jesus. [The preface is signed, Sylva.]. McCorquodale&Company. 1874. p. 96.
5. Can (1884). Can the independent chiefs of savage tribes cede to any private individual the whole or a part of their states, together with the sovereign rights which belong to them in conformity with the traditional customs of the country?.
6. "Jefferson and American Indians". Monticello. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
7. Brady, Cheyenne (2020-07-04). ""Merciless Indian Savages"". Center for Native American Youth. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
8. "The Fate of the Tejanos". 2024-03-10. Archived from the original on 2024-03-10. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
9. Olsson, Emilio (1899). The Dark Continent--at Our Doors: Slavery, Heathenism, and Cruelty in South America. M.E. Munson.
10. "DeLima v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 1 (1901)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
11. King, J. C. H. (2016-08-25). Blood and Land: The Story of Native North America. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-1-84614-808-8.
12. Silliman, Stephen W. (June 2008). "The "Old West" in the Middle East: U.S. Military Metaphors in Real and Imagined Indian Country". American Anthropologist. 110 (2): 237–247. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00029.x. JSTOR 27563986. S2CID 162479330. Retrieved Nov 23, 2020.
13. "Text of Bush's act of war statement". 2001-09-12. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
14. "EPF118 09/24/01 - Text: Ashcroft Outlines Proposed Changes in Anti-Terrorism Laws - (Attorney General testifies before House Judiciary Committee) (2600)". September 24, 2001. Archived from the original on March 10, 2024.
15. Comments on the Draft Working Lists of Federal Land Unit and Geographic Feature Names - Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names National Park System Advisory Board Address, circa 2023. Archived March 9, 2024.
16. "The "Violent Savage" · Race in the United States, 1880-1940 · Student Digital Gallery · BGSU Libraries". digitalgallery.bgsu.edu. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
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18. Goodyear, Sheena (July 8, 2021). "He created a logo to honour residential school victims. Now retailers are using it to 'make a buck'". CBC Radio.
19. "'This word is our N-word': Indigenous teacher asks Urban Planet to drop racial slur". CBC News. October 2, 2019.
20. "A Restaurant Changed Its Name From 'Savage' Due To The Racial History Of The Term". Delish. 2020-06-23. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
21. "South city restaurant changes name citing its association with 'a troubled history'". ksdk.com. 2020-06-22. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
22. Ryan, Michael W. S. (28 January 2010). "Al-Qaeda's Purpose in Yemen Described in Works of Jihad Strategists". Terrorism Monitor. 8 (4): Jamestown Foundation. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
23. Wright, Lawrence (16 June 2014). "ISIS's Savage Strategy in Iraq". The New Yorker. Retrieved 1 September 2014.
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25. "Savage Warfare: A Cultural History of British and American Colonial Campaigns 1885-1914 | Savage Warfare Project | Fact Sheet | H2020". CORDIS | European Commission. Retrieved 2024-03-10.