Savage is a derogatory term to describe a person or people the speaker regards as primitive anduncivilized. It has predominantly been used to refer toindigenous,tribal, andnomadic peoples.
Sometimes a legal, military, and ethnic term, it has shifted in meaning since its first usages in the 16th century.
Since 1776, American politicians have used the termsavage to refer to uncivilized peoples as well as those affiliated with Nazism, Communism, and terrorism.[1][2]
According to theNational 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".[3]
During the 16th century, thenoble savage, a romanticized literary archetype, emerged in Westernanthropology,philosophy, andliterature. The stock character symbolizes the mythical innate goodness and moral superiority of a character in tune with nature and uncorrupted by civilization.
An 1874 passage fromEcce Veritas epitomizes the overlap between the use of "savage" andeugenicist,white supremacist, andSocial 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 doesMr. Darwin, that the earlier races of mankind werebarbarous; ... it is the superior races that have thrust out the older and inferior, supplanting them as if by uniform law.[4]
The 1884 English pamphlet titledCan 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, SyrianBedouins,Iraqi Turkmen, and Central Africans including theKongo people.[5]
In the 1776United 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".[6][7]
The 1873Reports of the Committee of Investigation sent by theMexican Government to the Frontier of Texas contains 76 uses of the term "savages", possibly in reference toTejanos.[8]
The 1899 bookThe 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."[9]
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 theInsular Cases'DeLima v. Bidwell ruling.[10][1] In 2023, theACLU 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 tosystemic racism today.[1]
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 aregooks out there. In the same way weslaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter thewater buffalo in Vietnam".[11] He claimed soldiers also used the term "Indian country" to refer tofree-fire zones in South Vietnam.[11][12]
The day after the9/11 attacks on September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush declared a war on terror.[13]
On an address to theJudiciary Committee on September 24, 2001, Attorney GeneralJohn Ashcroft reiterated the description of the US as "the civil" and terrorists as "the savage":[14]
[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.[14]
In 2020, Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy of theUniversité 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 theIraq War and to increase support forTrumpism.[1]
In 2023, theNational 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".[15]
Citing 1922Wild 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".[16]
Beginning in about 2008,[17] the term became an Americanslang term meaning "bad-ass, cool, and violent".[citation needed]
In 2019, while browsing orange shirts to honorNative victims of residential schools for Canada'sNational Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a teacher atHarrison Trimble High School inMoncton came across an orange shirt which read "Savage est. 1998". Sold by retailerUrban 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 artistAndy Everson of theK'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.[18] Douglas Stewart, a teacher of theSylix/Okanagan Nation, pointed out the similarities and toldCBC News, "It's important to understand that for Indigenous people, this word is ourN-word". The assistant manager of theFredericton 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".[19]
In 2020, a clothing company and a restaurant changed its name along with public apologies regarding their usages of the term.[20][21] 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.[17]
The restaurant SHIFT (formerly named Savage) inSt. 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".[21][20]
In 2004, Pakistanial-Qaeda CEOMohammad Hasan Khalil al-Hakim publishedManagement of Savagery[22] (also translated asAdministration of Savagery)[22] which described a strategy forIslamic extremists to create a new Islamiccaliphate.[23]
In 2015, theEuropean Union funded a "Savage Warfare" project, using the term to apply toBritish andAmerican 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".[24][25]