A detail from Benjamin West's heroic, neoclassical history painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1771), depicting an idealized Native American.^[1]

The term noble savage (French, bon sauvage), expresses the concept of an idealized indigene, outsider (or "other"), and refers to the literary stock character of the same. In English the phrase first appeared in the 17th century in John Dryden's heroic play, The Conquest of Granada (1672), where it was used by a Christian prince disguised as a Spanish Muslim to refer to himself, but it later became identified with the idealized picture of "nature's gentleman", which was an aspect of 18th-century sentimentalism. The noble savage achieved prominence as an oxymoronic rhetorical device after 1851, when used sarcastically as the title for a satirical essay by English novelist Charles Dickens, who wished to disassociate himself from 18th and early 19th-century romantic primitivism.

The idea that in a state of nature humans are essentially good is often attributed to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, a Whig supporter of constitutional monarchy. In his Inquiry Concerning Virtue (1699), Shaftesbury had postulated that the moral sense in humans is natural and innate and based on feelings rather than resulting from the indoctrination of a particular religion. Shaftesbury was reacting to Thomas Hobbes's justification of royal absolutism in his Leviathan, Chapter XIII, in which he famously holds that the state of nature is a "war of all against all" in which men's lives are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The notion of the state of nature itself derives from the republican writings of Cicero and of Lucretius, both of whom enjoyed great vogue in the 18th century, after having been revived amid the optimistic atmosphere of Renaissance humanism.

Pre-history of the noble savage[link]

Oroonoko kills Imoinda in a 1776 performance of Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko.

During the late 16th and 17th centuries the figure of the indigene or "savage", and later, increasingly, the "good savage", was held up as a reproach to European civilization, then in the throes of the French Wars of Religion and Thirty Years War. During one event, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew (1572), some ten to twenty thousand men, women, and children were massacred by Catholic mobs, chiefly in Paris, but also throughout France. This horrifying breakdown of civil control was deeply disturbing to thoughtful people on both sides of the religious divide.^[2]

In his famous essay "Of Cannibals" (1580),^[3] Michel de Montaigne, himself a Catholic, reported that the Tupinambá people of Brazil ceremoniously eat the bodies of their dead enemies as a matter of honor, but he reminded his readers that Europeans behave even more barbarously when they burn each other alive for disagreeing about religion (he implies): "One calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to."^[4] In "Of Cannibals" Montaigne uses cultural (but not moral) relativism for the purpose of satire. His cannibals are neither noble nor especially good, but not worse than 16th-century Europeans. In this classical humanist view, customs differ but people everywhere are prone to cruelty, a quality that Montaigne detested.^[5]

The treatment of indigenous peoples by the Spanish Conquistadors also produced a great deal of bad conscience and recriminations.^[6] The Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas, who witnessed it, may have been the first to idealize the simple life of the indigenous Americans. He and other observers praised their simple manners and reported that they were incapable of lying.

European angst over colonialism inspired fictional treatments such as Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688), about a slave revolt in Surinam in the West Indies. Behn's story was not primarily a protest against slavery but was written for money; and it met readers' expectations by following the conventions of the European romance novella.

The leader of the revolt, Oroonoko, is truly noble in that he is a hereditary African prince, and he laments his lost African homeland in the traditional terms of a classical Golden Age. He is not a savage but dresses and behaves like a European aristocrat. Behn's story was adapted for the stage by Irish playwright Thomas Southerne, who stressed its sentimental aspects, and as time went on, it came to be seen as addressing the issues of slavery and colonialism, remaining very popular throughout the 18th century.

Origin of term[link]

In English, the phrase Noble Savage first appeared in poet Dryden's heroic play, The Conquest of Granada (1672):<poem> I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.</poem>

The hero who speaks these words in Dryden's play is a Spanish Muslim, who, at the end of the play, in keeping with the requirements of a heroic drama, is revealed to have been, unbeknownst to himself, the son of a Christian prince (since heroic plays by definition had noble and exemplary protagonists).

Ethnomusicologist Ter Ellingson believes that Dryden had picked up the expression "noble savage" from a 1609 travelogue about Canada by the French explorer Marc Lescarbot, in which there was a chapter with the ironic heading: "The Savages are Truly Noble", meaning simply that they enjoyed the right to hunt game, a privilege in France granted only to hereditary aristocrats.^[7]

Dryden's use of the phrase is a striking oxymoron. However, in his day it would have been less so, for in English the word "savage" did not necessarily have the connotations of cruelty we now associate with it, but only gradually acquired them. Instead it could as easily mean "wild", as in a wild flower, as it still does in its French and Italian cognates, for example.^[8]

In France the stock figure that in English is called the "noble savage" has always been simply "le bon sauvage", "the good wild man", a term without the any of the paradoxical frisson of the English one. This character, an idealized portrayal of "Nature's Gentleman", was an aspect of 18th-century sentimentalism, along with other stock characters such as, the Virtuous Milkmaid, the Servant-More-Clever-than-the-Master (such as Sancho Panza and Figaro, among countless others), and the general theme of virtue in the lowly born.^[9] Nature's Gentleman, whether European-born or exotic, takes his place in this cast of characters, along with the Wise Egyptian, Persian, and Chinaman.^[10]

He had always existed, from the time of the epic of Gilgamesh, where he appears as Enkiddu, the wild-but-good man who lives with animals. Another instance is the untutored-but-noble medieval knight, Parsifal. The Biblical shepherd boy David falls into this category. The association of virtue with withdrawal from society — and specifically from cities — was a familiar theme in religious literature.

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan an Islamic philosophical tale (or thought experiment) by Ibn Tufail from 12th-century Andalusia, straddles the divide between the religious and the secular. The tale is of interest because it was known to the New England Puritan divine, Cotton Mather. Translated in to English (from Latin) in 1686 and 1708, it tells the story of Hayy, a wild child, raised by a gazelle, without human contact, on a deserted island in the Indian Ocean. Purely through the use of his reason, Hayy goes through all the gradations of knowledge before emerging into human society, where he revealed to be a believer of Natural religion, which Cotton Mather, as a Christian Divine, identified with Primitive Christianity.^[11] The figure of Hayy is both a Natural man and a Wise Persian, but not a Noble Savage.

The locus classicus of the 18th-century portrayal of the American Indian are the famous lines from Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man" (1734): <poem>Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, a humbler heav'n; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the wat'ry waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold! To be, contents his natural desire; He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire: But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.</poem>

To Pope, writing in 1734, the Indian was a purely abstract figure—"poor" because uneducated and a heathen but also happy because living close to Nature. This view reflects the typical Age of Reason belief that men are everywhere and in all times the same as well as a Deistic conception of natural religion (although Pope, like Dryden, was Catholic). Pope's phrase, "Lo the Poor Indian", became almost as famous as Dryden's "noble savage" and, in the 19th century, when more people began to have first hand knowledge of and conflict with the Indians, would be used derisively for similar sarcastic effect.^[12]

Attributes of romantic primitivism[link]

In the 1st century AD, sterling qualities such as those enumerated above by Fénelon (excepting perhaps belief in the brotherhood of man) had been attributed by Tacitus in his Germania to the German barbarians, in pointed contrast to the softened, Romanized Gauls. By inference Tacitus was criticizing his own Roman culture for getting away from its roots — which was the perennial function of such comparisons. Tacitus's Germans did not inhabit a "Golden Age" of ease but were tough and inured to hardship, qualities which he saw as preferable to the decadent softness of civilized life. In antiquity this form of "hard primitivism", whether admired or deplored (both attitudes were common), co-existed in rhetorical opposition to the "soft primitivism" of visions of a lost Golden Age of ease and plenty.^[14]

As art historian Erwin Panofsky explains:

There had been, from the beginning of classical speculation, two contrasting opinions about the natural state of man, each of them, of course, a "Gegen-Konstruktion" to the conditions under which it was formed. One view, termed "soft" primitivism in an illuminating book by Lovejoy and Boas, conceives of primitive life as a golden age of plenty, innocence, and happiness -- in other words, as civilized life purged of its vices. The other, "hard" form of primitivism conceives of primitive life as an almost subhuman existence full of terrible hardships and devoid of all comforts -- in other words, as civilized life stripped of its virtues.^[15]

In the 18th century the debates about primitivism centered around the examples of the people of Scotland as often as the American Indians. The rude ways of the Highlanders were often scorned, but their toughness also called forth a degree of admiration among "hard" primitivists, just that of the Spartans and the Germans had done in antiquity. One Scottish writer described his Highland countrymen this way:

They greatly excel the Lowlanders in all the exercises that require agility; they are incredibly abstemious, and patient of hunger and fatigue; so steeled against the weather, that in traveling, even when the ground is covered with snow, they never look for a house, or any other shelter but their plaid, in which they wrap themselves up, and go to sleep under the cope of heaven. Such people, in quality of soldiers, must be invincible . . .^[16]

The reaction to Hobbes[link]

Debates about "soft" and "hard" primitivism intensified with the publication in 1651 of Hobbes's Leviathan (or Commonwealth), a justification of absolute monarchy. Hobbes, a "hard Primitivist", flatly asserted that life in a state of nature was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" -- a "war of all against all". Reacting to the wars of religion of his own time and the previous century, he maintained that the absolute rule of a king was the only possible alternative to the otherwise inevitable violence and anarchy of civil war. Hobbes' hard primitivism may have been as venerable as the tradition of soft primitivism, but his use of it was new. He used it to argue that the state was founded on a Social Contract in which men voluntarily gave up their liberty in return for the peace and security provided by total surrender to an absolute ruler, whose legitimacy stemmed from the Social Contract and not from God.

Hobbes' vision of the natural depravity of man inspired fervent disagreement among those who opposed absolute government. His most influential and effective opponent in the last decade of the 17th century was Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury countered that, contrary to Hobbes, humans in a state of nature were neither good nor bad, but that they possessed a moral sense based on the emotion of sympathy, and that this emotion was the source and foundation of human goodness and benevolence. Like his contemporaries (all of whom who were educated by reading classical authors such as Livy, Cicero, and Horace), Shaftesbury admired the simplicity of life of classical antiquity. He urged a would-be author “to search for that simplicity of manners, and innocence of behavior, which has been often known among mere savages; ere they were corrupted by our commerce” (Advice to an Author, Part III.iii). Shaftesbury's denial of the innate depravity of man was taken up by contemporaries such as the popular Irish essayist Richard Steele (1672–1729), who attributed the corruption of contemporary manners to false education. Influenced by Shaftesbury and his followers, 18th-century readers, particularly in England, were swept up by the cult of Sensibility that grew up around Shaftesbury's concepts of sympathy and benevolence.

Meanwhile, in France, where those who criticized government or Church authority could be imprisoned without trial or hope of appeal, primitivism was used primarily as a way to protest the repressive rule of Louis XIV and XV, while avoiding censorship. Thus, in the beginning of the 18th century, a French travel writer, the Baron de Lahontan, who had actually lived among the Huron Indians, put potentially dangerously radical Deist and egalitarian arguments in the mouth of a Canadian Indian, Adario, who was perhaps the most striking and significant figure of the "good" (or "noble") savage, as we understand it now, to make his appearance on the historical stage:

Adario sings the praises of Natural Religion. . . As against society he puts forward a sort of primitive Communism, of which the certain fruits are Justice and a happy life. . . . He looks with compassion on poor civilized man -- no courage, no strength, incapable of providing himself with food and shelter: a degenerate, a moral cretin, a figure of fun in his blue coat, his red hose, his black hat, his white plume and his green ribands. He never really lives because he is always torturing the life out of himself to clutch at wealth and honors which, even if he wins them, will prove to be but glittering illusions. . . . For science and the arts are but the parents of corruption. The Savage obeys the will of Nature, his kindly mother, therefore he is happy. It is civilized folk who are the real barbarians.^[17]

Published in Holland, Lahontan's writings, with their controversial attacks on established religion and social customs, were immensely popular. Over twenty editions were issued between 1703 and 1741, including editions in French, English, Dutch and German.^[18]

Atala au tombeau, par Girodet, 1808 - Musée du louvre.

In the later 18th century, the published voyages of Captain James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville seemed to open a glimpse into an unspoiled Edenic culture that still existed in the un-Christianized South Seas. Their popularity inspired Diderot's Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville (1772), a scathing critique of European sexual hypocrisy and colonial exploitation.

[edit] Benjamin Franklin's Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America

"The Care and Labour of providing for Artificial and Fashionable Wants, the sight of so many rich wallowing in Superfluous plenty, whereby so many are kept poor and distressed for Want, the Insolence of Office . . . and restraints of Custom, all contrive to disgust [the Indians] with what we call civil Society." — Benjamin Franklin marginalia in Matthew Wheelock, Reflections, Moral and Political on Great Britain and Her Colonies, 1770^[19]

Benjamin Franklin, who had negotiated with the Indians during the French and Indian War, protested vehemently against the Paxton massacre that took place at Conestoga, in western Pennsylvania, of December 1763, in which white vigilantes massacred Indian women and children, many of whom had converted to Christianity. Franklin himself personally organized a Quaker militia the to control the white population and "strengthen the government". In his pamphet Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America (1784), Franklin deplored the use of the term "savages" for native Americans: “Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs”. Franklin used the massacres to illustrate his point that no race had a monopoly on virtue, likening Paxton Men to "Christian White Savages'". Franklin cried out to a just God to punish those who carried the Bible in one hand and the hatchet in the other: 'O ye unhappy Perpetrators of this Horrid Wickedness!'" ^[20] Franklin praised the Indian way of life, their customs of hospitality, their councils, which reached agreement by discussion and consensus, and noted that many white men had voluntarily given up the purported advantages of civilization to live among them, but that the opposite was rare.

Franklin's writings on American Indians were remarkably free of ethnocentricism, although he often used words such as "savages," which carry more prejudicial connotations in the twentieth century than in his time. Franklin's cultural relativism was perhaps one of the purest expressions of Enlightenment assumptions that stressed racial equality and the universality of moral sense among peoples. Systematic racism was not called into service until a rapidly expanding frontier demanded that enemies be dehumanized during the rapid, historically inevitable westward movement of the nineteenth century. Franklin's respect for cultural diversity did not reappear widely as an assumption in Euro-American thought until Franz Boas and others revived it around the end of the nineteenth century. Franklin's writings on Indians express the fascination of the Enlightenment with nature, the natural origins of man and society, and natural (or human) rights. They are likewise imbued with a search (which amounted at times almost to a ransacking of the past) for alternatives to monarchy as a form of government, and to orthodox state-recognized churches as a form of worship.^[21]

Though retrospectively it may seem to us that Franklin may have idealized the Indians to make a rhetorical point , the phrase "noble savage" never appears in his writings.

Erroneous Identification of Rousseau with the noble savage[link]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, like Shaftesbury, also insisted that man was born with the potential for goodness; and he, too, argued that civilization, with its envy and self-consciousness, has made men bad. In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men (1754), Rousseau maintained that man in a State of Nature had been a solitary, ape-like creature, who was not méchant (bad), as Hobbes had maintained, but (like some other animals) had an "innate repugnance to see others of his kind suffer" (and this natural sympathy constituted the Natural Man's one-and-only natural virtue).^[22] It was Rousseau's fellow philosophe, Voltaire, objecting to Rousseau's egalitarianism, who charged him with primitivism and accused him of wanting to make people go back and walk on all fours.^[23] Because Rousseau was the preferred philosopher of the radical Jacobins of the French Revolution, he, above all, became tarred with the accusation of promoting the notion of the "noble savage", especially during the polemics about Imperialism and scientific racism in the last half of the 19th century.^[24] Yet the phrase "noble savage" does not occur in any of Rousseau's writings.^[25] In fact, Rousseau arguably shared Hobbes' pessimistic view of humankind, except that as Rousseau saw it, Hobbes had made the error of assigning it to too early a stage in human evolution. According to the historian of ideas, Arthur O. Lovejoy:

"The notion that Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality was essentially a glorification of the State of Nature, and that its influence tended to wholly or chiefly to promote "Primitivism" is one of the most persistent historical errors. – A. O. Lovejoy, “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality” (1923).^[26]

In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Rousseau, anticipating the language of Darwin, states that as the animal-like human species increased there arose a "formidable struggle for existence" between it and other species for food.^[27] It was then, under the pressure of necessity, that le charactère spécifique de l'espèce humaine – the specific quality that distinguished man from the beasts – emerged – intelligence, a power, meager at first but yet capable of an "almost unlimited development". Rousseau calls this power the faculté de se perfectionner – perfectibility.^[28] Man invented tools, discovered fire, and in short, began to emerge from the state of nature. Yet at this stage, men also began to compare himself to others: "It is easy to see. . . that all our labors are directed upon two objects only, namely, for oneself, the commodities of life, and consideration on the part of others." Amour propre – the desire for consideration (self regard), Rousseau calls a "factitious feeling arising, only in society, which leads a man to think more highly of himself than of any other." This passion began to show itself with the first moment of human self-consciousness, which was also that of the first step of human progress: "It is this desire for reputation, honors, and preferment which devours us all . . . this rage to be distinguished, that we own what is best and worst in men – our virtues and our vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers – in short, a vast number of evil things and a small number of good." It is this "which inspires men to all the evils which they inflict upon one another."^[29]. To be sure, Rousseau praises the newly discovered "savage" tribes (whom Rousseau does not consider in a "state of nature"), as living a life that is simpler and more egalitarian than that of the Europeans; and he sometimes praises this "third stage" it in terms that could be confused with the romantic primitivism fashionable in his times. He also identifies ancient primitive communism under a patriarchy, such as he believes characterized the "youth" of mankind, as perhaps the happiest state and perhaps also illustrative of how man was intended by God to live. But these stages are not all good, but rather are mixtures of good and bad. According to Lovejoy, Rousseau's basic view of human nature after the emergence of social living is basically identical to that of Hobbes.^[30] Moreover, Rousseau does not believe that it is possible or desirable to go back to a primitive state. It is only by acting together in civil society and binding themselves to its laws that men become men; and only a properly constituted society and reformed system of education could make men good.^[31]

For Rousseau the remedy was not in going back to the primitive but in reorganizing society on the basis of a properly drawn up social compact, so as to "draw from the very evil from which we suffer [i.e., civilization and progress] the remedy which shall cure it." Lovejoy concludes that Rousseau's doctrine, as expressed in his Discourse on Inequality:

declares that there is a dual process going on through history; on the one hand, an indefinte progress in all those powers and achievements which express merely the potency of man's intellect; on the other hand, an increasing estrangement of men from one another, an intensification of ill-will and mutual fear, cuminating in a monstrous epoch of universal conflict and mutual destruction [i.e.,the fourth stage in which we now find ourselves]. And the chief cause of the latter process Rousseau, following Hobbes and Mandeville, found, as we have seen, in that unique passion of the self-conscious animal – pride, self esteem, le besoin de se mettre au dessus des autres ["the need to put oneself above others"]. A large survey of history does not belie these generalizations, and the history of the period since Rousseau wrote lends them a melancholy verisimilitude. Precisely the two processes, which he described have . . . been going on upon a scale beyond all precedent: immense progress in man's knowledge and in his powers over nature, and at the same time a steady increase of rivalries, distrust, hatred and at last "the most horrible state of war" . . [Moreover Rousseau] failed to realize fully how strongly amour propre tended to assume a collective form . . . in pride of race, of nationality, of class..^[32]

The 19th century: belief in progress and the fall of the natural man[link]

During the 19th century the idea that men were everywhere and always the same that had characterized both classical antiquity and the Enlightenment was exchanged for a more organic and dynamic evolutionary concept of human history. Advances in technology now made the indigenous man and his simpler way of life appear, not only inferior, but also, even his defenders agreed, foredoomed by the inexorable advance of progress to inevitable extinction. The sentimentalized "primitive" ceased to figure as a moral reproach to the decadence of the effete European, as in previous centuries. Instead, the argument shifted to a discussion of whether his demise should be considered a desirable or regrettable eventuality. As the century progressed, native peoples and their traditions increasingly became a foil serving to highlight the accomplishments of Europe and the expansion of the European Imperial powers, who justified their policies on the basis of a presumed racial and cultural superiority.^[33]

[edit] Charles Dickens 1853 article on "The Noble Savage" in Household Words

In 1853 Charles Dickens wrote a scathingly sarcastic review in his weekly magazine Household Words of painter George Catlin's show of American Indians when it visited England. In his essay, entitled "The Noble Savage", Dickens expressed repugnance for Indians and their way of life in no uncertain terms, recommending that they ought to be "civilized out of existence". (Interestingly, Dickens's essay refers back to Dryden's well-known use of the term, not to Rousseau.) Dickens's scorn for those unnamed individuals, who, like Catlin, he alleged, misguidedly exalted the so-called "noble savage", was limitless. In reality, Dickens maintained, Indians were dirty, cruel, and constantly fighting among themselves. Dickens's satire on Catlin and others like him who might find something to admire in the American Indians or African bushmen is a notable turning point in the history of the use of the phrase.^[34]

Like others who would henceforth write about the topic, Dickens begins by disclaiming a belief in the "noble savage":

To come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance and an enormous superstition. ... I don't care what he calls me. I call him a savage, and I call a savage a something highly desirable to be civilized off the face of the earth.... The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he submits his life and limbs without a murmur or question and whose whole life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations and friends the moment a grey hair appears on his head. All the noble savage's wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermination – which is the best thing I know of him, and the most comfortable to my mind when I look at him. He has no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and his "mission" may be summed up as simply diabolical.

Dickens' essay was arguably a pose of manly, no-nonsense realism and a defense of Christianity. At the end of it his tone becomes more recognizably humanitarian, as he maintains that, although the virtues of the savage are mythical and his way of life inferior and doomed, he still deserves to be treated no differently than if he were an Englishman of genius, such as Newton or Shakespeare:

To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense. We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an ISAAC NEWTON; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher power [i.e., that of Christianity] than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when this place knows him no more.

Scapegoating the Inuit: cannibalism and Sir John Franklin's lost expedition[link]

Although Charles Dickens had ridiculed positive depictions of Native Americans as portrayals of so-called "noble" savages, he made an exception (at least initially) in the case of the Inuit, whom he called “loving children of the north”, “forever happy with their lot,” “whether they are hungry or full”, and “gentle loving savages”, who, despite a tendency to steal, have a “quiet, amiable character” ("Our Phantom Ship on an Antediluvian Cruise", Household Words, April 16, 1851). However he soon reversed this rosy assessment, when on October 23, 1854, The Times of London published a report by explorer-physician John Rae of the discovery by Eskimos of the remains of the lost Franklin expedition along with unmistakable evidence of cannibalism among members of the party:

From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource -- cannibalism -- as a means of prolonging existence.

Franklin's widow and other surviving relatives and indeed the nation as a whole were shocked to the core and refused to accept these reports, which appeared to undermine the whole assumption of the cultural superiority of the heroic white explorer-scientist and the imperial project generally. Instead, they attacked the reliability of the Eskimos who had made the gruesome discovery and called them liars. An editorial in The Times called for further investigation:

to arrive at a more satisfactory conclusion with regard to the fate of poor Franklin and his friends . . . . Is the story told by the Esquimaux the true one? Like all savages they are liars, and certainly would not scruple at the utterance of any falsehood which might, in their opinion, shield them from the vengeance of the white man."^[35]

This line was energetically taken up by Dickens's, who wrote in his weekly magazine:

It is impossible to form an estimate of the character of any race of savages from their deferential behavior to the white man while he is strong. The mistake has been made again and again; and the moment the white man has appeared in the new aspect of being weaker than the savage, the savage has changed and sprung upon him. There are pious persons who, in their practice, with a strange inconsistency, claim for every child born to civilization all innate depravity, and for every child born to the woods and wilds all innate virtue. We believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel; and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man – lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine-stricken, weak frozen, helpless, and dying – has of the gentleness of the Esquimaux nature. --"The Lost Arctic Voyagers”, Household Words, December 2; 1854.

Dr. John Rae rebutted Dickens in two articles in Household Words: “The Lost Arctic Voyagers”, Household Words, No. 248 (December 23, 1854), and "Dr. Rae’s Report to the Secretary of the Admiralty", Household Words, No. 249 (December 30, 1854). Though he did not call them noble, Dr. Rae, who had lived among the Inuit, defended them as “dutiful” and “a bright example to the most civilized people”, comparing them favorably with the undisciplined crew of the Franklin expedition, whom he suggested were ill treated and "would have mutinied under privation", and moreover with the lower classes in England or Scotland generally.^[36] (Dr. Rae himself was Scots).

Rae's respect for the Inuit and his refusal to scapegoat them in the Franklin affair arguably harmed his career. Lady Franklin's campaign to glorify the dead of her husband's expedition, aided and abetted by Dickens, resulted in his being more or less shunned by the British establishment. Although it was not Franklin but Rae who in 1848 discovered the last link in the much-sought-after Northwest Passage, Rae was never awarded a knighthood and died in obscurity in London. (In comparison fellow Scot and contemporary explorer David Livingstone was knighted and buried with full imperial honors in Westminster Abbey). However, modern historians have confirmed Rae's discovery of the Northwest Passage and the accuracy of his report on cannibalism among Franklin's crew.^[37] Canadian author Ken McGoogan, a specialist on Arctic exploration, states that Rae's willingness to learn and adopt the ways of indigenous Arctic peoples made him stand out as the foremost specialist of his time in cold-climate survival and travel. Rae's respect for Inuit customs, traditions, and skills was contrary to the prejudiced belief of many 19th-century Europeans that native peoples had no valuable technical knowledge or information to impart.^[38]

Dickens's racism, like that of many Englishmen, became markedly worse after the Sepoy Rebellion^[39] of 1857 in India.^[40] This event, and the virtually contemporaneous occurrence of the American Civil War (1861–64), which threatened to, and then did, put an end to slavery, coincided with a polarization of attitudes exemplified by the phenomenon of scientific racism.

Scientific racism[link]

In 1860, two British white supremacists, John Crawfurd and James Hunt mounted a defense of British imperialism based on “scientific racism".^[41] Crawfurd, in alliance with Hunt, took over the presidency of the Ethnological Society of London, which was an offshoot of the Aborigines' Protection Society, founded with the mission to defend indigenous peoples against slavery and colonial exploitation.^[42] Invoking "science" and "realism", the two men derided their "philanthropic" predecessors for believing in human equality and for not recognizing that mankind was divided into superior and inferior races. Crawfurd, who opposed Darwinian evolution, "denied any unity to mankind, insisting on immutable, hereditary, and timeless differences in racial character, principal amongst which was the 'very great' difference in 'intellectual capacity.'" For Crawfurd, the races had been created separately and were different species. Crawfurd was Scots, and thought the Scots "race" superior to all others; whilst Hunt, on the other hand, believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon "race". Crawfurd and Hunt routinely accused those who disagreed with them of believing in "Rousseau's Noble Savage". The pair ultimately quarreled because Hunt believed in slavery and Crawfurd did not.^[43] "As Ter Ellingson demonstrates, Crawfurd was responsible for re-introducing the Pre-Rousseauian concept of 'the Noble Savage' to modern anthropology, attributing it wrongly and quite deliberately to Rousseau.”^[44]

"If Rousseau was not the inventor of the Noble Savage, who was?" writes Ellingson,

One who turns for help to [Hoxie Neale] Fairchild's 1928 study,^[45] a compendium of citations from romantic writings on the "savage" may be surprised to find [his book] The Noble Savage almost completely lacking in references to its nominal subject. That is, although Fairchild assembles hundreds of quotations from ethnographers, philosophers, novelists, poets, and playwrights from the 17th century to the 19th century, showing a rich variety of ways in which writers romanticized and idealized those who Europeans considered "savages", almost none of them explicitly refer to something called the "Noble Savage". Although the words, always duly capitalized, appear on nearly every page, it turns out that in every instance, with four possible exceptions, they are Fairchild's words and not those of the authors cited.^[46]

Ellingson finds that any remotely positive portrayal of an indigenous (or working class) person is apt to be characterized (out of context) as a supposedly "unrealistic" or "romanticized" "Noble Savage". He points out that Fairchild even includes as an example of a supposed "Noble Savage", a picture of a Negro slave on his knees, lamenting lost his freedom. According to Ellingson, Fairchild ends his book with a denunciation of the (always unnamed) believers in primitivism or "The Noble Savage" -- whom he feels are threatening to unleash the dark forces of irrationality on civilization.^[47]

Ellingson argues that the term "noble savage", an oxymoron, is a derogatory one, which those who oppose "soft" or romantic primitivism use to discredit (and intimidate) their supposed opponents, whose romantic beliefs they feel are somehow threatening to civilization. Ellingson maintains that virtually none of those accused of believing in the "noble savage" ever actually did so. He likens the practice of accusing anthropologists (and other writers and artists) of belief in the noble savage to a secularized version of the inquisition, and he maintains that modern anthropologists have internalized these accusations to the point where they feel they have to begin by ritualistically disavowing any belief in "noble savage" if they wish to attain credibility in their fields. He notes that text books with a painting of a handsome Native American (such as the one one by Benjamin West on this page) are even given to school children with the cautionary caption, "A painting of a Noble Savage".^[48]

Opponents of primitivism[link]

The most famous modern example of "hard" (or anti-) primitivism in books and movies was William Golding's Lord of the Flies, published in 1954. The title is said to be a reference to the Biblical devil, Beelzebub. This book, in which a group of school boys stranded on a desert island "revert" to savage behavior, was a staple of high school and college required reading lists during the Cold War.

In the 1960s, film director Stanley Kubrick professed his opposition to primitivism. Like Dickens, he began with a disclaimer:

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved — that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.^[49]

The opening scene of Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) depicted prehistoric ape-like men wielding weapons of war, as the tools that supposedly lifted them out of their animal state and made them human.

Another opponent of primitivism is the Australian anthropologist Roger Sandall, who has accused other anthropologists of exalting the "noble savage".^[50] A third is archeologist Lawrence H. Keeley, who has criticised a "widespread myth" that "civilized humans have fallen from grace from a simple primeval happiness, a peaceful golden age" by uncovering archeological evidence that he claims demonstrates that violence prevailed in the earliest human societies. Keeley argues that the "noble savage" paradigm has warped anthropological literature to political ends.^[51]

The noble savage is described as having a natural existence. The term ignoble savage has an obvious negative connotation. The ignoble savage is detested— described as having a cruel and primitive existence. Often, the phrase “ignoble savage” was used and abused to justify colonialism. The concept of the ignoble savage gave Europeans the "right" to establish colonies without considering the possibility of preexisting, functional societies.^[52]

Noble savage idea today[link]

Motion picture[link]

The Noble savage idea sometimes used by film industry. In this case usually the philosophical background not deep and sometimes just simple supplies of the story.

Noble savage motion pictures:

• Tarzan
• Crocodile Dundee
• Un indien dans la ville
• Avatar

See also[link]

• Essays (Montaigne)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Wild child
• Wild man
• Anarcho-primitivism
• Neotribalism
• Romantic racism
• Charles Dickens: Racism and anti-Semitism
• Pelagianism

Concepts:

• Cultural relativism
• Golden Age
• Master-slave dialectic
• Social progress
• State of nature
• Xenocentrism

Cultural examples:

• Magical negro
• A High Wind in Jamaica (novel)
• Lord of the Flies
• The Blue Lagoon (novel)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Barnett, Louise. Touched by Fire: the Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. University of Nebraska Press [1986], 2006.
• Barzun, Jacques (2000). From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present. New York: Harper Collins. pp. 282–294, and passim.
• Bataille, Gretchen, M. and Silet Charles L., editors. Introduction by Vine Deloria, Jr. The Pretend Indian: Images of Native Americans in the Movies. Iowa State University Press, 1980*Berkhofer, Robert F. "The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present"
• Boas, George ([1933] 1966). The Happy Beast in French Thought in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Reprinted by Octagon Press in 1966.
• Boas, George ([1948] 1997). Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
• Bordewich, Fergus M. "Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century"
• Bury, J.B. (1920). The Idea of Progress: an Inquiry into its Origins and Growth. (Reprint) New York: Cosimo Press, 2008.
• Edgerton, Robert (1992). Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-908925-5
• Edwards, Brendan Frederick R. (2008) "'He Scarcely Resembles the Real Man': images of the Indian in popular culture". Website: Our Legacy. Material relating to First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples, found in Saskatchewan cultural and heritage collections.
• Ellingson, Ter. (2001). The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press).
• Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object
• Fairchild, Hoxie Neale (1928). The Noble Savage: A Study in Romantic Naturalism (New York)
• Fitzgerald, Margaret Mary ([1947] 1976). First Follow Nature: Primitivism in English Poetry 1725-1750. New York: Kings Crown Press. Reprinted New York: Octagon Press.
• Fryd, Vivien Green (1995). "Rereading the Indian in Benjamin West's 'Death of General Wolfe.'" American Art, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Spring, 1995), pp. 72–85.
• Hazard, Paul ([1937]1947). The European Mind (1690–1715). Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books.
• Keeley, Lawrence H. (1996) War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford: University Press.
• Krech, Shepard (2000). The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32100-5
• LeBlanc, Steven (2003). Constant battles: the myth of the peaceful, noble savage. New York : St Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-31089-7
• Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1923, 1943). “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, ” Modern Philology Vol. 21, No. 2 (Nov., 1923):165-186. Reprinted in Essays in the History of Ideas. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948 and 1960.
• A. O. Lovejoy and George Boas ([1935] 1965). Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Reprinted by Octagon Books, 1965. ISBN 0-374-95130-6
• Lovejoy, Arthur O. and George Boas. (1935). A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas, vol. 1. Baltimore.
• Moore, Grace (2004). Dickens And Empire: Discourses Of Class, Race And Colonialism In The Works Of Charles Dickens (Nineteenth Century Series). Ashgate.
• Olupọna, Jacob Obafẹmi Kẹhinde, Editor. (2003) Beyond primitivism: indigenous religious traditions and modernity. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27319-6, ISBN 978-0-415-27319-0
• Pagden, Anthony (1982). The Fall of the Natural Man: The American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pinker, Steven (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking ISBN 0-670-03151-8
• Sandall, Roger (2001). The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
• Reinhardt, Leslie Kaye. "British and Indian Identities in a Picture by Benjamin West". Eighteenth-Century Studies 31: 3 (Spring 1998): 283-30
• Rollins, Peter C. and John E. O'Connor, editors (1998). Hollywood's Indian : the Portrayal of the Native American in Film. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press.
• Tinker, Chaunchy Brewster (1922). Nature's Simple Plan: a phase of radical thought in the mid-eighteenth century. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Torgovnick, Marianna (1991). Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago)
• Whitney, Lois Payne (1934). Primitivism and the Idea of Progress in English Popular Literature of the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press
• Eric R. Wolf (1982). Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

External links[link]

• Massacres during the Wars of Religion: The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre: a foundational event
• Louis Menand. "What Comes Naturally". A review of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate from The New Yorker
• The Culture Cult
• Peter Gay. "Breeding is Fundamental". Book Forum. April / May 2009

Virgin Steele
David DeFeis and Edward Pursino
Background information
Origin	Long Island, New York, USA
Genres	Hard rock (early), heavy metal, power metal, symphonic metal
Years active	1981–present
Labels	SPV/Steamhammer, Dockyard1, T&T/Noise Records
Website	www.virgin-steele.com
Members
David DeFeis Edward Pursino Frank Gilchriest Josh Block
Past members
Rob DeMartino Joey Ayvazian Joe "O"Reilly Jack Starr

Virgin Steele is a heavy metal band from New York, originally formed in 1981.

The band released a few career highlights albums (Noble Savage, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II and Invictus). In recent years, they have enriched their sound with elements of musical theatre, progressive and symphonic metal, developing and writing projects such as the Metal Opera "The House of Atreus" (based on Oresteia and the Greek myth related to the Atreides) in 1999/2000 and the soundtrack for an imaginary movie Visions of Eden (A Barbaric Romantic Movie of the Mind) aka "The Lilith Project" (based on the Sumerian legend of Lilith) in 2006.

Barbaric Romanticism[link]

Barbaric Romantic Music[link]

Virgin Steele play what they call "barbaric romanticism" ^[1] which is a symphonic, romantic and bombastic music with many elements taken from classical music and fantasy/mythological lyrics based on real life events.

David DeFeis (all vocals, keyboards, orchestration, synth bass, swords and effects) about Virgin Steele's music: "From a whisper to a scream, barbaric, romantic, bombastic, yet subtle, grandiose, yet earthy. A call, a shout, an invocation to Freedom and the continual awakening to the awareness that every moment of life is lived to its fullest potential. It is a force, a sacred quest which drives Virgin Steele on".^[2]

Typically, during Virgin Steele's concerts a sword is burnt on stage.^[3]

In some special show they used to play a truly long live set called "Three hour extravaganza".^[4]

Fans consider "The Burning of Rome (Cry for Pompeii)" and "Emalaith" some of the most representative songs of the band.^[5]

Barbaric Romantic Synopsis[link]

Many Virgin Steele songs are mythological, often dealing with subjects from Greek and Christian mythology. Most of their albums are concept albums.

The later albums tend to be more epic and mythological while, on the early albums (up till Life Among the Ruins), many songs are more real-life based stories of love and sex.

According to David DeFeis, all the lyrics he writes are based on real life in some form or another.^[6]

Metal Opera & Theatre[link]

A Metal Opera is a mix between Rock opera, Broadway style and "Heavy metal adapted for theater's actors live performances".^[7]

According with German artists Walter Weyers ^[8] and Martina Krawulsky, with the name "Klytaimnestra": "The House of Atreus" Metal Opera (musically available on the Virgin Steele's albums The House of Atreus Act I, The House of Atreus Act II) was performed on stage in Germany theaters by Landestheater Production.^[9]
The result, very different from a heavy metal concert, is a metal based dark Broadway style musical really powerful and energetic with actors only.^[10]

The premiere of "Klytaimnestra" in Memmingen, the 5th June 1999,^[11] has been the first ever regular musical theatre show based on heavy metal concepts.

After "Klytaimnestra" success, David DeFeis & Landestheater Production extracted a second Metal Opera musical, named "The Rebels", from the previous Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy ("The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II", "Invictus").^[12]

In 2003, the same team released a third Metal Opera, named "Lilith", based on the material of album Visions of Eden. "Visons of Eden" was later on published in CD in 2006. In a different way to the previous two Operas, David DeFeis declared: "I don't think of it as a Metal Opera. What it really is, is the soundtrack for a major motion picture that has yet to be made! And by the hammer of Zeus, I will make this film one day. I call this work a Barbaric Romantic movie of the mind.".^[13]

Biography[link]

The origins[link]

At the beginning of the Eighties, Jack Starr (a guitarist of French origins) was looking for the right elements to form the ultimate heavy metal band. The first to answer his call was drummer Joey Ayvazian and together they started jamming and auditioning singers. They auditioned around 40 singers before David DeFeis was introduced to Jack by a friend of Joey.
With an astounding interpretation of "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin, "Child in Time" by Deep Purple and "Catch the Rainbow" by Rainbow, David got the vacant role of singer, bringing with him bassist Joe O'Reilly.^[14] At the end of 1981 the first line-up was ready.

The debut[link]

Virgin Steele debuted in 1982 with "Children of the Storm" (a song loved by Metallica ^[14]), included in the compilation "U.S. Metal Vol. II".^[15] A bit later they issued their self-titled first album. Their style was and remains very original, a melding of American heavy metal and Rainbow's epic atmospheres. David, who also plays piano and keyboards, shows a particular liking for pompous and melodic arrangements, while Jack goes for a harder and more immediate assault.

Fan mail was becoming more interesting. Two letters in particular stand out, one from a young band, who were from Seattle. Their name was - Queensryche.^[14] The other, from California, also a band, who called themselves Metallica.^[14]

The second album[link]

The following year (1983) the second album Guardians Of The Flame was supported by a mini LP called Wait for the Night ("A Cry in the Night" in the European version).

After the album, Jack Starr started recording his first solo album, Out of the Darkness. Meanwhile DeFeis continued the band with Edward Purisno. As stated in the Virgin Steele's website "we never actually asked Edward to join the band, he just came down one day and never left".^[14]) After a lawsuit won by Starr over the name Virgin Steele, he sold it to DeFeis.

Noble Savage and Age Of Consent[link]

Supported by Pursino, whose style prefectly fit DeFeis' songwriting more than the Starr's one, Virgin Steele new lineup recorded Noble Savage, which melts classic and epic music. Today, this album is still considered one of the most important manifests of heavy and epic metal worldwide.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

Between 1985 and 1986, some members of Virgin Steele strongly contributed to an album published under the name Exorcist called Nightmare Theatre ^[21] and to an album published under the name Piledriver called Stay Ugly.^[22] David DeFeis only produced and helped these albums even if some rumors said that he and Pursino were behind these bands.^[21]

Finally, the band managed to go to Europe, supporting Manowar on tour and gaining great approval from all quarters because of their live performances.^[23] When things started to come together, though, some inexplicable laws seemed to apply ^[14] and the following album, Age of Consent, got a very narrow distribution and ended up a complete commercial failure. At this point, Virgin Steele were in their darkest period: their label shut down and Joe O'Reilly decided to leave, forcing the band to stop playing for a while. During this break, David DeFeis graduated in piano and composition and played live with a semi-improvised band called "Smoke Stark Lightning", featuring some famous musicians like his old mate Jack Starr and drummer Bobby Rondinelli.^[24]

The come-back[link]

In 1993, Rob De Martino was chosen as the new bass player and Virgin Steele came back with Life Among the Ruins, an album of Whitesnake-influenced hard rock with a strong bluesy vein. The song "Last rose of Summer" is the highlight of the cd.^[25] Featuring none of the trademark epic and mythology-based elements of the band, Life Among the Ruins is probably the most atypical release in the Virgin Steele discography and disliked by many die-hard classic metal fans.^[25] Quite interesting is the fact the American version has got a different cover and a bonus-track called "Snakeskin Voodoo Man" (published as a stand-alone single too) while many video-clips, taken from this album, were included into the home-video "Tale Of The Snakeskin Voodoo Man".

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell[link]

One year later, the band returned to the original sound with The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I, an album of epic metal full of melodic and symphonic influences, very progressive oriented. This work (a concept regarding the different side of human nature) includes, among the others, the song "Life Among the Ruins" which is not related to the previous album with the same title.
Virgin Steele went back to Europe supporting Manowar and Uriah Heep and at the end of 1995 released The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II, following the concept and the style of the first one.

The band appeared also on the compilation A Tribute to Judas Priest: Legends of Metal - Volume II playing a raw cover of the song "Screaming for Vengeance". Another Judas Priest cover "Desert Plains" is included, as bonus-track, into the Age of Consent album reissue.

After another European tour (this time as headliner) in 1996, a new album was released in March 1998: the third and final chapter of the "Marriage" saga, titled Invictus. This was their heaviest album at the time and also very epic.^[26][27] Lyrically it is a concept album about humanity's rebellion against a pantheon of evil, uncaring gods.

The band played at the Wacken Open Air festival in 1997 and in 1998.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy signs also the debut of drummer Frank Gilchriest.

Always in 1998, Virgin Steele headlined a real long new European tour with Mark Reale's Riot and Stigmata IV as supporting acts. This tour included the headliner performance at the Biker festival "Motorock" in Cremona (Italy).^[28]

The Metal Opera[link]

Between the years 1999 and 2000, the band released the never done before project of a Metal Opera, writing the albums The House of Atreus Act I and The House of Atreus Act II, intended to be played by actors in theaters. The subject of the Metal Opera was Oresteia and the Greek myths related by Aeschylus, very familiar to David DeFeis, because of his father's theaterical background.^[29] On the albums all vocals and orchestrations are managed by David DeFeis himself.

Just before The House of Atreus Act II, the single "Magick Fire Music" was published, with some Metal Opera outtakes. Inspired by Virgin Steele's Metal Opera, the German band Tobias Sammet's Avantasia wrote various albums using the same format. David DeFeis appears as special guest on the track: "The Final Sacrifice" included in the Avantasia's second album.

After the show at the Bang Your Head!!! festival in 2000 without a bass player, in 2001 Virgin Steele toured with HammerFall and Freedom Call with the new bass player Josh Block.

The 20th years anniversary[link]

In 2002, the band released two compilations to celebrate the 20th years anniversary. The Book of Burning consists of a mix of previously unreleased songs and new compositions created by David DeFeis in collaboration with original guitarist Jack Starr. The songs were written at the beginning of the 90's and previously unofficially appeared in the underground, with Starr at the guitar, with the name "Sacred Demos". The album contained also re-recordings of various songs from the first two albums with Josh Block, and not Jack Starr, supporting Pursino at the second guitar. Hymns to Victory instead is a best-of album covering the band's career from Noble Savage to their latest album The House of Atreus Act II.

The way to manage the reissues of the first two albums Virgin Steele and Guardians of the Flame, never published in cd before, created one more time problems between DeFeis and Starr so they decided to truncate any sort of relationship.^[30] DeFeis managed the reissues all by himself remastering the original albums and adding new bonus tracks. The EP A Cry in the Night was included into the Guardians of the Flame CD.

Rising unchained[link]

David DeFeis (keyboards and backing vocals) appears as special guest on the first two Immortally Committed albums in the tracks "Epic" and "Council in Hell".^[31] He, Edward Pursino, Josh Block and Exorcist's drummer Geoff Fontaine played some live dates with the New York cover band Carnival of Souls.^[32]

Between the years 2002 and 2005, the band headlined a large number of heavy metal festivals such as the "Agglutination Festival" (2003, Italy), the "Tradate Iron Fest" (2004, Italy), the "Keep It True V Festival" (2004, Germany) and the "Ragnarock Festival" (2005, Netherlands).

A Barbaric Romantic Movie Of The Mind[link]

David DeFeis also created his own recording studio called: "The Hammer of Zeus" (sometimes also called "The Wrecking Ball Of Thor").^[33]

In September 2006, after 6 years without an all-new studio album, the band released its 11th full-length Visions of Eden. The album revolves heavily around Gnostic beliefs and critically revisits the traditional Christian mythology with regards to the creation of the Earth and the Biblical accounts of Adam and Eve.^[34] An even darker, more melancholic drama than the House of Atreus saga, the story revolves around Lilith, the first wife of Adam and a symbol of female strength and independence. Representing the female side of the true, higher god, she suffers under the lusting, jealous Demiurge who represents the Christian god, and as an emancipated woman who could not get along with the dominant Adam stands in stark contrast to Eve. Adam's second wife is portrayed as a docile, subservient partner created by the demiurge at the request of Adam, who could not cope with an independent woman on equal footing with him.

Visions of Eden (A Barbaric Romantic Movie Of The Mind) aka "The Lilith Project" is based on the Sumerian legend of Lilith and it is intended as the soundtrack for an imaginary movie. The band is actually looking for a producer to bring this concept album story on-screen.^[35]

Recent activities[link]

In 2007, the band played at the Power Prog VIII Festival (Atlanta, Georgia) and at the Evolution Festival (Florence, Italy). David DeFeis and Josh Block appear on the Polish band Crystal Viper EP in the cover of Virgin Steele's song "Blood and Gasoline" from the The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I album.

Between 2007 and 2008 the out of print albums Noble Savage, Age of Consent, Life Among the Ruins, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II were reissued (with bonus tracks) by the German label Dockyard1.

There are also rumors that a DVD live album is planned, a three hours show recorded at THE DOWNTOWN CLUB (Long Island, NY) in 2002 ^[4] and an acoustic concert played in 2000 in München should be part of it.^[36] In addition, the first ever Virgin Steele tribute album "By The Gods: A noble Tribute to Virgin Steele" is in the making.^[37] This album will feature true/power metal bands from all over the world and it's supported by Virgin Steele's frontman David DeFeis.

A new Virgin Steele album, entitled The Black Light Bacchanalia, was relelased at the end of October 2010 for the new label SPV/Steamhammer while, in 2011, the whole back-catalogue, from Noble Savage onwards, will be reissued again with faithfully restored covers and booklets, bonus tracks and linear notes.^[38]

Line-up[link]

• David DeFeis - all vocals, keyboards, orchestration, synth bass, swords & effects
• Edward Pursino - electric & acoustic guitars
• Frank Gilchriest - drums, chaos & pandemonium
• Josh Block - electric bass & additional rhythm guitar

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• 1982 - Virgin Steele
• 1983 - Guardians of the Flame
• 1986 - Noble Savage
• 1988 - Age of Consent
• 1993 - Life Among the Ruins
• 1994 - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I
• 1995 - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II
• 1998 - Invictus
• 1999 - The House of Atreus Act I
• 2000 - The House of Atreus Act II
• 2006 - Visions of Eden
• 2010 - The Black Light Bacchanalia

EPs[link]

• 1983 - Wait for the Night
• 2000 - Magick Fire Music

Compilations[link]

• 2002 - Hymns to Victory
• 2002 - The Book of Burning

Singles[link]

• 1992 - Snakeskin Voodoo Man
• 1998 - Through Blood And Fire

Videos/DVD[link]

• 1992 - Tale Of The Snakeskin Voodoo Man

References[link]

External links[link]

• Virgin Steele's Official Website
• Virgin Steele on Myspace
• ARMS OF MERCURY, Authorized Official Italian Site
• NOBLESAVAGES, Greek Official Fanclub of Virgin Steele

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2011)

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is an author, educator and activist, born in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal) in 1964.^[1] Alfred is an internationally recognized Kanien’kehaka intellectual, political advisor and he is currently a professor at the University of Victoria (UVic).^[1]

Alfred grew up in Kahnawake and received a B.A. in History from Concordia University, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.^[1] He served in the US Marine Corps in the 1980s.^[1]

Alfred is the current director of the Indigenous Governance Program and was awarded a Canada Research Chair 2003-2007, in addition to a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in education.^[1]

Bibliography[link]

• Heeding the Voices of our Ancestors : Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism, Oxford University Press (Canada), 1999.
• Peace, Power, Righteousness : an Indigenous manifesto, Oxford University Press (Canada), 1999.
• Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2005.
• Peace, Power, Righteousness : an Indigenous manifesto, 2nd Ed., Oxford University Press (Canada), 2009.

References[link]

External links[link]

Personal web site of Taiaiake Alfred

This article about an Indigenous person of North America is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e