Lahontan (1704)

Lom D'Arce, Louis-Armand de, baron de Lahontan (1666-1716). Dialogues de Monsieur le baron de Lahontan et d'un sauvage [...]. Amsterdam: La veuve Boeteman, 1704.

Lahontan's work as a whole is a compendium of the philosophical ideas of his time about the vices of European society and the illogicality of Christian dogma. During the seventeenth century, authors dealing with North America had gradually been spreading the image of happy and hospitable Indians of North America living in harmony and social equality, unlike civilized Europeans. This image is to be found especially in the writings of the missionaries who used it to teach European Christians a lesson in morals.

But it was Lahontan who really crystallized the myth of the "noble savage" in Dialogues. In this work Lahontan presents five fictitious conversations he supposedly had with a Huron named Adario on the subject of religion, law, happiness, medicine and marriage. Vice against vice, and virtue against virtue, it is the Indian of North America rather than the European who comes out the winner in this verbal sparring match; the primitive Indian of North America is the incarnation of the original and true human nature, which was basically good, but from which the civilized European has moved away by becoming a Christian.

During the eighteenth century, the myth of the "noble savage" became one of the major themes of philosophical writings and the novel. However, Dialogues brought its author into disrepute, in spite of himself. Less than a year after its appearance Lahontan became the victim of a literary theft. In 1705 an anticlerical unfrocked monk, Nicolas Gueudeville, published a new edition of Lahontan's work after making profound changes to the text. Subsequently, most authors viewed Lahontan with suspicion and dismissed his work as a whole, and only a few isolated authors still had confidence in him.