A classic study of early contact between European explorers and North American natives. When the two cultures met in the fifteenth century, it meant great upheavals for the Amerindians, but strengthened the Europeans' move toward nation-states and capitalism.

When I first met Canadian history, as a student in a convent school in the outskirts of Winnipeg, it was generally accepted that Canada was a large new country with little history. In the words of William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1936, when he was Liberal Prime Minister, "if some countries have too much history, we have too much geography." History was perceived as a written discipine, which in the case of Canada meant that it began with the arrival of writing---i.e, Europeans. It wasn't until I discovered that I had Metis ancestry that I began to wonder about Canada before Europeans. As I learned more about that distant and too-often ignored past, my country took on a whole new aspect. Exploring its history became a personal quest, all the more focussed because the heritage of my mixed ancestry had been reinforced during my adolescent years by living on the land in Manitoba's north, hunting and trapping. It was through a series of lucky breaks that I was able to go to university, at Father Athol Murray's Notre Dame College in Wilcox, SK, from there to become a journalist and finally, after being blessed with more good fortune, a professor of history at the University of Alberta. Although now retired, I am still passionate about researching and writing the Aboriginal aspect of Canadian history.

Olive Patricia Dickason's profile page

“...solid scholarship...contain[s] contemporary engravings by Theodor de Bry and others portraying the Indians as their European contemporaries saw them.” Pacific Historical Review

“...well-documented and handsomely illustrated... ...an excellent account of the impact of increased contacts upon French concepts about Indians...” American Indian Culture and Research Journal

“The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas is an excellent, well-documented, and beautifully illustrated account of early French-Amerindian relations…. There is much in this book to recommend: the review of the several European nations’ positions on aboriginal land rights, the treatment of the French colonies in Brazil and Florida, the summary of Amerindian visits to France. The author’s research has been extraordinarily thorough…. The Myth of the Savage deserved to be read and reread by all students of European-Indian contact in the Americas.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3

Donald B. Smith

“...attractive and scholarly...interestingly written, handsomely illustrated and well documented of primary and secondary sources...can be read for pleasure, enlightenment or both.” The English Historical Review

"...well-written, handsomely illustrated and well-documented...read for pleasure, enlightenment or both." The English Historical Review

“The Myth of the Savage adds historical depth and valuable new insights to our understanding of early French-Amerindian relation in eastern North America. It is also one of the most beautifully produced historical books published in Canada for a long time.” The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 66, No. 1

The Canadian Historical Review

“Consistent with revisionist scholarship regarding French colonial relations in the Americas, Dickason explores the roots of French attitudes towards indigenous nations contacted in eastern Canada, Florida, and Brazil... The reader is guided through the intellectual maze which characterized the emergence of the myth through extensive and highly readable selections of firsthand accounts recorded by explorers, traders, and missionaries. These observations are counterbalanced and reinforced with excerpts from theological and philosophical treatises on the subject.” Manitoba History, Number 12 [full review at http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/12/mythofthesavage.shtml]

Manitoba History