Essay On Indigenous Civilization Montaigne

To contrast early depictions of indigenous culture as “barbaric” and “savage,” Montaigne emphasizes how indigenous wars are based on honor and nobility, juxtaposing it to how European society has perverted the definition of war for greed through the conquests of land. In Montaigne’s description of indigenous warfare, Montaigne uses the repetition of lack of clothing and technology, or “naked, and without other arms than their bows and wooden swords, fashioned at one end like the head of our javelin” in order to portray how “natural” and simplistic indigenous warfare was, compared to European warfare, which relied on higher technologies like gunpowder. To Montaigne, valour is not represented by technology, or “the goodness of our horses or our arms,” but rather “the courage and the soul,” in “our own [abilities].” In addition, Montaigne describes how cannibals value dignity and pride, as “there is not a man amongst them who had not rather be killed and eaten, than so much as to open his mouth to entreat.” Rather than give up in order to survive, cannibals fight until their deaths for the stake of not only their honor and pride, but for the survival of
Furthermore, Montaigne criticizes how Europeans are more barbaric by how they torture their prisoners, “inflicting another sort of death,” ridiculing how Europeans, “being men who had sown the knowledge of a great many vices amongst their neighbors” were “greater masters in all sorts of mischief than they.” To Montaigne, “there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torment” represents the lack of one’s “piety and religion,” two aspects of morality that Montaigne further criticizes in how Europeans, despite having human knowledge,