I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear.

We've had these sort of dueling images of indigenous peoples as either noble savages or dark-sided savages.

And again, what you find is that throughout the history of the West, we'll use either one, whatever's convenient.

You know, if we want to talk about the deficiencies of Western society, we talk about

Indians, for example, being the first environmentalist.

If we want to talk about the superiority of Western society, we start denecrating the tribal peoples

and the hills of Pakistan, for example.

We still use this language.

It's not just focused on Indians, but this dichotomy between savagery and civilization

continues to find the West.

So we Westerners have a very odd relation with the Savage.

You know, at one point we embrace it, at the other point we reject it.

Thanks for joining us.

Mitch in America's original sin, and most of us will quickly think of the enslavement of

black people with a bitter fruit we're still harvesting. Rarely, though, are we summoned to

think about the fate of indigenous people, the Indians, who were already here when Europeans

discovered the so-called new world. Even the controversy over the name of the Washington Redskins fails to hold our attention for very long.

And you can safely bet that not many schoolchildren are taught that these native people wound up in the Declaration of Independence as merciless Indian savages, right there in the birth certificate

of our nation.

How is it?

They came to be mythologized.

They're so ignorant and primitive they didn't even know the value of Manhattan Island,

...