Felipe Fernández-Armesto

What did indigenous Americans make of Europe?

Many aspects of western civilisation that appealed to Amerindians – the arts, philosophy, technology and the reach of commerce – are overlooked by Caroline Dodds Pennock

As the son of a native princess, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega benefitted from Spanish snobbery. [Alamy] 
issue 21 January 2023

The most influential Native American visitor to Europe in colonial times was a fiction. The protagonist of L’Ingénu, Voltaire’s novel of 1767, and of a dramatisation by the sage’s acolyte Jean-François Marmontel, was the very model of a noble Huron. He fought the British with distinction, fell in love with an imprisoned French lady and assaulted the Bastille to liberate her.

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