The term "noble savage" is often attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, in "The Myth of the Nobel Savage", historian Ter Ellingson writes that Marc Lescarbot, a French lawyer-ethnographer, coined the term in 1609, over a century before Rousseau's birth. Lescarbot used the term in admiration of the generous qualities of American Indians. The term disappeared for about 250 years, and was resurrected in 1859 by John Crawfurd, a white supremacist who rejected the idea of universal human rights, which anthropologists were promoting at the time. He used the phrase in a speech to the Ethnological Society of London, misattributing it to Rousseau, as a way to ridicule those who sympathized with less advanced cultures.The term "noble savage" is often attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, in "The Myth of the Nobel Savage", historian Ter Ellingson writes that Marc Lescarbot, a French lawyer-ethnographer, coined the term in 1609, over a century before Rousseau's birth. Lescarbot used the term in admiration of the generous qualities of American Indians. The term disappeared for about 250 years, and was resurrected in 1859 by John Crawfurd, a white supremacist who rejected the idea of universal human rights, which anthropologists were promoting at the time. He used the phrase in a speech to the Ethnological Society of London, misattributing it to Rousseau, as a way to ridicule those who sympathized with less advanced cultures. --- Source: Ryan, Christopher. _Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress_, 2019. [https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=D26A36B0-73BE-4525-A51B-E7021500450F](https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=D26A36B0-73BE-4525-A51B-E7021500450F).