Ilana mentioned how ads for the Seminole Hard Rock Casino don't mention the Casino's owners at all. I think it is interesting that the modern media ignores Native Americans when media played such a critical role in the way Europeans perceived the people of America when colonizing the continent.
The European world was introduced to the image of native America by the French philosopher and essayist Montaigne. In his essay, “Of Cannibals,” Montaigne asserts that America's native people were civilized, in the purist way, in the original state of humankind, the state of nature, embodying "the most true and profitable virtues." Montaigne’s image of Native Americans eventually grew to the commonly accepted stereotype of the Noble Savage. This figure was a myth about an autonomous wild man in the woods and completely ignored the complex and diverse social and cultural structures that governed life in native America.
Montaigne was not the only contributor to the stereotype. Almost every writer of that time period elaborated on the image. In fact, Shakespeare played a major role in distributing the image of the Noble Savage to the public in Europe. The character of Caliban in Shakespeare's play The Tempest highlights the wildly racist popular opinions of the time.
Shakespeare's Caliban-
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