It was far from idyllic, Don. Life was usually hard, fraught with danger, there was much intertribal warfare, privation, sometimes disease, and women in particular worked extremely hard all their lives, while men faced everyday dangers in hunting and in war that most of us never face.

How does that translate as "idyllic"?

I was simply pointing out that they didn't have some of the chronic social problems we have...I was not saying that they had no problems.

The "noble" savage is to a great extent a myth. But it's not completely mythical. It contains a certain grain of truth, in that tribal peoples often had a more consistent spiritual life and honor system than the Europeans who came in and displaced them. For instance, the concept of lying seems to have been virtually unknown to some of the Amerindian tribes when they were first encountered by Whites in the northeast of North America. This, again, would hardly mean that their lives were idyllic.