A young Natchez warrior taken prisoner by an enemy tribe, the Christian Indian girl who sets him free, and a love neither their peoples nor her vow will allow. Chateaubriand had traveled in America in 1791 and published this in 1801; it made him famous overnight and set the fashion for the noble savage in French literature. Fifty-nine plates of shorelines, beaches and pine woods by painters including Munch and Catlin carry the wilderness and exile of this American tale.