The Norton Anthology offers this note on savage man: "Person clad in foliage to represent a savage, as in medieval and Renaissance pageantry" (465). Hawthorne explicitly relates this character to heraldry where the savage appears as one of the many conventionalized human figures. He fulfills the function of a supporter as do saracens and blackamoors. Both saracens and savages belong to the white race and are bearded. Saracens are habited, and wreathed in foliage about the temples; savages are naked and are wreathed about both the temples and the loins. Blackamoors, drawn intensely Negroid, often have the neck enwrapped, entwined or entwisted
with a serpent" (Franklyn 65).
Franklyn, Julian. Heraldry. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965.
,
Baym, Nina, et al. Eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 2nd shorter ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.