And, in Africa where the noble savages also lived and were studied, capable, superior tribes captured and sold the inferior as slaves to European buyers
For the most part in Africa, in tribal warfare...it was a choice of being a slave or just outright killing the captured guy. The stronger tribes survived and exist today....the lesser tribes? Long gone.
When you have lazy historians who just sit around and watch movies mostly....you get lousy history lessons.
The people that are known as “American Indians” are a highly diverse and widely dispersed over a geographic span of two continents. They also seem to have come from varied and diverse racial stock. Those in South America may in fact be descended from the Pacific Samoan people, those of northeastern part of North America may be descended from Indo-European stock. If you see an Ojibway (Chippewa) of relatively pure lineage, they are much different from their neighbors to the west, the Dakota (Sioux), who have much higher cheekbones and an almost Asiatic appearance. And the further west you travel, the more the tribal people resemble persons of Oriental descent. The various waves of those that crossed over from Asia differ again from each other. The most recent arrivals are not classified as Indians at all, but are Inuits or Aleuts (commonly called Eskimo, but that is a pejorative term).
“Nobility” is also a highly variable term, as not all people are of high moral character, but are shaped by their environment.
Until some years after the arrival of the Spaniards. NO tribes of the North or South American continents had horses. But when they did acquire them, they probably became the finest light cavalry the world has ever seen.
General Custer learned that the hard way.