In the book the scarlet letter, why was the indian refferred to a savage ?

While Hawthorne was closer to being a dark romantic writer than a light romantic writer, he did have some light romantic tendencies. It was a light romantic construct to consider native americans (all aboriginal people, really) as savages... most correctly, noble savages-- light romantic writers idealized native american's "one-ness" with nature and considered them more worthy than westernized civilization.