SHADOW ON THE WATERS, by Jack Thomas Leahy (241 pp. Knopf; $4), recalls that, as the world's last frontiers recede, so does the myth of the noble savage. People who are called savage are all too anxious to become civilized: people who are civilized have shown that the sav age left in them is anything but noble. In his first novel, the author seeks to restore the old image and picks the Northwest Indians as his noble savages; they prove too pathetic to offer an alternative to civilization, only a mild reproach.
Into the Indian community of Teawhit, on the coast of...
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