[1] Pocahontas sings counterpoint melodies during the song which are variations on "Colors of the Wind" and "Steady As The Beating Drum".
The second part intertwines Pocahontas' race to stop the execution of John Smith with the colonists and natives vowing to destroy and exterminate the other side.
[4] The Washington Post wrote "The most heavy-handed of the seven songs composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, "Savages" lacks the vivacity and wit that Menken's late partner, Howard Ashman, brought to previous Disney musicals".
It however praised the audio and visual quality: "Each of the memorable songs is belted at lofty volumes that seem to surround the listener.
[7] The "Pocahontas Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for Educators" describes the song as "especially unsettling" and "brutal", arguing "While the song presumably meant to unearth and thus neutralize from a perspective 350 years after the fact a pervasive racism of the earlier era, the song nonetheless embodies a complexity of attitudes and beliefs that remain, at their core, offensive to American Indian people and needless to say detrimental to Indian children".
But then does this not downplay the role the colonial ideology of savagism played in the extermination and dispossession of indigenous people.