|Tom Fairfield was descended from one of the best families in Virginia. Yet he was animated by what we may call a _restless spirit_. He ran away from home at twelve years of age, and came to Kentucky with a family of emigrants, who settled near Boone Station, in 1791. Kentucky, until after Wayne's treaty, in 1795, was continually exposed to incursions from the Indians; yet, before Tom's day of manhood, the bloody contest between the white and the red men had terminated on the virgin soil of the new-born State--Kentucky was admitted into the Union in 1792. Yet the heroic struggles with the Indians by the early settlers were fresh in the memories of all. Prior to the settlement of Kentucky by white men, the Southern and Northwestern tribes of Indians were in the habit of hunting here as upon neutral ground. No wigwam had been erected, but it was claimed by all as a hunting ground. The frequent and fierce conflicts that occurred upon the meeting of the Indian tribes, together with conflicts with white men, caused the Indians first to call Kentucky “_The dark and bloody ground_.” At no point on the American Continent had the hatred between the two races risen to a higher point. Long after the peace between England and America, and the close of the war of American Independence, the conflict between the white and red men in Kentucky was a war of extermination. The quiet cabin of the white man was frequently entered, under cover of night, by some roving band of Indians, and women and children tomahawked in cold blood. White men when taken by them, whether in the field at work, or behind a tree, watching their opportunity to shoot an Indian, were taken off to their towns in Ohio and burned at the stake, or tortured to death in a most cruel manner. No wonder the early settler in Kentucky swore eternal vengeance against the Indian who crossed his path, whether in peace or war. In a land where the white woman has cleaved the skull of the red warrior with an ax, who attempted to enter her cabin rifle in hand, from whence all but her had fled--who shall refuse to remember the heroines of the early settlers, and the historic name of the _dark and bloody ground_. When Tom Fairfield arrived at manhood, the golden wing of peace was spread over the new-born State, from the Cumberland Mountains to the Ohio river. A tract of land embracing a beautiful undulating surface, with a black and fertile soil, the forest growth of which is black walnut, cherry, honey locust, buckeye, pawpaw, sugar maple, elm, ash, hawthorn, coffee-tree and yellow poplar, entwined with grape vines of large size, which has been denominated the garden of Kentucky. Many of the phrases, familiar to our grandfathers, have become obsolete, such as latch-string, bee-crossing, hunting-shirt, log-rolling, hominy-block, pack-horse and pack-saddle.