The poets and philosophers who dwelt in security far from the frontier posts of danger, have been much disposed in the past to extol the virtues of the savage and bewail his misfortunes, at the expense of the rugged pioneer who had to face his tomahawk and furnish victims for his mad vengeance. They went into rhapsodies when speaking of the "poor Indian," assuming that in his primitive state, before he was corrupted by contact with the manners and customs of the white man, he represented all that was pure, good and simple, and that only after the European came, did this child of nature take on that ferocity and savagery that made his name the terror of the wilderness. They said that he was cruelly and unjustly despoiled of his lands and possessions; driven like a wild beast before the face of the settlements, and by fraud and force deprived of every right that he had enjoyed. These philosophers, while thus impeaching civilization, were always ready to condemn what they termed as the "rude frontiersmen," the men who originally made it possible that the land might be inhabited, the soil brought to a state of cultivation, and the arts and sciences brought to bear upon the wild forces of nature. They were especially severe in their animadversions upon the Kentuckians. They denounced their raids upon the Indian towns and villages along the Scioto and the Wabash as barbarous and uncalled for. They pointed to the fact that the Kentuckians pursued the Indians with a fierce and relentless hatred, using the scalping knife, and burning down their cabins and corn fields, forgetting at the same time the thousands of Kentuckians cruelly slain, the carrying away into captivity of pregnant women and innocent children, and the horrible tortures ofttimes inflicted on the aged and the helpless.