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   "Their lands lay nearest to the mountains.  The geographical position made for feudal customs and a certain independence of action.   They were on the border, they were accustomed to say, and had to take care of themselves...
    "Their fathers had pushed the frontier of the dominion northward and westward and had held the land.  They had fought the savage single-handed and desperately, by his own methods and with his own weapons.  Ruthless and merciless, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, they returned what they were given.
    "They did not send to Virginia for militia when the savage came; they fought him at their doors, and followed him through the forest, and took their toll of death.  They were hardier than he was, and their hands were heavier and bloodier...
    "Certain historians have written severely of these men and their ruthless methods, and prattled of humane warfare; but they wrote nursing their soft spines in the security of a civilization which these men's hands had builded, and their words are hollow."

Source: Melville Davisson Post, "A Twilight Adventure" (1914).