Sorry. Poor use of terminology. I had groups such as some of the tribal Gauls in mind (not that all Gauls were tribal, of course, and my understanding is that the tribes were settled and rather wealthy), rather than the 17th-20th century Irish Catholics (though the Brits did call Irish Catholics savages and possibly barbarians, I'm sure). Though I totally agree that Cromwell was all around a horrible person and that the Brits were disgustingly unhelpful during the Potato Famine. My ancestors went through a lot of violent bigotry.
Then they came to America to escape all the bigotry towards Irish in Ireland and promptly started shooting at Native Americans and throwing them off the land they inhabited. It'd be impressively ironic if it weren't so horrible.