"Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective." -Francis Jennings, writing about Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village on the Mystic River in 1636, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest, 1974