Before the white man's arrival Indian tribes living along the east coast engaged in endemic warfare, but the fighting was seldom costly in lives or property. Roger Williams correctly observed that Indian warfare was far less bloody than European warfare, and many whites reacted contemptuously to the mild manner in which Indians fought. For instance, Captain John Underhill affirmed that "they might fight seven years and not kill seven men. They came not near one another, but shot remote, and not point-blank, as we often do with our bullets, but at rovers, and then they gaze up in the sky to see where the arrow falls, and not until it is fallen do they shoot again. This fight is more for pasttime, than to conquer and subdue enemies." Furthermore, the natives did not wage total war, rarely striking at noncombatants or engaging in the systematic destruction of food supplies and property.
-For The Common Defense A Military History of the United States of America by
Allan R. Millet & Peter Maslowski pg.11
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