High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! John Mason (c. 1600–1672) was an English Army Major who immigrated to New England in 1632. Within five years he had joined those moving west from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the nascent settlements along the Connecticut River that would become the Connecticut Colony. Tensions there rose between the settlers and the dominant Indian tribe in the area, the Pequots, ultimately leading to bloodshed after the Manissean Indians on Block Island killed John Oldham, a Massachusetts Bay trade representative in 1636. Because the Manisseans were tributaries of the Pequot Nation, Massachusetts Bay sent an expedition, which included John Mason, to Block Island to kill the Manisseans. They were then to proceed to the Connecticut River to demand that the Pequot turn over Oldham`s murders. When the Pequot refused, the English expedition burnt several of their wigwams and corn, thus inciting the Pequot War, which ended in the Mystic Massacre, which virtually destroyed the Pequot tribe. Years later, he recounted his experiences in the Pequot War in his narrative Major Mason`s Brief History of the Pequot War, which wasn`t published until 1736.