On March 16, 1621, only about 4 months after landing at Plymouth Rock and setting up their new colony in what was then called Plymouth Colony (Now Massachusetts and Maine) the Pilgrims that had traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower had their first friendly contact with a Native person, and that contact came as quite a shock! On March 16, 1621, Samoset, a member of the Abenaki Sagamore people simply strolled into the Pilgrim village and greeted the Pilgrims in English! Samoset was not yet through with startling the colonists…
Digging Deeper
The first thing Samoset asked for after rendering his greetings was a request for beer. (We cannot make this stuff up.) The polyglot Native American had learned to speak English from fisherman that had been visiting the New England and Canadian coasts for close to 100 years before the Pilgrims established the first English colony in what became New England. (Virginia colonies at Jamestown had preceded the Pilgrims by 13 years.)
