ochre. They were followed by the Susquehanna culture, the first to use pottery. By the time of European discovery, the inhabitants of Maine were the Algonquian-speaking Wabanaki peoples, including the Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscots. Colonial period There are many stories of Norsemen exploring as far south as Maine, but there is currently no documented evidence for that. In 1497 John Cabot made the first of two documented voyages to explore the New World on behalf of Henry VII of England and it's very likely on one of the voyages reached as far south as the coast of Maine. Cabot's expeditions were based out of the fishing port of Bristol, England, and Bristol merchant William Weston followed up on Cabot's efforts in 1499. Cabot's crews reported (as written in a letter to the Duke of Milan in 1497): "The Sea there is swarming with fish which can be taken not only with the net but in baskets with a stone, so that it sinks in the water." In fact Bristol fishermen had already been sailing to Iceland for cod fishing, and after Weston's return there is anecdotal evidence that Europeans from England to Portugal regularly fished the waters of the northeast waters, including the Gulf of Maine, immediately afterwards. Following disputed rights over the northeast coasts between Spain and England the next documented Europeans to explore the coast of Maine were by Giovanni da Verrazzano under the French flag in 1574, and then the Portuguese explorer Estêvão Gomes, in service of the Spanish Empire, in 1525. They mapped the coastline (including the Penobscot River) but did not settle, though Verrazzano's efforts added a French claim to the area. The first European settlement in the area was made on St. Croix Island in 1604 by a French party that included Samuel de Champlain and Mathieu da Costa. The French named the area Acadia. French and English settlers would contest central Maine until the 1750s (when the French were defeated in the French and Indian War). The French developed and maintained strong relations with the local Indian tribes through Catholic missionaries. English colonists sponsored by the Plymouth Company founded a settlement in Maine in 1607 (the Popham Colony at Phippsburg), but it was abandoned the following year. A French trading post was established at present-day Castine in 1613 by Claude de Saint-Étienne de la Tour, and may represent the first permanent European settlement