 The Pilgrims were not the first people in the area . Besides the indigenous tribes , there had been nearly a century of exploration , fishing , and settlement by Europeans . John Cabot 's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 had laid the foundation for the extensive English claims over the east coast of North America . One of the earliest maps of New England was produced c . 1540 by cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi and erroneously identified Cape Breton with the Narragansett Bay . The resulting map completely omits most of the New England coast . European fishermen had been plying the waters off the New England coast for much of the 16th and 17th centuries . 
