Pilgrims and Puritans

The first people to live in eastern Massachusetts were the Native Americans. A tribe called the Wampanoags lived on that rocky coast for perhaps 10,000 years.

The Mayflower arrived at Plymouth Harbor on November 11, 1620, and aboard that ship were about 35 people who belonged to a small but extreme religious faction called the Pilgrims.

These were Separatists, Englishmen and women who chose to illegally separate themselves from the Church of England. If not for the Wampanoags, more Pilgrims would have starved that first winter.

A third group arrived in eastern Massachusetts, in 1630. Called th...