Samoset, a member of the Abenaki tribe, walked into Plymouth Colony and greeted the Pilgrims in English (depicted).

Samoset was an Abenaki sagamore and the first American Indian to make contact with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony in New England. He startled the colonists on March 16, 1621 by walking into Plymouth Colony and greeting them in English, saying "Welcome, Englishmen."

The Abenaki are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predominantly spoken in Maine, while the Western Abenaki language was spoken in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Plymouth Colony was the first permanent English colony in New England from 1620 and the third permanent English colony in America, after Newfoundland and the Jamestown Colony. It was settled by the passengers on the Mayflower at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of what is now the southeastern portion of Massachusetts. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the American tradition of Thanksgiving and the monument of Plymouth Rock.

The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who travelled to North America on the ship Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony at what now is Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States. John Smith had named this territory New Plymouth in 1620, sharing the name of the Pilgrims' final departure port of Plymouth, Devon, England. The Pilgrims' leadership came from religious congregations of Brownists or Separatists who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.