I was taught in highschool (and reminded today by aTIL) that the native Americans who interacted with the early pilgrims spoke some English, and that they learned it from fishermen in Maine.
I was under the impression that the pilgrims were some of the first English speaking Europeans to come to North America in large numbers. Who other than them was crossing the Atlantic around then? Where did they come from? Was crossing the Atlantic actually a common thing for fishermen to do or were they massively lost?
Hi, you might find this thread useful, where I and u/rooftop_jenkem_farm discuss what was going on in America before the pilgrims arrived. While the pilgrims were among the first successful settlers (unsuccessful attempts had taken place for the previous fifty odd years), there was already widespread interaction between Europeans and natives on the North American Continent.