Though the origin myths of the United States paint Plymouth as a "first contact" event, 1621 is actually quite late in the game of European exploration of the New World. Historians generally assume prolonged first contact with the mainland of what is now the United States occurred soon after Spanish expansion in the Caribbean, with slavers most likely raiding the Florida peninsula in the first years of the sixteenth century. During Juan Ponce de Leon's famous first entrada to Florida in 1514 he encountered coastal populations who already understood several words of Spanish, and fled from his scouting parties, leaving him to assume slavers preceded him to the area. By the time Mayflower arrived in 1621 Spain had maintained a permanent mission presence in Florida for more than a century and a half, and tried to expand their presence northward all the way to the failed mission in Virginia in 1572. The English found, and lost, Roanoke in North Carolina in the 1580s, an arctic mining endeavor near Baffin Island in 1578, and a fort on the Maine coast near the Kennebec River in 1608. The French explored huge swaths of the northern Atlantic Coast, and Cartier's exploration claimed much of the north for France in 1538.

When Mann mentions Europeans visiting New England for a century by the time of Plymouth he is referring to official voyages like Verrazzano's (an Italian sailing for France) 1524 voyage up the Atlantic Coast, and Portuguese explorer Estevão Gomes whose work helped map the Atlantic coast for Spain in 1524-1525. What these official first contact events conceal, however, is the long history of unofficial first contacts from fisherman, traders, and slavers we know occurred throughout New England. Verrazzano, like Leon before him, encountered coastal Native American populations who already understood Europeans. They knew the trade goods they valued, like furs, and refused to trade in person aboard ships, choosing to instead pass goods across a line strung between their canoes and Verrazzano's craft, leading to assumption they were trying to avoid being kidnapped. For the following century Spanish, Portuguese, English, Brenton, Basque and French fishermen regularly plied the New England coast. They routinely came ashore for fresh water, or to hunt, and stayed in short-term camps to dry their catch before returning home. Often, in the quest for further profit, they would abduct Native Americans and sell them as slaves. Tisquantum/Squanto, a Pautuxet from the coast of Massachusetts, was abducted in this manner, eventually freed, and likely crossed the Atlantic four or six times in his odyssey home. He finally returned home to find his village deserted shortly before the Mayflower's arrival. Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag, would famously use his English language skills, as well as those of Samoset, an Eastern Abenaki sagamore (subordinate chief) who learned English from fishermen visiting the Gulf of Maine, to make “first contact” with the strangers.