Verrazzano’s ship, La Dauphine, nears the area of Cape Fear on about March 1 and, after a short stay, reaches the Pamlico Sound, the largest lagoon along the North American East Coast, in modern North Carolina.

In a letter to Francis I, Verrazzano writes that he is convinced the Sound is the beginning of the Pacific Ocean, from which an access could be gained to China.

This report causes one of many errors in the depiction of North America in contemporary maps.

The continent will not be fully mapped for hundreds of years.

Verrazzano and his crew, continuing to explore the coast further northwards, comes into contact with Native Americans living on the coast, possibly landing at Chincoteague Bay.

However, he does not notice the entrances to Chesapeake Bay or …

…the mouth of the Delaware River.

Verrazzano encounters the Lenape in New York Bay, where he anchors at the Narrows that now bear his name, and observes what he deems to be a large lake, which is in fact the entrance to the Hudson River.

Verrazzano next sails along Long Island and enters Narragansett Bay, where he receives a delegation of Wampanoag and Narragansett people.

The words "Norman villa" are found on the 1527 map by Visconte Maggiolo identifying the site.

The historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote "this occurs at Angouleme (New York) rather than Refugio (Newport).

It was probably intended to compliment one of Verrazzano's noble friends.

There are several places called "Normanville" in Normandy, France.

The main one is located near Fécamp and another important one near Evreux, which would naturally be it.

West of it, conjecturally on the Delaware or New Jersey coast, is a Longa Villa, which Verrazzano certainly named after Francois d’Orleans, duc de Longueville".

Verrazano remarks that nearby Block Island appears similar to the Mediterranean island of Rhodes.

He stays here for two weeks, then moves northwards, …

… following the coast up to modern Maine, …

…southeastern Nova Scotia and …

…Newfoundland, after which Verrazzano returns to France by July 8, 1524, without having discovered the elusive Northwest Passage, confirming only that the North American coastline appears to be continuous from Cape Fear to Cabot’s New Found Land.

He names the region he has explored Francesca in honor of the French king, but his brother’s map labels it Nova Gallia, "New France".

Indigenous peoples have lived in the New England area for thousands of years.

Gradually the Narragansett and other historic tribes developed societies as descendants of earlier cultures.

At this time, the Rhode Island coast is home to five Algonquian-speaking tribes: the Narragansett, Wampanoag, Mohegan, Niantic, and Nipmuck.

The Narragansett are one of the leading tribes of New England, controlling the west of Narragansett Bay in present-day Rhode Island, and also portions of Connecticut and eastern Massachusetts, from the Providence River on the northeast to the Pawcatuck on the southwest.

The Narragansett culture has existed in the region for centuries.

They have extensive trade relations across the region.

The first European contact had been in 1524, when Verrazano visited Narragansett Bay.

Northern North America (1540 – 1683 CE)

Enduring Indigenous Worlds and the First Colonial Frontiers

Geography & Environmental Framework

From the Pacific fjords of Alaska and British Columbia to the forests, lakes, and coasts of the Atlantic and Gulf, Northern North America encompassed enormous ecological diversity: glaciated mountains, salmon rivers, oak savannas, prairies, hardwood woodlands, tundra, and the boreal shield.
The Little Ice Age shaped all three subregions. Glaciers advanced along Pacific ranges; Hudson Bay and Greenland froze longer each winter; drought pulses and hurricanes alternated across the Gulf and interior plains. Communities adapted through preservation, trade, and migration, creating resilient social ecologies that endured well before sustained European settlement.

Northwestern North America: Enduring Indigenous Worlds, First Distant Glimpses

Across the Pacific Northwest and sub-Arctic, dense forests, rivers, and coasts sustained prosperous Indigenous nations.
Coastal Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish peoples harvested salmon, halibut, whales, and shellfish from plankhouse villages and celebrated potlatch feasts that redistributed wealth and affirmed law. Interior and plateau groups followed seasonal rounds of hunting, fishing, and root gathering, meeting for great trade fairs at Celilo Falls and other river nodes.
Cedar canoes, totemic art, and carved masks expressed lineage and spirit power. Despite glacial advance and fluctuating salmon runs, storage, trade, and ceremony maintained abundance.
By 1683, the Pacific North had not yet seen sustained European intrusion—Spanish and Russian expeditions lay still ahead—leaving a self-governing world of maritime and riverine civilizations poised at the threshold of contact.

Northeastern North America: Fishermen, Colonists, and Resilient Woodland Worlds

From Florida’s estuaries to Greenland’s fjords, woodland, prairie, and coastal peoples adapted to cooling climates and expanding Atlantic fisheries.
Iroquoian and Algonquian farmers maintained maize-bean-squash agriculture alongside hunting and fishing; in the far north, Inuit extended seal hunting over newly thickened sea-ice. Rivers and lakes served as highways binding interior nations to the first European colonies.
By the early 1600s, French Acadia and Quebec, Dutch New Netherland, English New England and Chesapeake, and Spanish Florida had taken root. Furs, fish, and forests tied Indigenous and European economies together, while epidemics and warfare began to reshape demographics.
The Iroquois Confederacy rose as a major political power; missionaries, traders, and settlers built fragile alliances and rivalries.
By 1683, a multicultural mosaic extended from cod banks to Great Lakes forests—an Atlantic frontier still overwhelmingly Indigenous in its interior but irrevocably drawn into global circuits.

Gulf and Western North America: Spanish Entradas and Enduring Societies

South and west of the Mississippi, diverse Indigenous polities dominated vast landscapes.
Pueblo farmers of the Rio Grande maintained irrigated fields and kivas; Navajo and Apache expanded herding and raiding economies; California’s coastal and island tribes prospered on acorns, fisheries, and trade networks.
Spanish expeditions under de Soto and Coronado probed but never mastered the interior. Missions and forts appeared in Florida and New Mexico, yet survival depended on Indigenous alliances. The horse—introduced by Spaniards—was transforming mobility across the plains.
By 1683, the Gulf and West remained largely autonomous: European outposts clung to coasts and valleys, while Native confederacies, pueblos, and nomadic nations adapted horses, firearms, and trade to their advantage.

Cultural and Ecological Themes

Across the northern continent, art and ceremony anchored identity:

• Totemic carving and potlatch law on the Pacific;

• Wampum diplomacy and council fires in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence;

• Kachina dances and Green Corn rites in the Southwest and Southeast.

Environmental adaptation was everywhere sophisticated—salmon and seal preservation in the Northwest, maize granaries in the East, irrigation and acorn storage in the arid West. Climatic stress during the Little Ice Age spurred innovation rather than collapse.

Transition (to 1683 CE)

By 1683, Northern North America was a continent of enduring Indigenous sovereignties threaded with the first strands of European empire. Spanish forts, French missions, English farms, and Dutch ports dotted its edges, while vast interiors remained guided by Native diplomacy, ecology, and exchange. The Little Ice Age’s rigors had tested but not broken subsistence systems.
The next age would see intensified colonization, new alliances, and epidemic shocks—but also the continuity of Native landscapes, languages, and cosmologies that had already sustained the North for millennia.