Excavations in Massachusetts reveal that the earliest human inhabitants arrived about 3,000 years ago. The first European mention of Native Americans dates from about 1500 A.D. The Native Americans in Massachusetts were mostly from the Algonquian Nation; tribes included the Massachuset, Nauset, Nipmuc, Pennacook, Pocumtuc, and Wampanoag. Tragically, diseases brought over by pre-Pilgrim European settlers decimated the Indians in 1616 and 1617. By 1620, the Pilgrims found that the Indian population had dropped from 30,000 to about 7,000.
European history in Massachusetts begins with adventurous explorers, who roved about the coast of Massachusetts centuries before the Mayflower made its famous voyage. There is a legend that Leif Ericson and his Norsemen touched here in the year 1000, and probably fishermen from France and Spain, bound for the teeming waters off the Grand Banks, stopped now and again to cast their nets for cod. In 1497 and 1498 John Cabot carried through the explorations upon which England based her original claim to North America. Other occasional landings were made by voyagers seeking a new route to the fabled treasures of the exotic East, and occasionally abortive plans for colonization took vague shape. In 1602 Bartholemew Gosnold explored the bay and christened Cape Cod for the fish that swarmed about it. Twelve years later John Smith wrote of his New England journeyings with a fervor that stirred the blood of discontented English farmers, describing "Many iles all planted with corne; groves, mulberries, salvage gardens and good harbours". A second enthusiast, William Wood, in 1634 contributed his "New England Prospect" to the growing travel literature of the New World. There was talk in Europe of the wealth that lay here and the trade that might be established; but the first important movement toward settlement originated not in material but in religious aspirations.
The Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom, set sail for North America in 1620 and established their colony in Plymouth, which they had chosen under the influence of Smith's A Description of New England. There they set up a democratic government in accordance with the terms of the famous "Mayflower Compact", an agreement binding all to conform to the will of the majority. In spite of great hardship, the Pilgrim settlement prospered (the local Wampanoag, including the English-speaking Squanto and Chief Massasoit, were very helpful), and in 1621 the first Thanksgiving was observed. Gradually small fishing and trading stations were established, notably at Wessagusset (Weymouth), Quincy, and Cape Ann.

1706-90: Though best remembered for his services as a diplomat and statesman during the American Revolution, this "wisest American" was also a philosopher, publisher, and scientist. His collection of common-sense sayings in Poor Richard's Almanack won immediate and lasting success. His other contributions came as the colonies' first postmaster general, and as founder of the American Philosophical Society, which later became the University of Pennsylvania.