European explorers and settlers of the 16th and 17th centuries did not discover a “New World.” They encountered Indigenous peoples who had been here for thousands of years and existed in intricate spiritual relationships with the land and all other living beings in their environment. Our understanding of these earliest inhabitants is limited. Euro-American observations of Indigenous peoples and their lifeways frequently ignore oral history and cultural traditions in favor of written documents and surviving artifacts. While many artifacts have decayed over time, examples of bone, stone, pottery, and a few fragments of wooden objects reveal the intricacy of Native craftwork and tools. The consequences of contact between European newcomers and the inhabitants of what would come to be called “the Americas” were profound on both sides. New trading partners and novel trade goods generated new relationships and destabilized old ones. European traders and settlers triggered devastating epidemics when they unwittingly introduced measles, smallpox, typhus, and other Old World diseases to the New World. By the 1630s, the “Great Migration” of British people to New England had begun. These immigrants came with assumptions and beliefs that condemned the original inhabitants as ignorant, irreligious, roving savages who lacked valid claims to the land or its resources. Resulting conflicts between European newcomers and Indigenous peoples yielded tragic results in an ever-shifting world of political alliances and warfare.