Hmmmmm! Maybe they just weren't called "Pilgrims".....English settlers established Roanoke Colony on the island off the coast of what would become Virginia, in either 1580 or 1582, well before the Plymouth Rock gang hit town. My direct descendant, John White, was Governor of the Colony. John White sailed back to England shortly after the Colony's Establishment and was two years gone.....when he returned the Colony had vanished (Lost Colony Of Roanoke). No signs of violence. The local Indians reported that the Colonists had departed with a little-known band of "light-skinned" Indians.....maybe Cherokees? Maybe the original Native Americans, those whose descendants call them "hillbillies", emigrants fron the Iberian Peninsula roughly 10,000 years before. Linguistic studies have tied some aspects of primitive Southeast North America to the ancient Iberian Peninsula and, in the lower Mississippi River Valley there exist ancient (10,000 year-old) mounds of much older design than the famous Ohio River Valley Mounds. DNA evidence of remains in the area of the site indicate, also, European connections.