when Columbus returned to Europe he told people about his adventures and other sailors like Cabot and Cartier followed him across the Atlantic. Europeans came to fish the rich seas of America too.
But it was only in the seventeenth century that the French, the Dutch and the British all came to live in North America: the French in Quebec, the Dutch in New York and the British in Virginia and New England. Two very different groups of English people crossed the Atlantic. The first group began the colony of Jamestown in virginia in 1607. They hoped to find gold there, but life was very hard for them. There was very little food, and many of them died during the first winter. Then Pocahontas, the daughter of a Native American chief, became a friend of Captain John Smith and helped him and the other English people. She later married a man called John Rolfe and went to England with him. Luckily, tobacco saved the young colony. It was easy to grow tobacco in Virginia, and smoking was becoming very fashionable. People in the colony stopped looking for gold and began to grow tobacco, which they sold in Europe. Soon they started to bring people from Africa to work as their slaves and help them to grow more and more.
John smith travelled north in 1614 to the part of America that he called New England. When he returned to London, he told people that it was a good place to live. In 1620,another group of 101 English man, women and children arrived in Plymouth,Massachusetts. These people are called