In 1607 English West Country promoters established a small settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec River on the coast of Maine. But Indian hostility and the hard winter demoralized the colonists, who eagerly sailed home in the spring of 1608. Their failure saddled the region with a daunting reputation as frigid and hostile. Determined to improve that reputation, Captain John Smith (of Jamestown fame) explored the coast in 1614 and named it New England because, he claimed, the climate and soil replicated the mother country.
