Before the coming of the English explorers and colonists, Cape Ann was home
to a number of Native American villages, inhabited by members of the Agawam
tribe. Samuel de Champlain named the peninsula "Cap Aux Isles" in
1605, and his expedition may have landed there briefly. By the time the first
Europeans founded a permanent settlement at Gloucester in 1623, most of the
Agawams had been killed by diseases caught from early contacts with Europeans.
The area that is now Rockport was simply an uninhabited part of Gloucester
for more than 100 years, and was primarily used as a source of
timber—especially pine-for
