“The Phoenicians were, religiously, the villains of the Old Testament. It was their gods that were the counterpoint to Yahweh, and a perpetual temptation to the Israelites.”
Exactly right. And they may very well have been here long long before the Mayflower and Puritans. In fact the Christian Catholics were here before the Puritans.
If you mean the Spanish, then certainly.
St Augustine Florida is the oldest continuous European settlement in what is now the US. Santa Fe NM, and a slew of others predate the Pilgrims.
For that matter so does Jamestown VA.