In language and lifestyle, the Pennacook were virtually identical to the Abenaki in southern Maine. It was for this reason, some people classified the Pennacook to be just the southernmost group of the Abenaki, but in 1620 the Pennacook were a large, independent confederacy which tended to view their Abenaki relatives to the north as enemies. This distinction continued for the first sixty years after the arrival of the English in New England, but by the start of the 18th century, encroachment and war with the Massachusetts colonists had made the Pennacook and Abenaki one and the same.