What previously encountered ethnic group did the English compare the Native Americans to?

Indians

Explanation:

The English compared the Native Americans to indians and called them Indians influenced by the Spanish.

When Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, he first landed on a small island in the Bahamas, but he thought that he had actually reached India, because the initial goal of his voyage was to find an alternative route from Spain to India.

Since he thought he was in India, he called the native peoples "Indians", and the term came to be used by the rest of the European colonizers who came afterward, including the English.