Practice questions: European Colonization

Answer: (C) The small French colony relied on Native hunters to supply its beaver pelts.

1. New France had only a few hundred colonists in its first thirty years; large farming populations marked the English colonies.
2. Collecting tribute from conquered Native towns was a Spanish practice, while the French got furs by trading with Native allies.
3. With few colonists of its own, New France relied on Native hunters for pelts, and competing French and English buyers let those hunters bargain.
4. In the 1630s Native hunters trapped and prepared nearly all the beaver, and French traders bought the pelts rather than trapping them.

Answer: (D) French colonists sought ties to Native families, while the English mostly settled apart.

1. This reverses the pattern: English colonies drew large numbers of families, while New France had few colonists, many of them men in the fur trade.
2. Taking Native tribute and labor was the Spanish pattern, and English colonists worked their land with family labor, servants and later enslaved Africans.
3. Jesuit missionaries made converting Native people a central French aim, while most English Puritans built churches for their own communities.
4. French traders built trade and diplomatic ties by marrying Native women, while English colonists took land for farms and lived in separate towns.

Answer: (B) Haudenosaunee attacks scattered the Wendat, France’s main trade partners.

1. New France’s settlers stayed in the St. Lawrence valley, and Wendat country was emptied by war, not taken for French farms.
2. Epidemics in the 1630s killed at least half of the Wendat, and in 1648–1649 Haudenosaunee war parties destroyed or dispersed their towns.
3. The Wendat traded with the French, while Dutch traders at Fort Orange armed the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat’s enemies.
4. A royal regiment reached New France only in 1665, years after the Wendat towns were destroyed, and it marched against the Mohawk.

Answer: (A) Ties to Native nations could open access to the furs Europeans wanted.

1. Radisson offered knowledge of Native languages, customs and trade networks, which promised access to the beaver pelts that European hatmakers needed.
2. Chesapeake tobacco planters used English servants and later enslaved Africans, and Radisson’s backers wanted furs, not field workers.
3. His backers were merchants and courtiers interested in trade, and the venture that followed, the Hudson’s Bay Company, sent traders, not missionaries.
4. The backers wanted a northern fur trade, while the English colonists who sought Native land were farmers in New England and the Chesapeake.

Answer: (C) French traders who bought furs from Native allies along the St. Lawrence

1. Puritan settlers wanted land for family farms and lived apart from Native peoples rather than in a trade partnership.
2. Spanish colonists in New Mexico demanded tribute and labor from the Pueblo peoples instead of trading with them as partners.
3. Like the Dutch, the French sent few colonists and relied on Native allies to supply furs, so both alliances rested on trade.
4. Chesapeake planters wanted land for tobacco, worked it with servants and enslaved Africans, and fought the Powhatan over that land.

Answer: (D) The colony’s fur-trading posts had drawn very few settlers from Europe.

1. The fur trade at Fort Orange was the Company’s main business and it was working, so the plan addressed settlement, not lost trade.
2. New Netherland’s economy rested on furs, not tobacco, and planters short of servants were a Chesapeake problem.
3. The Dutch did little missionary work among Native nations, and the patroon plan was a way to bring in settlers.
4. The Company’s fur posts had attracted few colonists, so it offered large estates to investors who would ship fifty settlers each within four years.

Answer: (B) weakened royal control of the fur trade and left the colony’s farms short of men

1. France and Spain did not fight over Mississippi Valley furs in 1680, and the French first reached the river’s mouth in 1682.
2. Under mercantilism the crown wanted furs to reach France through licensed traders, and men trading in the woods took business out of that system in a colony short of farmers.
3. The English had taken New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York, so no Dutch colony controlled that trade in 1680.
4. The traders in the woods were French Catholics, and the officials complained about lost trade and empty farms, not religion.

Answer: (D) Colonial society ranked people in unequal groups by ancestry, freedom and wealth.

1. Spanish colonial society incorporated Native people and Africans, free and enslaved, while settling apart from Native peoples was the English pattern.
2. Small groups of traders who relied on Native hunters describe New France and New Netherland, not New Spain.
3. Spain allowed only Catholic colonists, and towns built by religious dissenters describe the Puritans of New England.
4. New Spain’s casta system ranked people by ancestry, legal status and wealth, so a free woman of African and Native parents needed papers to defend her freedom.

Answer: (A) The crown rewarded colonists with the tribute and labor of Native communities.

1. Spain paid conquerors and colonists with grants of Native households that owed tribute or labor, called encomiendas, and Coronado asked for a larger one.
2. Land for paying a servant’s passage was the headright system of Virginia and Maryland, not a Spanish practice.
3. Licensed fur trading with Native hunters was the French pattern, while Spanish wealth came from mines, tribute and forced labor.
4. Buying land by written deed was practiced by Dutch and some English colonists, while Spanish grants rested on conquest and royal authority.

Answer: (C) wrote to persuade the king to keep paying for the Franciscan missions

1. Benavides wrote in 1630, fifty years before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 destroyed the missions.
2. Benavides was a Franciscan friar, and New Mexico had no silver mines, which is why its colonists lived off Pueblo tribute.
3. Benavides wrote to Philip IV when funding for the missions was in doubt, so he had reason to present the largest possible numbers.
4. The baptism totals were the friars’ own claims in an appeal for money, not counts taken by Pueblo communities.

Answer: (B) answer English critics who doubted the colonists’ right to settle Native land

1. Winthrop wrote in England for fellow Puritans and backers, not for Native leaders, and his argument denied that Native people held full title to the land.
2. Puritans and investors in England asked whether taking land that Native people already used was lawful, and Winthrop argued that it was.
3. Winthrop defended taking land, and the damage English livestock did to Native fields became a Native complaint, not a cause he pressed.
4. Massachusetts Bay drew Puritan families who wanted farms and a godly society, while tobacco grown by servants was the Chesapeake economy.

Answer: (A) drew more young single men, who came as indentured servants

1. Tobacco planters paid the passage of young English servants, most of them men, so the Chesapeake had far fewer families than New England.
2. Migrating as families to build towns around a church describes the Puritans who settled New England.
3. Virginia exported tobacco grown on its own land, while trade alliances with Native hunters for furs marked New France and New Netherland.
4. Early Virginians hoped to find gold but found none, and tobacco, not precious metal, became the colony’s export.

Answer: (D) Metacom’s War, fought between Native nations and the New England colonies

1. The Pueblo Revolt was a rising in New Mexico against Spanish labor demands and religious persecution, not a response to English farming.
2. The Beaver Wars were fought over furs and trade routes, not over English livestock and farms.
3. Bacon’s Rebellion pitted Virginia frontier settlers against their own governor in the Chesapeake, far from the nations of southern New England.
4. English farms, fences and livestock kept taking Native land and food, and in 1675 Metacom (King Philip) led Native nations in war against the New England colonies.

Answer: (C) English colonies drew families and servants to farm, while New France relied on furs.

1. Epidemics struck Native peoples far harder than colonists, and they do not explain the gap between French and English settler numbers.
2. The crown sent about eight hundred young women to New France between 1663 and 1673 to marry settlers, and the colony still stayed small.
3. England’s crowded countryside sent families and servants to farm colonial land, while New France’s fur economy needed Native hunters more than settlers.
4. Haudenosaunee raids hurt the colony, but French settlers stayed, and New France’s population roughly tripled between 1666 and 1681.

Answer: (B) English colonies drew far larger farming populations, while New France relied more on Native trade alliances.

1. This reverses the pattern: around 1680 the English mainland colonies had about 150,000 colonists and New France fewer than 10,000.
2. The Hudson’s Bay Company showed that England also traded through Native partners, but English colonies as a whole still drew far more settlers who farmed land taken from Native nations.
3. This charter claimed the bay’s whole drainage for English proprietors without Cree consent, and French claims rested more on alliances than on direct rule.
4. Shared fur trading did not make the empires alike, because English farm settlement took Native land on a scale the French fur trade did not.

Answer: (A) Colonists kept taking tribute and labor while officials punished Pueblo religion.

1. Encomienda tribute in corn and blankets and repartimiento labor continued through the famine, and officials whipped Pueblo religious leaders, which helped unite the towns in 1680.
2. New Mexico’s colonists lived off Pueblo tribute in corn and cotton blankets, and tobacco plantations were a Chesapeake development.
3. Fur trading with Native hunters was the French and Dutch pattern, while Spain demanded tribute and labor from Pueblo farmers.
4. Friars kept demanding Pueblo labor and suppressing Pueblo religion until 1680, and easing came only after the Spanish returned in 1692.

Answer: (D) eased labor demands and tolerated more Pueblo religious practice

1. Removal to reserved lands was a later United States policy, and the Pueblo peoples stayed in their towns along the Rio Grande.
2. Spain did not give up New Mexico, and Diego de Vargas led the Spanish return in 1692.
3. Franciscan friars returned to the pueblos after 1692, and the missions continued with more tolerance of Pueblo ceremonies.
4. When the Spanish returned in 1692, they eased their labor demands and tolerated more Pueblo religious practice, a shift toward accommodation.

Answer: (B) The crown’s effort after 1663 to end Haudenosaunee attacks on New France

1. French settlement stayed along the St. Lawrence, and the soldiers destroyed Mohawk towns and food and then withdrew.
2. After Louis XIV took direct control in 1663, he sent a royal regiment that burned the Mohawk towns and their food stores in 1666, and the Mohawk made peace in 1667.
3. The English had taken New Netherland in 1664, so the Dutch no longer held the Hudson River trade in 1666.
4. England’s Hudson Bay venture began with a voyage in 1668 and the charter of 1670, and the 1666 campaign was aimed at the Mohawk.