ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by xenophobia,

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fear of the letter Z.

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Get it? It starts with an "X." It's very clever, we thought.

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All right, overall how did conflicts with Native Americans

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affect the beliefs of British colonists in New England?

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And here are your potential answers.

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All right... [ mumbling ]

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All right. So what's this question asking?

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Well, we know that British colonists

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for the most part came from the same country,

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spoke the same language,

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and worshipped the same god.

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Basically, they were all one very similar flavor of vanilla ice cream.

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So when they encountered the Native Americans,

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whose languages, customs, and societies

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were very different, well, stuff was bound to get complicated.

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So let's see which answer best describes how the British felt when these two groups clashed.

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Did British conflicts with Native Americans - A,

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challenge colonists' religious convictions?

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Well, after King Philip's war in the late 1670s,

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colonists were furious at the violence committed

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by Native American tribes,

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even though the colonists killed about five times as many Native Americans.

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Regardless, the violence further committed colonists

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to the righteousness of their religious cause,

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as well as enhancing their negative feelings

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of Native Americans as a whole.

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So that eliminates A and B.

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Did these fights with Native Americans -

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D, convince the colonists of

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the American Indians' superiority?

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Uh, strike that, reverse it.

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The colonists were so furious after these battles

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that they decided they would need to conquer the entire continent.

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And we know how that turned out.

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So that means these battles - C,

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reinforced the colonists' worldview.

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Yeah, you bet it did.

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As a relatively homogenous society,

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British colonists had a big fear of anyone or anything different.

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So when these Native Americans put up a fight

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for their homeland, it only helped reinforce the colonists' idea

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that they'd have to eliminate them all

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in order to feel safe.

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So C's the right answer.

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And, well, xenophobia is not the right answer.

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It's super wrong and incredibly destructive,

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but, well, you know what we mean.

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