Colonial House Quiz
1. The first European colony in the New World was in what is now the
state of Virginia, and it was founded by the English.
TRUE
FALSE
2. The English colonists of the 1620s and 1630s usually wore black and
white clothing. Men decorated their clothing, shoes, and hats with
large buckles.
TRUE
FALSE
3. All English colonists in the seventeenth century came to the New
World seeking religious freedom.
TRUE
FALSE
4. The "Pilgrims" founded the first colony in the area now known as
"New England."
TRUE
FALSE
5. The "Pilgrims" were "Puritans" who were seeking to "purify" the
Church of England.
TRUE
FALSE
6. An "Indian princess" named Pocahontas rescued early colonist Captain
John Smith from certain death, and she later fell in love with him.
TRUE
FALSE
7. Early English colonists lived in log cabins.
TRUE
FALSE
8. After traveling over 2,700 miles from England to the New World, the
"Pilgrims" first came ashore on Plymouth Rock and established their
permanent colony.
TRUE
FALSE
9. Early colonists celebrated the first Thanksgiving in November 1621,
and it has been an annual holiday in North America ever since, except
during the years of the American Civil War (1861-1865).
TRUE
FALSE
10. The weapon of choice for English colonists during the 1620s was a gun
called a blunderbuss, which featured a thick and bell-shaped barrel.
TRUE
FALSE
11. Early English colonists developed strict laws and harsh punishments for
those who broke them.
TRUE
FALSE
12. Early English colonists viewed alcohol and tobacco as instruments of the
devil and banned them from the colonies.
TRUE
FALSE
13. Colonists in New England were friends with Indians and did not fight
them, as settlers did later in the American West.
TRUE
FALSE
14. Enslaved Africans arrived in Colonial America before the Mayflower did.
TRUE
FALSE
15. Early English colonists, such as the Pilgrims, introduced Christian
holidays such as Christmas and Easter to North America.
TRUE
FALSE
ANSWER KEY:
Myth-Conceptions Quiz
1. FALSE
The Spanish founded the first permanent European colony in North
America at St. Augustine, in what is now the state of Florida, in 1565.
The first colony in what is now Virginia was Jamestown, and it was
founded by the English in 1607.
Around the year 1000, Norse mariners from Greenland briefly established
a small colony in or near what today is Newfoundland, Canada. The Norse
called the area Vinland, and it was the first European settlement in North
America. The colony collapsed within a generation.
2. FALSE
Contrary to popular belief, early English colonists during the 1620s and
1630s did not usually wear black suits or skirts with white collars and
cuffs. Black cloth was expensive and hard to obtain, so colonists wore
black clothing only on Sundays or for other special occasions (if they had
any at all). Colonists commonly wore colors such as brown, gray, green,
beige, red, blue, and purple. Early colonists did not wear buckles on their
shoes, hats, or clothes. Illustrators in the nineteenth century, three
hundred years later, depicted the colonists with buckles on their hats and
shoes because at that time, buckles were considered old-fashioned.
Buckles did came in to fashion late in the seventeenth century and early
in the eighteenth century ... over 70 years after the first permanent
colonies in New England. But thinking that the Pilgrims and their
contemporaries wore black and white outfits adorned with buckles is like
thinking that most people in 2003 dress the way people did in the early
1930s ... it simply isn't true.
3. FALSE
Some seventeenth-century English colonists came to the New World
seeking religious freedom. Settlers founded the Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay colonies because they were unhappy with the
Church of England. However, many colonists came to the New World for
other reasons. Some had heard tales of fabulous riches in the New
World, and hoped to find huge quantities of gold and silver. Many
colonists came to escape poverty in England, and dreamed of owning
their own houses and farms. Wealthier colonists had often provided large
sums of money to the companies (investors) which journeyed to the
New World, and wanted to keep an eye on their investments. Colonists
also recruited others -- such as blacksmiths and barrel makers -- because
of their skills or trades. Finally, some people left England simply to find
adventure and new opportunities.
4. FALSE
The "Pilgrims," a group of English separatists who later became
associated with the "First Thanksgiving," arrived in the area now known
as New England in 1620 and founded the Plymouth colony. However, in
1607, an earlier group of settlers created a colony called Popham, in what
is now the state of Maine. These colonists were members of the "northern
branch" of the Virginia Company. The "southern branch" of the
Company founded Jamestown in present-day Virginia that same year.
5. FALSE
The "Pilgrims" and Puritans were two separate groups, who had different
beliefs about religious reform. In 1532, England's King Henry VIII
withdrew the Church of England from the jurisdiction of the Catholic
Church in Rome. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, differing religious beliefs developed among Protestants in
England. One group sought to "purify" the Church, and make
modifications to its existing structure. This group came to be known as
"Puritans." Another group felt that they should completely separate
from the Church of England, and make their own decisions regarding
religion, church structure, and worship. This group is historically known
as "Separatists." The "Pilgrims" were a group of Separatists. To
complicate matters even more, the Pilgrims did not refer to themselves as
Pilgrims; that label became popular long after their arrival in the New
World.
6. FALSE
Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, an Algonquian Indian chief.
Her real name was Mataoka, and "Pocahontas" was a nickname which,
roughly translated, means "little troublemaker." When she was eleven or
twelve years old, the Virginia Company, led by Captain John Smith,
arrived in the New World to found the Jamestown colony. Not long
afterward, Smith reported, he was kidnapped by Indians, who took him to
their village and prepared to club him to death. At the last possible
second, Pocahontas ran to Smith and protected him from the clubs.
Powhatan then announced that he and Smith would be friends, and that
Smith would be his adopted son. Many historians have speculated that
the Indians never intended to kill Smith, and that his kidnapping was part
of an adoption ritual. Historians suspect that Smith invented the story
about Pocahontas saving him, and it's even more suspicious because
Smith reported that Indian women saved his life on several other
occasions. At any rate, there is not much evidence to suggest that there
was ever a romantic relationship between Smith and Pocahontas.
Pocahontas later married another colonist, John Rolfe, and traveled to
England, where she met King James I and the rest of the royal family.
She died at the age of 22 and was buried in a churchyard in Gravesend,
England.
7. FALSE
Swedish immigrants introduced the "traditional" log cabin design of
notched and interlocking logs to America in the 1770s, long after the
earliest colonists. Many early English settlers lived in "wattle and daub"
cottages. Colonists sawed thin boards, or clapboards, from logs and used
them to frame the walls of their homes. The interior walls of the houses
were then in-filled with wattle, a woven network of thin branches and
saplings, and the wattle was covered with daub, a mixture of clay, sand,
and straw. Some colonists also mixed animal manure into it. Daub was
important in insulating the houses against the long New England winters.
8. FALSE
After completing their journey of over 2,700 miles on the Mayflower
(traveling at a speed of 2 miles per hour), the Pilgrims first anchored in
the harbor of present-day Provincetown, Massachusetts, on November
11, 1620. Over a month later, the Pilgrims selected the location for their
new colony, which they named Plymouth, at the site of an abandoned
Indian village. However, at the time, none of the Pilgrims mentioned
stepping onto the land at a rock or boulder. The first mention of
Plymouth Rock as the "landing place" of the Pilgrims didn't happen until
over one hundred years later. In 1741, an elderly resident of Plymouth
named Thomas Faunce identified a large boulder on the beach as the spot
where the Pilgrims first made landfall. Faunce's father, who arrived in
Plymouth three years after the original Pilgrims, was told about the Rock
by one of the original colonists. Since none of the original Pilgrims wrote
about the Rock when describing their arrival, and since Thomas Faunce's
story was a third-hand account 121 years later, there is no way to know
for certain if the Plymouth Rock story is true. However, the Rock is an
important symbol of the courage and determination of early colonists; it
currently stands in Pilgrim Memorial State Park in Plymouth, and
thousands of tourists visit it each year.
9. FALSE
Sometime during the fall of 1621, the colonists who had survived the first
winter in the Plymouth Colony held a harvest celebration. It may have
been in November…. or possibly October… perhaps it was in September.
No one really knows for sure. The harvest celebration consisted of
feasting and games. The colonists may have eaten turkey, but more
likely they had lobster and eel. There were definitely no mashed
potatoes, and the colonists did not refer to the celebration as
"Thanksgiving." There is no record of a harvest festival in the Colony for
the next few years.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, just over 150 years ago, no
one associated the early colonists -- or Pilgrims -- with "Thanksgiving." It
began as a local New England holiday that celebrated community,
harvest, and bounty. Colonial (and later, state) governors picked a day
each autumn that was designated as a Day of Thanksgiving. As settlers
moved westward, days of Thanksgiving were held in new colonies,
territories, and states, but it was not an official annual holiday. Pilgrims
were first linked to Thanksgiving when a first-hand account of the 1621
harvest festival was discovered and published in 1841.
In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed an
annual Day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. By the
end of the nineteenth century, with the "Wild West" being settled,
Americans felt comfortable with the idea of their Pilgrim forefathers dining
with Indians, and the colonists became more closely identified with the
holiday. Images of the "First Thanksgiving" were used to teach recent
immigrants about the United States.
In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the
third Thursday in November, to give shoppers and merchants and extra
week of holiday shopping time. The date change ultimately proved
unpopular, and in 1941, Thanksgiving was moved back to the fourth
Thursday in November.
10.
FALSE
Though many people usually associate swords and armor with knights
and medieval times, early colonists also used them for defense and
protection. In addition to their swords, many colonists carried knives or
daggers as their weapons of choice. While the blunderbuss was in
existence at the time, colonists were most familiar with matchlock and
flintlock muskets, which were large and complicated. Some guns of the
period were so heavy that they required placing the barrel in a supporting
stand before firing!
11.
TRUE
Early English colonists developed an elaborate system of laws, fines,
punishments, and public humiliations to keep order in the New World. In
Plymouth Colony, colonists could be put to death for crimes such as
murder, practicing witchcraft, arson, rape, and adultery. Colonists who
broke the laws could be publicly whipped or placed in the public stocks, a
wooden frame in which the criminal's head and hands were locked.
Colonists could also be fined for cursing, missing church services, lying,
or defying their parents. Serious offenders could be forced wear badges
or cloth letters identifying their crimes; failure to wear these identifying
badges in public resulted in even more severe punishments.
12.
FALSE
Heck, no! Men, women, children, church officials, EVERYONE in the early
colonies drank alcoholic beverages. Many colonists thought that alcohol
was helpful in preventing disease. Colonists viewed water suspiciously,
and rightly believed that unpurified water could cause illness and even
death. Some colonists were later surprised to discover that their children
felt better when drinking water instead of beer! However, colonists
frowned upon excessive consumption of alcohol and public drunkenness.
One colonist in the Massachusetts Bay Colony's repeated offenses
required him to "wear a red 'D' [for drunkard] around his neck for a
year."
Smoking tobacco was not as widely accepted, but many colonists
smoked. With tobacco being grown and exported from the Colonies, it
was often available and people did use it. However, unlike alcohol
consumption, which some colonists believed to be approved by the Bible,
there were no benefits to smoking. Several colonies developed antismoking laws because of the fire risks smokers posed to houses, barns,
thatched roofs, and haystacks.
13.
FALSE
Saying that the colonists and the Indians were "friends" is a tricky
subject. In many colonies, the colonists and Indians interacted, traded,
and even socialized with each other. For instance, 90 Wampanoag Indian
men attended the Pilgrims' 1621 harvest festival ... but they weren't
"invited"; they showed up to see what the noise was all about. "Peaceful"
relationships were largely based on trade and commerce. To say that
they were "friends" is difficult. Colonists frequently viewed the Indians as
"heathens" and "savages," who were below them intellectually and
culturally. While many colonies enjoyed peaceful relationships with
Indians, there were also conflicts and wars. The first "war" between New
England colonists and Indians was 1637's Pequot War in southern
Connecticut.
14.
TRUE
In 1619, a Dutch ship carrying 20 Africans arrived in Virginia's Jamestown
Colony, to be sold as indentured servants. People of African descent
were soon in both northern and southern colonies.
The majority of America's first colonists were indentured servants.
Unlike enslaved Africans, white indentured servants voluntarily came to
the colonies, signing a contract pledging servitude in exchange for
passage to the New World. Servitude lasted between four and eight
years.
15.
FALSE
The Pilgrims only recognized three types of holidays as approved by the
Bible: the Sabbath, days of thanksgiving, and fast days. The Sabbath
was carefully observed each week. Days of fasting and thanksgiving -which both focused on prayer -- were proclaimed by colonial governors in
response to droughts, wars, sickness, or good harvests. The "First
Thanksgiving" associated with the Pilgrims -- feasting with the neighbors
-- was actually a harvest festival, and not a religious thanksgiving day.
Celebrations of Christmas and Easter were viewed as holidays constructed
by the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
Source: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse/teachers/plan1b.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse/quiz_pop/myth.html
Retrieved from Internet April 5, 2014.