Question

William Bradford, the second governor of the Plymouth Colony, said the following, “The good hand of God favored our beginnings,” Bradford mused, by “sweeping away great multitudes of the natives … that he might make room for us.” From this quote, what can you infer about his beliefs as to the reason for the success of European colonization? Bradford believed God favored the Europeans and wanted them to succeed. Bradford believed that the Natives were weak and not fit to live on the land. Bradford believed that the Europeans were intellectually superior and dominated the Natives

Answer 1

The least bad answer is the first, that Bradford believed God favored the Europeans and wanted them to succeed.

I say "least bad" because it involves some anachronistic thinking in the way it's phrased. In the first place, Bradford didn't think of himself as "European" and set that against the identity of the natives. That kind of cultural tribal thinking is an artifact of the 20th century. For example, Bradford would've been just as gratified if the hand of God had swept away great multitudes of Catholic French settlers instead, and he would have sorrowed over the deaths of God-fearing Puritan Indians, had there been any. In that age men identified themselves more by their religious feelings than by their national or cultural origin. After all, Bradford and his fellow settlers came to the New World because they hated most Europeans and most European culture, feeling Europe had strayed too far from God's preferred path to be tolerated -- had become Sodom.

Secondly, Bradford would not have said that God wanted them to succeed, but rather that their success was apparently integral in some way to the Master Plan of God. A good Puritan does not think of God helping him succeed, but of his work helping God's plan succeed. The use of the word "favor" here is not used in the modern sense of "select preferentially, from affectionate feelings, perhaps in conflict with strict justice," the way we might speak of a father "favoring" his son in making him a Vice President in the father's firm, despite the fact that the son failed out of college. It's used rather in the older sense of "choose." So God is "choosing" to advance the success of the Plymouth Colony, not because he particularly cherishes the Puritans, but because the Puritans happen to be doing His work -- whatever it is. Bradford is musing that, as it turns out, there was a clear sign (in his view) that what they were doing advanced God's work. A Puritan is always concerned about that, and looks with great relief on any signs that indicate God agrees with his actions.

Answer 2

Incidentally, it's of interest to know to what Bradford refers, in case you don't: he refers to the fact that a great wave of sickness had spread through the Indians not longer before the Plymouth colonists arrived, killing most of them. By the time the Puritan colonists arrived, the native population of New England had been nearly wiped out. The origins of this disease have been debated, but I think much modern opinion is that it originated in European explorers themselves -- consisted of diseases to which the Europeans had developed immunity, but which were deadly to the native Americans, who had not. Something like chicken pox or measles, which seem harmless to descendants of Europeans, but which may have gone through the Indians like bubonic plague.