Explain how ethnocentrism shaped European encounters with native peoples.

Ethnocentrism shaped European encounters with native
people (such as the Native Americans) by giving the Europeans the sense that they could
treat these people as they wanted.  They felt superior towards the native peoples and
treated them more like objects than like human beings who were equal to
them.

This can be seen quite clearly in the example of the
Americas.  Native peoples in the Americas were typically either pushed out of the way
(or simply killed) or were assimilated into European-dominated societies, but at the
lowest rungs.

In what is now the United States,
ethnocentrism led to the idea that the natives were not legitimate owners of the land
and could be pushed aside as the Europeans wanted.  This often involved wars to kill
natives as well as to push the survivors off a given area of
land.

In what is now Latin America, natives were used as
more or less captive labor.  The system of encomienda gave Spanish landowners the right
to the labor of a given population of natives.  This was supported by the idea that the
natives were inferior to the Spanish and therefore could be disposed of as the Spanish
wished.

In these ways, ethnocentrism made Europeans treat
native peoples like objects.  The Europeans felt superior and so they did whatever they
wanted to do (whatever was most convenient for them) to the
natives.