The question of the number of
the native population of America, and particularly of the United
States and British America, at the coming of the white man, has been
the subject of much speculation. Extremists on the one hand have
imagined a population of millions, while on the other hand the
untenable claim has been made, and persistently repeated, that there
has been no decrease, but that on the contrary, in spite of removals,
wars, epidemics, and dissipation, and the patent fact that the
aboriginal population of whole regions has completely disappeared, the
Indian has thriven under misfortune and is more numerous to-day than
at any former period. The first error is due in part to the tendency
to magnify the glory of a vanished past, and in part to the mistaken
idea that the numerous ancient remains scattered over the country were
built or occupied at practically the same period. The contrary error,
that the Indian has increased, is due to several causes, chief of
which is the mistake of starting the calculation at too recent a
period, usually at the establishment of treaty relations. The fact is
that between the discovery of America and the beginning of the federal
government the aboriginal population had been subjected to nearly
three centuries of destructive influences, which had already wiped out
many tribes entirely and reduced many others to mere remnants.
Another factor of apparent increase is found in the
mixed-blood element, which is officially counted as Indian, although
frequently representing only 1/16, 1/32 or even1/64 of Indian blood,
while in the late Indian Territory (Oklahoma) it is well known that
the tribal rolls contain thousands of names repudiated by the former
tribal courts. The Indian of the discovery period was a full-blood ;
the Indian of today is very often a mongrel, with not enough of
aboriginal blood to be distinguishable in the features, yet, excepting
in a few tribes, no official distinction is made.
The chief causes of decrease, in order of importance,
may be classed as smallpox and other epidemics; tuberculosis; sexual
diseases; whisky and attendant dissipation; removals, starvation and
subjection to unaccustomed conditions; low vitality due to mental
depression under misfortune; wars. In the category of destroyers all
but wars and tuberculosis may be considered to have come from the
white man, and the increasing destructiveness of tuberculosis itself
is due largely to conditions consequent upon his advent. Smallpox has
repeatedly swept over wide areas, sometimes destroying perhaps one
half the native population within its path.
One historic smallpox epidemic originating on the upper
Missouri in 1781-82 swept northward to Great Slave Lake, eastward to
Lake Superior, and westward to the Pacific. Another, in 1801-02,
ravaged from the Rio Grande to Dakota, and another, in 1837-38,
reduced the strength of the northern Plains tribes by nearly one-half.
A fever visitation about the year 1830 was officially estimated to
have killed 70,000 Indians in California, while at about the same time
a malarial fever epidemic in Oregon and on the Columbia, said to have
been due to the plowing up of the ground at the trading posts-ravaged
the tribes of the region and practically exterminated those of
Chinookan stock. The destruction by disease and dissipation has been
greatest along the Pacific coast, where also the original population
was most numerous. In California the enormous decrease from about a
quarter of a million to less than 20,000 is due chiefly to the
cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early
settlers. The almost complete extermination of the Aleut is
attributable to the same causes during the early Russian period.
Confinement in mission establishments has also been
fatal to the Indian, in spite of increased comfort in living
conditions. Wars in most cases have not greatly diminished the number
of Indians. The tribes were in chronic warfare among themselves, so
that the balance was nearly even until, as in the notable case of the
Iroquois, the acquisition of firearms gave one body an imminence
superiority over its neighbors. Among the wars most destructive to the
Indians may be noted those in Virginia and southern New England, the
raids upon the Florida missions by the Carolina settlers and their
savage allies, the wars of the Natchez and Foxes with the French, the
Creek war, and the war waged by the Iroquois for a period of thirty
years upon all the surrounding tribes.
A careful study of population conditions for the whole
territory north of Mexico, taking each geographic section separately,
indicates a total population, at the time of the coming of the white
man, of nearly 1,150,000 Indians, which is believed to be within 10
per cent of the actual number. Of this total 840,000 were within the
limits of the United States proper, 220,000 in British America, 72,000
in Alaska, and 10,000 in Greenland. The original total is now reduced
to about 403,000, a decrease of about 65 per cent.
The complete study is expected to form the subject of a
future bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
