318 |§ ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
lation is slowing, we know surprisingly little about the American 
physical type that is evolving. In support of this statement I shall 
review the racial elements that have entered into the American melt- 
ing pot and also the efforts made by physical anthropologists to 
sample the product. 
Americans, as Hooton has said, may be divided into five classes: 
1, Real Americans, otherwise known as Indians; 2, Old Americans 
and 3, new Americans, both of whom have been born to Americanism; 
4, immigrant Americans, those who have achieved Americanism; and 
5, Afro-Americans, or those who have had Americanism thrust upon 
them. For lack of space the first and fifth of these classes will not 
be considered here.® 
PEOPLING THE UNITED STATES 
Before 1800.—¥ ortunately for our purposes, the national origins of 
the peoples coming to America, and accordingly the implications of 
their racial background, are well documented. This is due largely 
to the fact that a provision for census taking is included in the Con- 
stitution and consequently that the first census of the entire United 
States was taken in 1790, or nearly 10 years before the first census in 
any European country except Sweden. In this first census the names 
of the inhabitants were recorded, but not the places of birth. Hence, 
the proportions of the various European nationalities comprised in 
the population of the United States at that time have been worked 
out from inspection of the names. In general, 82.1 percent of the 
names are English, 7.0 percent Scotch, 5.6 percent German, 2.5 percent 
Dutch, 1.9 percent Irish, and all others less than 1 percent. Thus, 
although the early settlers were predominantly (91 percent) from 
the British Isles, there were goodly numbers of Germans and Dutch, 
and small numbers of still other nationalities. However, there was 
not a uniform distribution of these nationalities even at the beginning, 
for the Scotch show a concentration in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and 
the Carolinas; the Germans in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Vir- 
ginia; and the Dutch in New York. 
Incidentally, the late Ale’ Hrdlitka designated the descendants of 
this early population as Old Americans, and this explains Hooton’s 
use of the term as appears above. According to the original definition, 
Old Americans include those whose ancestors on each side of the family 
were born in the United States for at least two generations. At the 
time Hrdlicka was working (1910-1924) this meant in general that 
- all the ancestors on both sides of the family were in this land before 
1830. 
® The situation as regards the American Negro has been summarized recently in a series 
of publications assembled by Gunnar Myrdal under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution. 
