32 The Winning of the West 



ferent lines. Not only have the red men themselves 

 kept back the settlements, but they have also had 

 a very great effect upon the outcome of the strug- 

 gles between the different intrusive European 

 peoples. Had the original inhabitants of the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley been as numerous and unwarlike as 

 the Aztecs, de Soto would have repeated the work 

 of Cortes, and we would very possibly have been 

 barred out of the greater portion of our present 

 domain. Had it not been for their Indian allies, 

 it would have been impossible for the French to 

 prolong, as they did, their struggle with their much 

 more numerous English neighbors. 



The Indians have shrunk back before our advance 

 only after fierce and dogged resistance. They were 

 never numerous in the land, but exactly what their 

 numbers were when the whites first appeared is im- 

 possible to tell. Probably an estimate of half a 

 million for those within the limits of the present 

 United States is not far wrong; but in any such 

 calculation there is of necessity a large element of 

 mere rough guess-work. Formerly writers greatly 

 over-estimated their original numbers, counting 

 them by millions. Now it is the fashion to go to 

 the other extreme, and even to maintain that they 

 have not decreased at all. This last is a theory 

 that can only be upheld on the supposition that the 

 whole does not consist of the sum of the parts; for 

 whereas we can check off on our fingers the tribes 

 that have slightly increased, we can enumerate 

 scores that have died out almost before our eyes. 



