OF THE HUM AN FAMILY. 219 



probably straggling bands from Virginia. The foregoing were the principal 

 Atlantic Algonkin nations. 



Of those enumerated, the Micmacs, the Etchemins, the Abenakis, the Mohegan, 

 the Delawares, and the Munsees still maintain a distinct political existence. 

 Beside these, there are about a thousand of the descendants of the New England 

 Indians, more or less mixed in blood, still living in Massachusetts, Connecticut, 

 and Rhode Island, 1 and about the same number in Maine. 



The Atlantic Algonkins were never very numerous, although they cultivated to 

 some extent, and possessed excellent fisheries. They were probably more nume- 

 rous, in equal areas, than the Gichigamian or Mississippi nations ; but still incon- 

 siderable in numbers. Throughout the continent, with the exception of parts of 

 Mexico and Central America, and the valley of the Columbia, the Indian popula- 

 tion was everywhere scanty. It is impossible at the present time, under the sug- 

 gestions of ample experience, to repress the tendency to exaggerated estimates. 

 Even the census which has come in at last, to dispel these illusions, does not shed 

 a convincing light upon the past, because the hypothesis is allowed to intervene, 

 that they have wasted away between the estimate and the census. Experience 

 shows that nomadic nations, and more especially nations composed of fishermen 

 and hunters, increase slowly and waste slowly ; and that the equilibrium of num- 

 bers is better preserved among them than it is among agricultural and commercial 

 peoples. In a volume now open before me are estimates made as late as 1834, 

 in which the Crow Indians are stated to number 45,000, the Blackfeet 30,000, and 

 the Shoshonees 30,000. These nations were then well known to the Fur companies, 

 and to the traders, although they had not at that time come under any direct rela- 

 tions to the government. In 1849, after treaties had been formed with them, and 

 an effort had been made to ascertain their numbers, by a count of lodges, the 

 Crows were estimated at 4000, the Blackfeet at 13,000, and the Shoshonees at 

 700. An actual census, when taken, will probably reduce both the Crows and 

 Blackfeet considerably below these numbers. This is undoubtedly a fair illustra- 

 tion of the deceptive character of all the estimates made of our aboriginal inhabit- 

 ants. With our present experience there is no further excuse for such extrava- 

 gance. The early Spanish estimates of the inhabitants of Mexico and Central 

 America reveal the same tendency to exaggeration, and upon a scale of such utter 

 recklessness as to become insulting to common intelligence. The Indian inhabit- 

 ants of these countries were undoubtedly more numerous than the northern 

 Indians, through a higher and more productive agriculture ; but their cultivation 

 was of garden beds, and not of the field, and their occupation and use of the soil 

 were limited to infinitesimal patches compared with the whole area held. Neither 

 is it so assuredly true that the American Indian nations have perished at the fright- 



1 In the year 1862 I met on the Mississippi River a half-blood Narragansett woman, with two 

 Pequots, her grandchildren, then on their way to Kansas, where they resided. She was descended, 

 on the mother's side, from the Narragansetts, amongst whom descent as well as nationality follows 

 the female line. This made her a Narragansett, She further informed me that both the Pequot and 

 Narragansett dialects were now extinct. 



