SWANT..N] EARLY HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIANS 451 
the end of thai century and during the first three decades of the 
nineteenth the population appears to have increased gradually, for 
the census of L831, taken just before the removal, shows 19, 554. i 
Allowing for the 1,000 or 2,000 Choctaw who remained in Mississippi 
and are noi always enumerated in the later returns, we seem to have 
a surprising Constancy in Choctaw population. Thus in 1904, when 
a careful census was made in which the Indians, intermarried whites, 
freedmen. and Mississippi Choctaw were carefully distinguished, we 
6nd 15,550 Indians belonging to the old emigration to Oklahoma to 
whom the 2,255 "Mississippi Choctaws" must be added. 2 These 
last were not. however, the Choctaw then living in Mississippi, but 
those who had emigrated recently from that State to share in the 
Choctaw allotment. As in 1910 there were 1.366 in Mississippi, 
Alabama. Louisiana, and other States, 8 we must also add at least that 
number, making a total of 18,539. This shows a decrease of only 
about 1,000 since 1831, but to the earlier figures something like 1,200 
musl be added for those Choctaw who had left the nation previous 
to the census of 1831 and settled in Louisiana and Texas. An 
actual decline of about 2,200 is thus indicated. It must, however, 
be remembered that the amount of Indian blood represented by the 
18,539 Choctaw listed in 1904 was much smaller in quantity, relatively 
as well as absolutely, than that in the 19.554 of 1S31, the quantity 
of white and Negro blood having been continually on the increase. 
From 1903 to 1914 the Bgures of the Indian Office show an apparent 
increase. so that, including the older emigrants to Oklahoma, the 
later emigrants, and the Indians in other States, there is a total of 
20.451. But when one considers the premium placed upon Indian 
blood during the period of allotment and the constant lowering of the 
bars it will at once be suspected that all of this is not a legitimate 
Indian growth, and that these 20,451 are for the most part not ethnic 
Indians but legal Indians. The true state of" affairs is probably 
approached much closer in the census returns of 1910, in which we 
find 14,551 given in Oklahoma, 1,162 in Mississippi, 115 in Louisiana, 
57 in Alabama, and 32 in other States — a total of 15,917. 3 There 
had thus been an actual decrease in the numbers of the tribe since 
1831, and a still greater decrease in its blood, though this latter must 
be corrected in turn by the addition of a certain amount which has 
passed out among the whites and Negroes and is no longer recognized 
as ( Jhoctaw, or even as Indian, and by allowing for certain individuals 
who have left the Indian country and now live the lives of ordinary 
white citizens. 
i Sen. I >o >. 512, 23d Cong., 1st seas., m, p. 149. 
»Rept. I'nmra. Tncl. AlT. for 1904, p. 59S. 
» Ind. Pop. in the U. &., Census of 1910, p. 17. 
