286 



POPULATION 



[b. a. e. 



were nowise superior to those of the later 

 Indian. There is no evidence incom- 

 patible with the theory that the builders 

 of the mounds and the dwellers in the 

 cliffs are the ancestors of the tribes now 

 or recently in possession of the same 

 regions. 



StuUdiUi and tadturnity. — The idea of 

 the Indian, once po^^ular, suggests a taci- 

 turn and stolid character, who smoked 

 his pipe in silence and stalked reserved 

 and dignified among his fellows. Un- 

 questionably the Indian of the Atlantic 

 slope differed in many respects from his 

 kinsmen farther w. ; it may be that the 

 forest Indian of tli^ N. and E. imbibed 

 something of the spirit of the primeval 

 woods which, deep and gloomy, over- 

 spread much of his region. If so, he has 

 no counterpart in the regions w. of the 

 Mississippi. On occasions of ceremony 

 and religion the western Indian can be 

 both dignified and solemn, as befits the 

 occasion; but his nature, if not as bright 

 and sunny as that of the Polynesian, is at 

 least as far removed from moroseness as 

 his disposition is from taciturnity. The 

 Indian of the present day has at least a 

 fair sense of humor, and is very far from 

 being a stranger to jest, laughter, and 

 repartee. (h. w. h.) 



Population. The question of the num- 

 ber 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 dissipa- 

 tion, and the patent fact that the aborig- 

 inal 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 cen- 

 turies of destructive influences, which had 

 already wiped out many tribes entirely 

 and reduced many others to mere rem- 

 nants. Another factor of apparent increase 



is found in the mixed-blood element, 

 which is officially counted as Indian, al- 

 though frequently representing only y^, 

 s\, or even Jj of Indian blood, while in 

 the late Indian Ter. (Oklahoma) it is well 

 known that the tribal rolls contain thou- 

 sands of names repudiated by the former 

 tribal courts. The Indian of the discovery 

 period was a full- blood ; the Indian of to- 

 day is very often a mongrel, with not 

 enough of aboriginal blood to be distin- 

 guishable 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 small- 

 pox and other epidemics; tuberculosis; 

 , sexual diseases; whisky and attendant dis- 

 sipation ; removals, starvation and sub- 

 jection to unaccustomed conditions ; low 

 vitality due to mental depression under 

 misfortune ; wars. In the category of de- 

 stroyers all but wars and tuberculosis may 

 be considered to have come from the 

 white man, and the increasing destruc- 

 tiveness 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 originat- 

 ing on the upper Missouri in 1781-82 

 swept northward to Great Slave lake, 

 eastward to L. Superior, and westward to 

 the Pacific. Another, in 1801-02, rav- 

 aged from the Eio 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 com- 

 fort 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, 



