NO. 7 ABORIGINAL POPULATION OF AMERICA — MOONEY 3 



that portion of Quebec Province lying between New York and the 

 St. Lawrence. The period of disturbance and colonization for this 

 region began about the year 1600, at which time the Indian popu- 

 lation was probably about 55,000, reduced now to about 22,000 or 

 about 40 per cent in the United States and Canada. Of the latter 

 the Iroquois make up nearly 18,000, largely of mixed blood, while 

 the rest consist of Abnaki, also much mixed, and mongrel remnants 

 of the coast tribes, hardly deserving the name of Indians. 



The original Indian population of New England was probably 

 about 25,000 or about one-half what the historian Palfrey makes it. 

 The first great cause of decrease noted here was the epidemic — ap- 

 parently some previously unknown fever — which swept the whole 

 southern New England coast in 161 7, almost depopulating eastern 

 Massachusetts. Then followed the Pequot war of 1637, the terribly 

 destructive King Philip's war of 1675-6, and the later border wars of 

 Maine, each with its accompaniment of enslavement and head or scalp 

 bounties. In 1632-3, only 19 years after the fever, smallpox ravaged 

 southern New England, killing, as is said, 700 of the Narraganset 

 tribe alone, and destroying all of the Massachuset that had survived 

 from 1617. With the subjection of the tribes began an era of dissi- 

 pation which continued almost unchecked until the tribes had lost 

 all importance and survived only as half-negro mongrels. The single 

 exception is the Abnaki tribe, which still keeps an independent exis- 

 tence with fairly healthy blood, owing to the watchful care of devoted 

 missionaries. 



In New York the Iroquois, from being rather a small confederacy, 

 as compared with other noted historic groups, rapidly grew in strength 

 from earlier possession of firearms and singular compactness of 

 organization, until by successful, aggressive warfare and wholesale 

 incorporation of aliens, chiefly of cognate stock, they had doubled 

 their number within a century and are now probably three times as 

 many as in 1600. This increase, however, has been at the expense 

 of the tribes which they have destroyed — Hurons, Neutrals, Erie and 

 Conestoga — and has been aided also by intermixture with the whites. 

 Smallpox epidemics in 1637-8, 1663, 17 17, 1755 and later, only 

 temporarily checked the general advance. 



The Conestoga, formerly the dominant southern tribes of the re- 

 gion, after steady decrease by Iroquois invasion and smallpox were 

 finally destroyed as a people by the Iroquois about 1675, the survivors 

 being mostly incorporated with the conquerors. The power of the 



