NO. 7 ABORIGINAL POPULATION OF AMERICA MOONEY 5 



territory. At the beginning of the colonizing period, say about 1600. 

 this region was well populated with numerous tribes which dwindled 

 rapidly by wars, disease, dissipation, and dispossession, so that, with 

 the exception of the Tuscarora. there exist of them today not 20 

 fullbloods keeping their own language, although a thousand or more 

 of mixed Indian, white and negro blood, still claim the name. All 

 of the so-called " Croatan Indians " of North Carolina worthy of 

 serious ethnologic consideration are included within this number. 



Leaving out of account the early Spanish expeditions and slave 

 raids along the Carolina coast, we may ^late the beginning of the decline 

 with the founding of the Virginia colony in 1607. The ensuing wars 

 with the Powhatan and other Virginia tribes were of such an ex- 

 terminating character that already in 1645 it was reported that they 

 were " so routed and dispersed that they are no longer a nation." and 

 by 1705 they were reduced to about one-seventh of their original 

 strength. Some mixed blood bands keep the name. The interior 

 Virginia tribes disappeared unnoticed. The unceasing attacks of the 

 well-armed northern Iroquois constantly weakened the southern 

 tribes, while systematic slave captures throughout the whole region 

 had also much to do with their extinction. 



The Charleston colony (S. C.) was founded in 1670 and the Albe- 

 marle settlement (N. C.) a few years later. Here, smallpox and 

 gross dissipation, introduced by degenerate whites, so rapidly thinned 

 the native population that Lawson, writing about 1710, said that 

 through these means there was not left within reach of the frontier 

 one-sixth the number of 50 years before. The Piedmont region was 

 still populous, with small towns thickly scattered. He speaks of 

 earlier repeated visitations of smallpox, of none of which record 

 seems to have been preserved, excepting for 1696. when it swept the 

 Albemarle region. In 1738, 1759 and 1776, the same disease again 

 ravaged Carolina. The Tuscarora war of 171 1-2 and the Yamasee 

 war of 1 71 5-6 nearly completed the destruction of the Carolina tribes, 

 which, with the exception of the Cherokee, are represented today 

 only by about 700 Tuscarora and less than 100 mixed blood Catawba, 

 with a few scattered mongrels in the eastern counties. 



North of the Potomac the chief causes of decrease were smallpox 

 and other introduced diseases, and dissipation, which prevailed to such 

 an extent that not a single fullblood survives. The decrease for the 



