NO. 7 ABORIGINAL POPULATION OF AMERICA MOONEY II 



On the whole the Central tribes have held their own comparatively 

 well. The chief causes of decline have been: The Iroquois inva- 

 sions of the seventeenth century by which the Erie were destroyed 

 and the Illinois, Miami, and Mascouten greatly reduced ; the war 

 waged by the Foxes and their allies against the French from about 

 1/12 to 1740, by which the Foxes were nearly destroyed; liquor 

 and wholesale dissipation introduced by the French garrisons and 

 traders and continued through the later treaty and removal period, 

 the prime cause of the extinction of the Illinois and Miami; the 

 almost continuous border wars from 1774 to 181 5; local epidemics 

 and removals. No widespread epidemic visitations are on record, 

 although smallpox has several times visited particular tribes, notably 

 the IMascouten, Ottawa, and Ojibwa. The great smallpox visita- 

 tion of 1 781 -2 ravaged the Ojibwa territory as far east as Lake 

 Superior. There have been no great losses from mission confine- 

 ment, as in Texas, from blood-poisoning as on the Columbia, or 

 from wholesale massacre as in California. Several tribes have re- 

 cruited their number by intermarriage with the whites, particularly 

 the Ojibwa, who appear to be more numerous now than at any 



earlier period. 



1650 1907 



Erie 4,000 Extinct 



Fox (now represented by a band in Iowa) 3,000^ 345 



Illinois. confederates (now about % of Peoria, etc., 



in Oklahoma) 8,000 50 



Kickapoo (including perhaps 350 or more in 



Mexico in 1907) 2,000 830 



Mascouten 1,500 ' Extinct 



Menomini 3.000 1,375 



Miami (including Wea and Piankashaw) 4.500 530 



Ojibwa (United States and Canada) 3S.ooo 36,000 (?) 



Potawatomi (including 180 in Canada) 4,000 2,555 



Sauk 3.500' 608 



Shawnee 3,000 1,500 (?) 



Winnebago 3.800 2,333 



75,300 46,126 



' Michelson (Journ. Wash. Acad. Sci., Vol. 9, No. 16, Oct. 4, 1919, pp. 

 489-494) tells us that the most reliable early estimates of the population of 

 tlic Foxes and the Sauk are those of Lewis and Clark which would make 

 the numbers of the former 1,200 and of the latter 2,000 in the year 1806. 

 Allowing for the losses which the two tribes suffered between 1650, the date 

 taken by Mooney for his first estimates, and the time of Lewis and Clark, 

 there would still seem to be a discrepancy of perhaps a thousand in each case 

 between IMooney's figures and the figures indicated by Michelson's researches. 

 Dr. Michelson also considers it certain that the " Mascouten " of Mooney were 

 identical with the Peoria. — J. R. S. 



