Anthropology of the Chippewa 



By Ales Hrdlicka 



N June 30, 19 1 5, the total Indian population of the United 

 States was given by the Indian Office as 333,000, : of which 

 nearly 174,000 are reported as of full-blood ; the fact is, how- 

 ever, that actual full-bloods are much less numerous today 

 than given officially, aggregating, in the writer's opinion, 

 fewer than 100,000. The assimilation of the Indians into the white 

 population has progressed much farther than is generally appreciated, 

 and is proceeding at a steadily increasing rate. Poverty of the Indian 

 women in some cases and their riches in others, with their attractive 

 looks and other good qualities, and the many wifeless white men on 

 the frontiers, favor the process of miscegenation. Regular inter- 

 marriage, moreover, is everywhere sanctioned, and no physiological 

 repugnance, such as is manifest on the part of whites toward negroes, 

 exists between the white and the Indian. As a result, wherever there 

 is contact of the two races, mixture with whites is manifest and 

 increasing. Large and important tribes are already so mixed that 

 it is a task for the anthropologist to find a sufficient number of full- 

 bloods for his studies, and those found are usually the old, who will 

 pass away before many years. In the Eastern, Northern, Central, 

 and Southern states few tribes indeed offer other conditions; and 

 the Northwest, West, and Southwest are progressing in the same 

 direction. 



Under these circumstances the need grows more urgent to deter- 

 mine the physical type of at least the most important tribes before 

 the full-bloods have wholly disappeared, and among the foremost 

 of such tribes are the Chippewa, or Ojibway. It is the largest 

 Algonquian tribe, numbering at present well over 25,000 individuals; 

 it has been closely connected with the history of American colon- 

 ization for approximately three centuries, during which it remained 

 generally friendly to the whites and especially to the French; and 

 it is a tribe which led protracted and sanguinary wars with most 

 of its neighbors, especially with the Sioux, as a result of which it 

 acquired even within historic times an extensive domain in the north- 

 ern territories. No other body of the Algonquian Indians has attained 



1 Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, 1915, p. 66. 



[198] 



