Abstract
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN STATISTICS.—A study of the population of America north of Mexico, which was begun by the late Mr. James Mooney as a contribution to the “Handbook of American Indians,” but grew beyond limits suitable for that publication, has been published as No. 7, vol. 80, of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. It was still incomplete at the time of the author's death in 1921, but was sufficiently advanced to warrant publication. The territory is divided into fourteen areas. The figures show the relative strength of the tribes and an approximate estimate of losses and gains, with notes on the causes, epidemics and other, responsible for the decline. In the North Atlantic States, including New York, New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as part of Quebec, at the time of first colonisation, about 1600, the Indians probably numbered about 55,000. They are now reduced to about 22,000, of which number about 18,000 are Iroquois. In the South Atlantic States—Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas—leaving out the Cherokee territory, there are not to-day twenty full-bloods keeping their own language, though there are about 1000 mixed bloods. It is estimated that in the early seventeenth century they numbered 52,000. Decline was noted so early as 1607. In the Gulf States the numbers have fallen from 114,000 to 62,700, though this latter figure includes large numbers with white admixture. Of the remaining regions the largest decrease is shown in the southern plains, where the population has fallen from 41,000 to 2861, and in California from 260,000 in 1769 to 18,797 in 1907. The figures for the whole area, including Alaska and Greenland, are: early figure, 1,153,000; latest figures, 406,000. The early figure, it will be noted, includes the first estimate or calculation for each area, but is not composed of synchronous figures, some belonging to the seventeenth century, others to the eighteenth or even early nineteenth centuries.
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Research Items. Nature 121, 807–809 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/121807a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/121807a0