Abstract
UNTIL recently, it would appear that little attention has been given to certain facts relating to the Indian population of North America, which are disclosed in the census returns. It has generally been accepted that the Indian is a dying race; but it is now indicated that, while certain Indian peoples have undoubtedly become extinct, and the Indians of Mexico to a considerable extent have been fused in the general population, the Indian population north of Mexico as a whole is on the up grade. The problem of the future will be, not the arrest of a decrease, but the provision in the reservations of land adequate to support an increased population. This, at least, it is thought at the moment, is the form which the problem will take in the United States. Data relating to the population statistics were examined by Dr. Clark Wissler recently in a communication on the birth-rate among the Plains Indians, which was presented to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting at New Haven, Conn., on April 30-May 2. Dr. Wissler then stated that the birth-rate of the Plains Indians would appear to be the highest hi the world, being 48 per thousand. The white birth-rate, even before the depression, had sunk to 20 per thousand. He went on to point out that when the Indian was first placed on reservations, there was a rapid decline in numbers, but this had been checked. This was not due to the birth-rate, which apparently has not changed much since 1800, but arose from a death-rate which reached its peak about 1890 and had since declined.
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Indian Population of North America. Nature 137, 978–979 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137978b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137978b0