Russell Thornton - American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492

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American Indian Holocaust and Survival : A Population History Since 1492 Civilization of the American Indian Series ; V. 186

Thornton, Russell.

subject

English

Indians of North America--Population, America-- Population.

1987

E59.P75T48 1987eb

304.6/08997073

Indians of North America--Population, America-- Population.

University of Oklahoma Press 080612220X

9780806122205 9780806170213

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The Civilization of the American Indian Series

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American Indian Holocaust and Survival A Population History Since 1492

by Russell Thornton

University of Oklahoma Press : Norman and London

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BY RUSSELL THORNTON

Sociology of American Indians: A Critical Bibliography (With Mary K. Grasmick) (Bloomington, Ind., 1980)

The Urbanization of American Indians: A Critical Bibliography (with Gary D. Sandefur and Harold G. Grasmick) (Bloomington, Ind., 1982)

We Shall Live Again: The 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance Movements as Demographic Repitalization (New York, 1986)

American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 (Norman, 1987)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thornton, Russell, 1942

American Indian holocaust and survival.

(The Civilization of the American Indian series; v. 186) Bibliography: p. 247.

Includes index.

1. IndiansPopulation. 2. AmericaPopulation.

I. Title. II. Series

E59.P75T48 1987 304.6'08997073 87-40216

ISBN: 0-8061-2220-X (paper)

ISBN: 0-8061-2074-6 (cloth)

American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 is Volume 186 in The Civilization of the American Indian Series.

Copyright 1987 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A. First edition, 1987. First paperback printing, 1990.

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

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To my parents, Faye Garrett Thornton and Walter Gilbert Gip Thornton For all those Indian lives unlived

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Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.

TECUMSEH (SHAWNEE)

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Arrivals in the Western Hemisphere

2. American Indian Population in 1492

3. Overview of Decline: 1492 to 18901900

4. Three Hundred Years of Decline: 1500 to 1800

5. Decline to Nadir: 1800 to 1900

6. The Great Ghost Dances

7. American Indian Population Recovery: 1900 to Today

8. Population Recovery and the Definition and Enumeration of American Indians

9. Urbanization of American Indians

Appendix: The Native American Population History of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland

References Index

Page xv xix 3 15 42 60 91 134 159

186 225

241 247 283

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Illustrations

Figures P-

American Indian Population Decline and Recovery in the United States

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Area, 14921980

P-Non-Indian Population Growth in the United States Area, 14921980 2.

2-1.Excavated American Indian Ossuary at Nanjemoy Creek, Maryland 4-1.Kiowa Winter, Summer, and Monthly Counts

4-2.Sioux Pictographs from Winter Counts

5-1.Chief Four Bears of the Mandan, by George Catlin

5-2.The Battle of Greasy Grass (or Little Big Horn River)

5-3.Ishi, the Last Yahi Yana

5-4. The Trail of Tears , by Robert Lindneux

6-1.Karok Facial Painting for the 1870 Ghost Dance

6-2.Wovoka, the Northern Paiute Ghost Dance Prophet

6-3.1890 Sioux Ghost Dance Ceremony

6-4.Sitting Bull

6-5.Scene of the Wounded Knee Massacre

6-6.Chief Big Foot's Body at Wounded Knee

6-7.Burying the Dead at Wounded Knee

6-8.A Sioux Ghost Dance Shirt Worn at the Wounded Knee Massacre 6-9.Fenced Grave at Wounded Knee

7-1.Theory of Demographic Transition

8-1.The Big Road Census

8-2.Cover of 1880 Cherokee Census Schedule

Maps

1-1. Location of Beringia

5-1. Flight of the Cheyenne

5-2. Texas Indian Tribes

6-1. Areas Influenced by the 1870 and the 1890 Ghost Dance Religions 6-2. The Sioux Reservations, 186889

6-3. Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890 8-1. Yuki and Tolowa Territories

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Preface.

Each of the World's Peoples has had many histories over decades, centuries, and millenniums. None is so fundamental as their history as a physical population. Yet as basic as this history is, it is often ignored, frequently unrecognized, and more frequently unwritten. This is particularly true of the North American Indians. We know much about North American Indian social and cultural history subsequent to contacts with Europeans, but little has been written about their demographic history. This book is an attempt to redress that imbalance. It is a demographic history of the populations of American Indians north of present-day Mexico, particularly those in the conterminous United States of America.

Some 500 years ago Christopher Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere. Columbus did not, however, discover the New World. It was already old when he came to it. Furthermore, Columbus was not even the first to arrive from Europe. The Vikings had preceded him by 500 years. Others traveling across the oceans may have preceded him both before and after the Vikings. The first human beings to arrivethe ancestors of the American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts living on the continent when Columbus arrivedhad preceded him by thousands and thousands of years.

The demographic effects of Columbus's discovery were nevertheless important in many ways. There was a marked shift in the world's populations as Europeans and others migrated to the Western Hemisphere, where they experienced remarkable population growth. Great countries developed in a very short span of human history. Euro-American people have much cause to celebrate Columbus's arrival in his New World.