cover cover next page > title: American Indian Holocaust and Survival : A Population History Since 1492 Civilization of the American Indian Series ; V. 186 author: Thornton, Russell. publisher: University of Oklahoma Press isbn10 | asin: 080612220X print isbn13: 9780806122205 ebook isbn13: 9780806170213 language: English subject Indians of North America--Population, America-- Population. publication date: 1987 lcc: E59.P75T48 1987eb ddc: 304.6/08997073 subject: Indians of North America--Population, America-- Population. cover next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/cover.html[1/17/2011 5:09:37 PM] page_i < previous page page_i next page > Page i The Civilization of the American Indian Series < previous page page_i next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_i.html[1/17/2011 5:09:38 PM] page_v < previous page page_v next page > Page v American Indian Holocaust and Survival A Population History Since 1492 by Russell Thornton University of Oklahoma Press : Norman and London < previous page page_v next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_v.html[1/17/2011 5:09:38 PM] page_vi < previous page page_vi next page > Page vi BY RUSSELL THORNTON Sociology of American Indians: A Critical Bibliography (With Mary K. Grasmick) (Bloomington, Ind., 1980) The Urbanization of American Indians: A Critical Bibliography (with Gary D. Sandefur and Harold G. Grasmick) (Bloomington, Ind., 1982) We Shall Live Again: The 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance Movements as Demographic Repitalization (New York, 1986) American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 (Norman, 1987) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thornton, Russell, 1942 American Indian holocaust and survival. (The Civilization of the American Indian series; v. 186) Bibliography: p. 247. Includes index. 1. IndiansPopulation. 2. AmericaPopulation. I. Title. II. Series E59.P75T48 1987 304.6'08997073 87-40216 ISBN: 0-8061-2220-X (paper) ISBN: 0-8061-2074-6 (cloth) American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 is Volume 186 in The Civilization of the American Indian Series. Copyright © 1987 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A. First edition, 1987. First paperback printing, 1990. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 < previous page page_vi next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_vi.html[1/17/2011 5:09:39 PM] page_vii < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii To my parents, Faye Garrett Thornton and Walter Gilbert Gip Thornton For all those Indian lives unlived < previous page page_vii next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_vii.html[1/17/2011 5:09:39 PM] page_ix < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. TECUMSEH (SHAWNEE) < previous page page_ix next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_ix.html[1/17/2011 5:09:39 PM] page_xi < previous page page_xi next page > Page xi Contents Preface Page xv Acknowledgments xix 1. Arrivals in the Western Hemisphere 3 2. American Indian Population in 1492 15 3. Overview of Decline: 1492 to 18901900 42 4. Three Hundred Years of Decline: 1500 to 1800 60 5. Decline to Nadir: 1800 to 1900 91 6. The Great Ghost Dances 134 7. American Indian Population Recovery: 1900 to Today 159 8. Population Recovery and the Definition and Enumeration of American Indians 186 9. Urbanization of American Indians 225 Appendix: The Native American Population History of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland 241 References 247 Index 283 < previous page page_xi next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_xi.html[1/17/2011 5:09:40 PM] page_xiii < previous page page_xiii next page > Page xiii Illustrations Figures P- 1. American Indian Population Decline and Recovery in the United States Page Area, 14921980 xvii P- Non-Indian Population Growth in the United States Area, 14921980 xvii 2. 2-1.Excavated American Indian Ossuary at Nanjemoy Creek, Maryland 38 4-1.Kiowa Winter, Summer, and Monthly Counts 80 4-2.Sioux Pictographs from Winter Counts 81 5-1.Chief Four Bears of the Mandan, by George Catlin 97 5-2.The Battle of Greasy Grass (or Little Big Horn River) 106 5-3.Ishi, the Last Yahi Yana 112 5-4.The Trail of Tears, by Robert Lindneux 118 6-1.Karok Facial Painting for the 1870 Ghost Dance 137 6-2.Wovoka, the Northern Paiute Ghost Dance Prophet 141 6-3.1890 Sioux Ghost Dance Ceremony 143 6-4.Sitting Bull 150 6-5.Scene of the Wounded Knee Massacre 153 6-6.Chief Big Foot's Body at Wounded Knee 153 6-7.Burying the Dead at Wounded Knee 154 6-8.A Sioux Ghost Dance Shirt Worn at the Wounded Knee Massacre 155 6-9.Fenced Grave at Wounded Knee 156 7-1.Theory of Demographic Transition 164 8-1.The Big Road Census 214 8-2.Cover of 1880 Cherokee Census Schedule 215 Maps 1-1. Location of Beringia 6 5-1. Flight of the Cheyenne 121 5-2. Texas Indian Tribes 128 6-1. Areas Influenced by the 1870 and the 1890 Ghost Dance Religions 135 6-2. The Sioux Reservations, 186889 147 6-3. Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890 152 8-1. Yuki and Tolowa Territories 202 < previous page page_xiii next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_xiii.html[1/17/2011 5:09:40 PM] page_xv < previous page page_xv next page > Page xv 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. Another demographic history exists, however. It is the history of the people Columbus met here: the descendants of the first humans to arrive on the land, the first to populate it, the first to prosper on it. For them 1492 also marked a turning point in population history. The date, however, is not one to be celebrated. Far from it! In the centuries after Columbus these Indians suffered a demographic collapse. Numbers declined sharply; entire tribes, often quickly, were wiped from the face of the earth. This is certainly true of the American Indians on the land that was to become the United States of America. For them the arrival of the Europeans marked the beginning of a long holocaust, although it came not in ovens, as it did for the Jews. The fires that consumed North American Indians were the fevers brought on by newly encountered diseases, the flashes of settlers' and soldiers' guns, the ravages of firewater, the flames of villages and fields burned by the scorched-earth policy of vengeful Euro-Americans. The effects of this holocaust of North American Indians, like that of the Jews, was millions of deaths. In fact, the holocaust of the North American tribes was, in a < previous page page_xv next page > file:///C:/Users/User/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$EX00.794/080612220X/files/page_xv.html[1/17/2011 5:09:41 PM] page_xvi < previous page page_xvi next page > Page xvi way, even more destructive than that of the Jews, since many American Indian peoples became extinct. It is truly remarkable that during these 500 years somehowreasons range from chance to adaptation to determinationmost North American Indian tribes survived the horrendous history. Even more remarkable, numerous tribes have shown recent population gains. Their stories are tributes to human survival instincts, perseverance, and hope. In this book I trace the history of North American Indians as a physical population, considering both their numerical decline after about 1492 and their recent resurgence. I occasionally compare the American Indian population history with that of the non-Indians who later created the United States of America. The 500-year population curves of the two groups are very different, as shown in figures P-1 and P-2.