| Heretofore, Native American
history has been told by anecdote, with even the most ambitious Native
American History classes, documentaries, and books reflecting less than
half of the total picture. As a result, students are left with an
incomplete picture and simply do not understand what happened. By
teaching the Four Directions of Native American History, most of the
history can be told in a one hour lecture or in a few book chapters. |
| We would be the last to consider
the Wounded Knee or Sand Creek Massacres as anecdotal, or the Pueblo
Conquest, or the aggression of De Soto for that matter in and of
themselves, but when compared to the four above protracted episodes,
they do not tell the story. When one considers that the
post-contact United States Indian population was just over 900,000, and
by 1880 the population had decreased to about 300,000, a population
decrease of 600,000, the effect of the Four Directions reflected 75% of
the depopulation. When considering removal, the Four Directions
concept reflected about 90% of the removal from ancestral territories. |
|
There is
no issue more hotly disputed than that on the aboriginal
populations of Native Americans. Estimates for the United States
range from less than a million to more than 14.5 million. One,
however, cannot compare the various estimates without looking
beyond the final numbers. In each case, the seemingly more
conservative numbers are based on populations at the time of
contact for the respective ethnies, whereas the higher numbers
for the year 1492 include a provision for
post-Columbian/pre-contact disease. |
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|
Aboriginal Estimates for
Conterminous United States (In
thousands) |
|
|
| Demograopher |
Year |
Contact |
1492 |
| Mooney |
1910 |
846 |
|
| Mooney |
1928 |
849 |
|
| Kroeber |
1939 |
728 |
|
| Driver |
1969 |
|
2,500 |
| Thornton/Marsh-Thornton |
1981 |
|
1,845 |
| Dobyns |
1983 |
|
14,579 |
| Thornton |
1987 |
|
5,000 |
| Sunderland |
2001 |
904 |
|
|
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|
Historically, smallpox, by far the most deadly disease
introduced into the New World by the Europeans, has a mortality
rate of about 30%. Other deadly diseases included diphtheria,
influenza, measles, pneumonia, scarlet fever, and others
combined probably contributed to less than 10% of the
contribution of smallpox. |
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|
Driver,
Thornton/Marsh-Thornton, and Dobyns, archeological demographers,
theorized that diseases introduced in 1492 by Columbus, or
surely by 1520 by Cortez, spread across the Americas before most
of the native population ever had contact with the Europeans.
However, Ramenofsky (1987) asserts about Dobyns projection of
95% decline: |
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Dobyn’s position on
disease and Native American depopulation contrasts
strongly to that of Kroeber. Yet it is difficult to
accept his estimates of pre-contact aboriginal
populations because of his biases and methods of
reconstruction that derive from incomplete data. |
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No
demographer doubts that depopulation as a result of
post-Columbian/pre-contact disease was significant. Even
Kroeber, by far the most conservative of demographers, states on
the subject: |
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After some hesitation I
have omitted ... accounts of the relations of the
natives with the Whites and events befalling them after
such contact was established. It is not that this
subject is unimportant, or uninteresting, but that I am
not in a position to treat it adequately. |
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Indeed,
several early explorers who were the first to contact ethnies
observed the scars of past smallpox among the Native Americans.
But knowing that the phenomenon existed and quantifying it are
two different issues. The NAHDB (Native American Historical Data
Base constructed by Larry Sunderland) reflects historical
depopulation in the United States due to disease, primarily
smallpox, at about 200 thousand, albeit this estimate is based
on unstable statistics. It also reflects the nature of the
epidemics as often affecting large geographical areas of
averaging 140 thousand square miles per epidemic on the mobile
Great Plains to an average of 14 thousand square miles per
epidemic in regions of sedentary cultures. But most of the 45 or
so outbreaks affected small areas and only a few ethnies at a
time during historical times until 1900. In no case did a single
epidemic sweep the continent. These are numbers in no way
support Dobyns estimates of 20:1. |
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None of
the archeological demographers seem to dispute Mooney’s
estimates for the conterminous United States but do dispute
Kroeber’s estimates for California, his area of expertise.
Indeed they use, for the most part, Mooney’s numbers as a
basis for their estimates. Kroeber’s estimates are disputable
for California and Cook, Baumhoff, Bean, and Smith have done so,
refining Kroeber’s estimate to a combined 149 thousand
reflected herein for the contact population. Once again, 1492
California populations estimated by Cook at 300 thousand and
even Dobyns at 336 thousand are not necessarily unreasonable
though an estimate of 750,000 by Powers (1976) seems to be quite
high. |
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So in the
final analysis there is really relatively insignificant dispute
once the apples are put in the barrel with the apples and the
oranges are put in the barrel with the oranges, except for
Dobyns 1492 estimates which are clearly off base. Indeed Kroeber
was not too far off for California except in the far northern
part of the state. And since the post-Columbia/pre-contact
disease is a broad statistic based on unstable data, it cannot
reasonable be applied to a single ethnie. It is necessarily a
broad generalization. |
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