The Tip of an Iceberg

Pre-Columbian Indian Demography and Some Implications for Revisionism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4222623
AutoresWilbur R Jacobs (autor de correspondencia)
Año1974
Volumen31
Número1
Páginas123
Fecha de publicación1974-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1918985
OpenAlexW2334976605
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15

A LTHOUGH controversies about the nature of the American Revolution and related topics have not diminished our interest in early American Indian-white history, we have largely ignored recent demographic studies of the American Indian which may well give new direction to much of the rationale of colonial growth and progress. While it is difficult to make positive judgments, several scholars (mostly nonhistorians) have suggested an entirely new version of early Indian-white relations showing that Europeans had an overwhelming role in triggering an enormous depopulation of native American people. What is involved here is truly one of the most fascinating numbers games in history, one that may well have a determining influence upon interpretive themes not only of early United States history but also of the history of all the Americas. The basic questions are these: is there evidence to show that there were some one hundred million Indians in the Western Hemisphere at the time of discovery? Further, is it true that this evidence may give us a new figure of nearly ten million Indians in the North America of 1492? And finally, is it now generally accepted by anthropologists that the figures of James Mooney, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Angel Rosenblat-some one million Indians for preColumbian North America and eight to fourteen million Indians for the Western Hemipshere-are now out of date? If the new estimates for native American population (allowing for disagreement among authorities but general agreement that Mooney, Kroeber, and Rosenblat are now of only relative value) are to be considered, we must now cope with new evidence that indicates there were between fifty and one hundred million Indians in possession of the New World on the day that it was discovered. Thus we have an invasion of Europeans into areas that were even more densely settled than parts of Europe. There is even the possibility that in the late fifteenth century the Western

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