Population figures for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before European colonization have been difficult to establish. Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million, though many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million by the end of the 20th century.
The monarchs of the nascent Spanish Empire decided to fund Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492, leading to the establishment of colonies and marking the beginning of the migration of millions of Europeans and Africans to the Americas. While the population of European settlers, primarily from Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands, along with African slaves, grew steadily, the Indigenous population plummeted. There are numerous reasons for the population decline, including exposure to Eurasian diseases such as influenza, pneumonic plagues, and smallpox; direct violence by settlers and their allies through war and forced removal; and the general disruption of societies. Scholarly disputes remain over the degree to which each factor contributed or should be emphasized; some modern scholars have categorized it as a genocide, claiming that deliberate, systematic actions by Europeans were the primary cause. Traditional scholars have disputed this characterization, maintaining that incidental disease exposure was the primary cause.
Population overview
Pre-Columbian population figures are difficult to estimate because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence. Estimates range from 8–112 million. Scholars have varied widely on the estimated size of the Indigenous populations prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact. Estimates are made by extrapolations from small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used the existing estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people. Nonetheless, more recent estimates still range widely. In 1992, Denevan suggested that the total population was approximately 53.9 million and the populations by region were, approximately, 3.8 million for the United States and Canada, 17.2 million for Mexico, 5.6 million for Central America, 3 million for the Caribbean, 15.7 million for the Andes and 8.6 million for lowland South America. A 2020 genetic study suggests that prior estimates for the pre-Columbian Caribbean population may have been at least tenfold too large. Historian David Stannard estimates that the extermination of Indigenous peoples took the lives of 100 million people: "...the total extermination of many American Indian peoples and the near-extermination of others, in numbers that eventually totaled close to 100,000,000." A 2019 study estimates the pre-Columbian Indigenous population contained more than 60 million people, but dropped to 6 million by 1600, based on a drop in atmospheric CO2 during that period. Other studies have disputed this conclusion.
The Indigenous population of the Americas in 1492 was not necessarily at a high point and may actually have already been in decline in some areas. Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a low point by the early 20th century.
Using an estimate of approximately 37 million people in Mexico, Central and South America in 1492 (including 6 million in the Aztec Empire, 5–10 million in the Mayan States, 11 million in what is now Brazil, and 12 million in the Inca Empire), the lowest estimates give a population decrease from all causes of 80% by the end of the 17th century (nine million people in 1650). Latin America would match its 15th-century population early in the 19th century; it numbered 17 million in 1800, 30 million in 1850, 61 million in 1900, 105 million in 1930, 218 million in 1960, 361 million in 1980, and 563 million in 2005. In the last three decades of the 16th century, the population of present-day Mexico dropped to about one million people. The Maya population is today estimated at six million, which is about the same as at the end of the 15th century, according to some estimates. In what is now Brazil, the Indigenous population declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated four million to some 300,000. Over 60 million Brazilians possess at least one Native South American ancestor, according to a DNA study.
While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, estimates range from 3.8 million, as mentioned above, to 7 million people to a high of 18 million. Scholars vary on the estimated size of the Indigenous population in what is now Canada prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact. During the late 15th century is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million, with a figure of 500,000 currently accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health. Although not without conflict, European Canadians' early interactions with First Nations and Inuit populations were relatively peaceful. However repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza, measles, and smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity), combined with other effects of European contact, resulted in a twenty-five percent to eighty percent Indigenous population decrease post-contact. Roland G Robertson suggests that during the late 1630s, smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot (Huron), who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in the area of New France. In 1871 there was an enumeration of the Indigenous population within the limits of Canada at the time, showing a total of only 102,358 individuals. From 2006 to 2016, the Indigenous population has grown by 42.5 percent, four times the national rate. According to the 2011 Canadian census, Indigenous peoples (First Nations – 851,560, Inuit – 59,445 and Métis – 451,795) numbered at 1,400,685, or 4.3% of the country's total population.
The population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of cultural and racial superiority. Historian Francis Jennings argued, "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not possibly have created or sustained large populations." In 1998, Africanist Historian David Henige said many population estimates are the result of arbitrary formulas applied from unreliable sources.
Estimations
| Author | Date | US and Canada | Mexico | Mesoamerica | Caribbean | Andes | Patagonia and Amazonia | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapper | 1924 | 2–3 | 12–15 | 5–6 | 3–4 | 12–15 | 3–5 | 37–48.5 |
| Kroeber | 1939 | 0.9 | 3.2 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 3 | 1 | 8.4 |
| Steward | 1949 | 1 | 4.5 | 0.74 | 0.22 | 6.13 | 2.9 | 15.49 |
| Rosenblat | 1954 | 1 | 4.5 | 0.8 | 0.3 | 4.75 | 2.03 | 13.38 |
| Dobyns | 1966 | 9.8–12.25 | 30–37.5 | 10.8–13.5 | 0.44–0.55 | 30–37.5 | 9–11.25 | 90.04–112.55 |
| Ubelaker | 1988 | 1.213–2.639 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Denevan | 1992 | 3.79 | 17.174 | 5.625 | 3 | 15.696 | 8.619 | 53.904 |
| Snow | 2001 | 3.44 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Alchon | 2003 | 3.5 | 16–18 | 5–6 | 2–3 | 13–15 | 7–8 | 46.5–53.5 |
| Thornton | 2005 | 7 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Peros | 2009 | 2.5 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Milner | 2010 | 3.8 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
Estimations by tribe
Population size for Native American tribes is very difficult to state definitively, but at least one writer has made estimates, often based on an assumed proportion of the number of warriors to total population for the tribe. Typical proportions were 5 people per one warrior and at least 1 up to 5 warriors (therefore at least 5–25 people) per lodge, cabin or house.
| Rank | Cultural Area | Region | Tribe or nation | Highest pop. estimate | Year | Towns/ villages | Lodges/cabins/houses/tents/tipis etc. | Sources of estimates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Sioux | 150,000 – 50,000 (1841) | 1762 | 40+ | 5,000 lodges in 1846, averaging over ten people per lodge | Lt. James Gorrell and A. Ramsey |
| 2 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Choctaw | 125,000 | 1718 | 102 | 102 towns enumerated by Swanton | Le Page du Pratz and J. R. Swanton |
| 3 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Illinois | 100,000 | 1658 | 60 | Jean de Quen | |
| 4a | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Shoshone | 60,000 | 1820 | (number without 20,000 East Shoshone) | Jedidiah Morse | |
| 4b | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Eastern Shoshone | 20,000 | 1820 | Jedidiah Morse | ||
| 5 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Tigua (Tiwa) | 78,100+ | 1626 | 20 | 7,000 houses only in two largest pueblos | Alonso de Benavides |
| 6a | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Blackfoot in the US | 37,500 – 30,000 (1841) | 1836 | (60,000 in 1841 & approx. 75,000 in 1836, ca. half of them in the US) | George Catlin | |
| 6b | Great Plains | Prairies, Canada | Blackfoot in Canada | 37,500 – 30,000 (1841) | 1836 | (60,000 in 1841 & approx. 75,000 in 1836, ca. half of them in Canada) | George Catlin | |
| 7 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Iroquois | 70,000 | 1690 | 226 | Nearly 60 towns destroyed in 1779 | L. A. de Lahontan and John R. Swanton |
| 8 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Apache | 60,000 | 1700 | José de Urrutia | ||
| 9 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Muscogee confederacy including Hitchiti | 50,000 | 1794 | 100 | (at least 100 towns in 1789 per Henry Knox) | James Seagrove and Henry Knox |
| 10 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Hopi | 50,000 | 1584 | 7 | Antonio de Espejo | |
| 11 | NE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Shawnee | 50,000 – 15,000 (1702) | 1540 | 38+ | (at first contact est. 50,000 & 15,000 in 1702) | M. A. Jaimes & Pierre d'Iberville |
| 12 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Crow (Apsáalooke) | 45,000 | 1834 | Samuel Gardner Drake | ||
| 13 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Hurons (Wyandot) | 40,000 | 1632 | 32 | Gabriel Sagard and J. Lalemant | |
| 14 | Great Plains | Texas Annexation | Comanche | 40,000 | 1832 | George Catlin and J. Morse | ||
| 15 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Tano/Maguas including Pecos | 40,000 | 1584 | 11 | Antonio de Espejo | |
| 16 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Miami | 40,000 | 1657 | 20+ | (one of their towns had 400 families in 1751) | Gabriel Druillettes |
| 17 | NE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Ioways | 40,000 | 1762 | 16+ | (at least 16 towns in the early 19th century) | Lt. James Gorrell |
| 18a | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Piegan in the US | 30,000 | 1700 | (ca. 3/4 in the US, ca. 6,000 lodges) | George Bird Grinnell | |
| 18b | Great Plains | Alberta, Canada | Piegan in Canada | 10,000 | 1700 | (ca. 1/4 in Canada, ca. 2,000 lodges) | George Bird Grinnell | |
| 19 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Pawnee | 38,000 | 1719 | 38 | 5,000 – 6,000 cabins/lodges & 7,600 warriors | Claude Du Tisne and L. Krzywicki |
| 20a | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Ojibwe in the US | 18,000 | 1860 | (half in the US and half in Canada) | Emmanuel Domenech | |
| 20b | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Ojibwe in Canada | 18,000 | 1860 | (half in the US and half in Canada) | Emmanuel Domenech | |
| 21a | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Assiniboine in the US | 17,500 | 1823 | 15+ | (ca. half in the US, ca. 1,500 lodges) | W. H. Keating and G. C. Beltrami |
| 21b | Great Plains | Prairies, Canada | Assiniboine in Canada | 17,500 | 1823 | 15+ | (ca. half in Canada, ca. 1,500 lodges) | W. H. Keating and G. C. Beltrami |
| 22 | NE Woodlands | Acadia, Canada | Mi'kmaq | 35,000 | 1500 | Virginia P. Miller | ||
| 23 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Apalachee | 34,000 | 1635 | 11+ | J. R. Swanton | |
| 24 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Navajo (Diné) | 30,000+ | 1626 | In 1910 still numbered 29,624 people in Arizona and New Mexico | Alonso de Benavides | |
| 25 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Cherokee | 30,000 | 1735 | 201 | 201 towns enumerated by Swanton | J. Adair and Ga. Hist. Coll., II |
| 26 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Tuscarora | 30,000 | 1600 | 24 | D. Cusick | |
| 27 | NE Woodlands | New England | Narragansett | 30,000 | 1642 | 8+ | S. G. Drake and J. R. Swanton | |
| 28 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Mohican confederacy | 30,000 | 1600 | 16+ | J. A. Maurault and J. R. Swanton | |
| 29 | NE Woodlands | New England | Massachusett | 30,000 | 1600 | 23+ | J. A. Maurault and J. R. Swanton | |
| 30 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Jemez Pueblo | 30,000 | 1584 | 11 | Antonio de Espejo | |
| 31 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Timucua tribes | 30,000 | 1635 | 141 | 44 missions in 1635: 30,000 Christian Indians | J. R. Swanton |
| 32 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Clayoquot (Clayoquat) | 30,000 | 1780 | (30,000 under the rule of chief Wickaninnish) | Ho. Doc. 1839–1840 and Meares | |
| 33a | Subarctic & Arctic | Saskatchewan, Canada | Woods Cree in Saskatchewan | 5,600 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 33b | Subarctic & Arctic | Manitoba, Canada | Cree living in Manitoba | 4,250 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 33c | Subarctic & Arctic | Alberta, Canada | Woodland Cree in Alberta | 3,050 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 33d | Subarctic & Arctic | Ontario, Canada | Swampy Cree in Ontario | 2,100 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 33e | Subarctic & Arctic | Ontario, Canada | Moose Cree (Monsoni) | 5,000 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 33f | Great Plains | Prairies, Canada | Plains Cree | 7,000 | 1853 | David G. Mandelbaum | ||
| 34a | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Ute living in Utah | 13,050 | 1867 | Indian Affairs 1867 | ||
| 34b | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Ute living in Colorado | 7,000 | 1866 | Indian Affairs 1866 | ||
| 34c | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Ute living in New Mexico | 6,000 | 1846–1854 | H. H. Davis and Indian Affairs 1854 | ||
| 35 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Mabila (Mobile) | 25,000 | 1540 | Mississippian chiefdom under chief Tuskaloosa, about 5,000 warriors | Ludwik Krzywicki | |
| 36 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Chinook tribes | 22,000 | 1780 | 1,000 lodges just among the Lower Chinook | James Mooney and Duflot de Mofras | |
| 37 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Mascouten | 20,000 | 1679 | They consisted of 12 sub-tribes | Claude Dablon | |
| 38 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Chickasaw | 20,000 | 1687 | 27+ | Louis Hennepin | |
| 39 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Neutrals | 20,000 | 1616 | 40 | Samuel de Champlain | |
| 40 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Zuni Pueblo | 20,000 | 1584 | 12 | Antonio de Espejo | |
| 41 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Tewa/Ubates | 20,000 | 1584 | 5 | Antonio de Espejo | |
| 42 | NE Woodlands | New England | Pequots | 20,000 | 1600 | 21 | Daniel Gookin and J. R. Swanton | |
| 43 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Skidi | 20,000 | 1687 | 22 | At least 4,400 cabins (on average at least 200 per town) | George Bird Grinnell |
| 44 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Natchez | 20,000 | 1715 | 60 | Pierre Charlevoix | |
| 45 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Punames | 20,000 | 1584 | 5 | Zia was the largest of 5 Puname pueblos | Antonio de Espejo |
| 46 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Lenape (Delaware) | 18,400 | 1635–1648 | 118 | (3,680 warriors in 27 divisions or "kingdoms") | R. Evelin, Th. Donaldson & Swanton |
| 47 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Mandan | 17,500 – 15,000 (1836) | 1738 | 17 | 1,000+ lodges and 3,500 warriors | W. Sanstead & Indian Affairs 1836 |
| 48 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Atsina (Gros Ventre) | 16,800 | 1837 | Still reported at 16,800 in 1841 | Indian Affairs 1837 | |
| 49 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Powhatan confederacy | 16,600 | 1616 | 161 | (3,320 warriors in 1616) | William Strachey and John Smith |
| 50 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Nanticoke confederacy | 16,500 | 1600 | 16+ | (1,100 warriors in 4 tribes, in total 12 tribes) | John Smith and J. R. Swanton |
| 51 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Arikaras | 16,000 | 1700 | 48 | Kinglsey M. Bray | |
| 52 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Vancouver Island Salish | 15,500 | 1780 | (Coast Salish on Vancouver Island) | Herbert C. Taylor | |
| 53 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Arapaho | 15,250 | 1812 | M. R. Stuart | ||
| 54 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Wichita confederacy | 15,000+ | 1772 | (3,000+ warriors) | Juan de Ripperda | |
| 55 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Keres | 15,000 | 1584 | 7 | Antonio de Espejo | |
| 56 | NE Woodlands | New England | Abenaki | 15,000 | 1600 | 31 | J. A. Maurault and J. R. Swanton | |
| 57 | NE Woodlands | New England | Pennacook confederacy | 15,000 | 1674 | Daniel Gookin | ||
| 58 | NE Woodlands | New England | Wampanoag (mainland) | 15,000 | 1600 | 30 | Daniel Gookin and J. R. Swanton | |
| 59 | NE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Missouria | 15,000 | 1764 | H. Bouquet and J. Buchanan | ||
| 60 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Hidatsa | 15,000 | 1835 | William M. Denevan | ||
| 61 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Ottawa (Odawa) | 15,000 – 13,150 (1825) | 1777 | (3,000 warriors in 1777) | L. Houck and J. C. Colhoun | |
| 62 | Southwest | Texas Annexation | Coahuiltecan tribes | 15,000 | 1690 | James Mooney | ||
| 63 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Mishinimaki | 15,000 | 1600 | 30 | Claude Dablon | |
| 64 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Taos Pueblo (Yuraba) | 15,000 | 1540 | 1+ | Relacion del Suceso | |
| 65 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Erie | 14,500 | 1653 | J. N. B. Hewitt | ||
| 66 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Kwakiutl tribes excluding Haisla | 14,500 | 1780 | Herbert C. Taylor | ||
| 67 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Nootka (Nutka) tribes | 14,000 | 1780 | Herbert C. Taylor | ||
| 68 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Wappinger confederacy | 13,500 | 1600 | 68 | E. J. Boesch and J. R. Swanton | |
| 69 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Mississaugas (Messassagnes) | 12,000+ | 1744 | 3+ | (2,400 warriors in 3 large towns) | Arthur Dobbs |
| 70 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Coast Salish (except VI) | 12,000 | 1835 | (includes 7,100 mainland Cowichan / Stalo and 1,400 mainland Comox) | Wilson Duff & J. Mooney | |
| 71 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Franklin, Canada | District of Franklin Inuit | 12,000 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 72 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Lekwiltok | 10,520 | 1839 | HBC Indian Census 1839 | ||
| 73 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Puget Sound Salish (Lushootseed) tribes | 10,300 | 1780 | Herbert C. Taylor | ||
| 74 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Catawba | 10,000 | 1700 | R. Mills and H. Lewis Scaife | ||
| 75 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Akimel O'odham (Pima) | 10,000 | 1850 | S. Mowry | ||
| 76 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Cheyenne | 10,000 | 1856 | 1,000 lodges and 2,000 warriors | Thomas S. Twiss | |
| 77 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Chilkat | 10,000 | 1869 | F. K. Louthan | ||
| 78 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Tompiro | 10,000 | 1626 | 15 | Alonso de Benavides | |
| 79 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Menominee | 10,000 | 1778 | (2,000 warriors) | H. R. Schoolcraft | |
| 80 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Mohave (Mojave) | 10,000 | 1869 | William Abraham Bell | ||
| 81 | Southwest | Texas Annexation | Jumanos | 10,000 | 1584 | 5+ | 5 large towns | Antonio de Espejo |
| 82 | SE Woodlands | Florida Purchase | Seminole | 10,000 | 1836 | 93 | (other figures: 4,883 people in 1821 and 6,385 people in 1822) | N. G. Taylor and Capt. Hugh Young |
| 83 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Calusa | 10,000 | 1570 | 56 | Lopez de Velasco & J. R. Swanton | |
| 84 | Great Plains | Texas Annexation | Kichai, Waco, Tawakoni | 10,000 | 1719 | (2,000 warriors) | Benard de La Harpe | |
| 85 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Pisquow (Piskwau) and Sinkiuse-Columbia | 10,000 | 1780 | (including Wenatchi / Wenatchee) | James Teit | |
| 86 | NE Woodlands | Quebec, Canada | St. Lawrence Iroquoians | 10,000 | 1500 | Also known as Laurentians | Gary Warrick & Louis Lesage | |
| 87 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Bitterroot Salish (Flathead Salish) | 9,000 | 1821 | (1,800 warriors) | M. R. Stuart | |
| 88 | Great Basin | Oregon Country | Bannock and Diggers | 9,000 | 1848 | 1,200 lodges of southern Bannock (in 1829) | Joseph L. Meek and Jim Bridger | |
| 89 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Piro Pueblo | 9,000 | 1500 | 14 | John R. Swanton and Alonso de Benavides | |
| 90 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Caddo tribes | 8,500 | 1690 | James Mooney | ||
| 91 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Haida (except Kaigani) | 8,400 | 1787 | 42+ | C. F. Newcombe | |
| 92 | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Paiute | 8,200 | 1859 | John Weiss Forney | ||
| 93 | NE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Osage | 8,000 | 1819 | 17 | (1,500 families in 1702,1,600 warriors in 1764 and 8,000 people in 1819) | Th. Nuttall, Iberville and H. Bouquet |
| 94 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Kansa (Kaw) | 8,000 | 1764 | (1,600 warriors) | Henry Bouquet | |
| 95 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Nez Perce | 8,000 | 1806 | Isaac Ingalls Stevens | ||
| 96 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Tionontati (Petun) | 8,000 | 1600 | 9 | 9 towns, 600 families in the main town | James Mooney & Jes. Rel. XXXV |
| 97 | Subarctic & Arctic | Canada | Chipewyan | 7,500 | 1812 | Samuel Gardner Drake | ||
| 98 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Secwepemc (Shuswap) | 7,200 | 1850 | James Teit and A. C. Anderson | ||
| 99 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Omaha, Ponca | 7,200 | 1702 | Pierre d'Iberville | ||
| 100 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Yamasee | 7,000 | 1702 | 10 | (1,400 warriors) | Guillaume Delisle |
| 101 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Conoy (Piscataway) | 7,000+ | 1600 | 13+ | W. M. Denevan & J. R. Swanton | |
| 102 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Umpqua | 7,000 | 1835 | Samuel Parker | ||
| 103 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Tsimshian of British Columbia and Nisga'a | 7,000 | 1780 | (includes Kitksan / Gitxsan and Kitsun tribes) | James Mooney | |
| 104 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Tohono Oʼodham (Papago) | 6,800 | 1863 | 19 | Indian Affairs 1863 | |
| 105 | NE Woodlands | Quebec, Canada | Algonquin (Anicinàpe) | 6,500 | 1860 | Emmanuel Domenech | ||
| 106 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Sauk (Sac) | 6,500 | 1786 | Wisconsin Hist. Coll., XII | ||
| 107 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Potawatomi | 6,500 | 1829 | Peter Buell Porter & McKenney | ||
| 108 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Meskwaki (Fox) | 6,400 | 1835 | Cutting Marsh in Wisconsin Hist. Coll., XV | ||
| 109 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Acoma Pueblo | 6,000 | 1584 | 1+ | 500+ houses | Antonio de Espejo |
| 110 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Wea | 6,000 | 1718 | 5 | (1,200 warriors) | N. Y. Col. Dcts., IX |
| 111 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Quapaw (Arkansa) | 6,000 | 1541 | 4+ | Fidalgo D'Elvas | |
| 112 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Yakama | 6,000 | 1857 | (1,200 warriors) | A. N. Armstrong | |
| 113 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Montauk | 6,000 | 1600 | 20 | J. R. Swanton | |
| 114 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Alsea, Siuslaw, Yaquina and Luckton | 6,000 | 1780 | 110 | (tribes of Yakonan language family) | James Mooney and James Owen Dorsey |
| 115 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) | 5,800 | 1818 | Jedidiah Morse | ||
| 116 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Rogue River Indians (Tututni tribes) | 5,600 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 117 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Kutenai (Ktunaxa) | 5,600 | 1820 | Jedidiah Morse | ||
| 118 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Quechan (Yuma) | 5,500 | 1775–1855 | A. F. Bandelier, Ten Kate | ||
| 119 | Subarctic & Arctic | Quebec, Canada | Innu and Naskapi | 5,500 | 1600 | 17+ | James Mooney and J. R. Swanton | |
| 120 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Kiowa | 5,450 | 1805–1807 | Z. M. Pike | ||
| 121 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Palouse (Palus) | 5,400 | 1780 | James Mooney and J. R. Swanton | ||
| 122 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Susquehanna (Conestoga) | 5,000 | 1600 | 20+ | James Mooney and J. R. Swanton | |
| 123 | NE Woodlands | New England | Pocumtuk | 5,000 | 1600 | Pocumtuc History | ||
| 124 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Nlaka'pamux | 5,000 | 1858 | James Teit & A. C. Anderson | ||
| 125 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Dakelh (Carrier) | 5,000 | 1835 | A. C. Anderson and J. Mooney | ||
| 126 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Klikitat (Klickitat) | 5,000 | 1829 | (1,000 warriors under chief Casanow) | Paul Kane | |
| 127 | SE Woodlands | Texas Annexation | Hasinai confederacy | 5,000 | 1716 | Herbert Eugene Bolton | ||
| 128 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Makah | 5,000+ | 1805 | (more than 1,000 warriors) | John R. Jewitt | |
| 129 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Yuchi (Euchee also known as Chisca) | 5,000 – 2,500 (in 1777) | 1550 | (at least 500 warriors in year 1777) | William Bartram & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 130 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Halyikwamai | 5,000 | 1605 | Juan de Oñate | ||
| 131 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | District of Mackenzie Inuit | 4,800 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 132 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Chilcotin (Tsilkotin) | 4,600 | 1793 | (by 1888 population was 10% of 1793 level) | A. G. Morice and HBC employees | |
| 133 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Chopunnish | 4,300 | 1806 | Extinct native American tribes of North America | ||
| 134 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Honniasont | 4,000+ | 1662 | (800+ warriors) | John R. Swanton | |
| 135 | NE Woodlands | New England | Niantic | 4,000 | 1500 | Capers Jones | ||
| 136 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Chitimacha | 4,000 | 1699 | 300+ cabins and 800 warriors | Benard de La Harpe | |
| 137 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Lillooet (Stʼatʼimc) | 4,000 | 1780 | James Mooney and J. Teit | ||
| 138 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Modoc & Klamath | 4,000 | 1868 | Indian Affairs 1868 | ||
| 139 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Weapemeoc (Yeopim) | 4,000 | 1585 | 5+ | (800 warriors) | S. R. Grenville |
| 140 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Sahaptin | 4,000 | 1857 | (Tenino, Tygh, Wyam, John Day, Tilquni) | A. N. Armstrong | |
| 141 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Guale | 4,000 | 1650 | J. R. Swanton | ||
| 142 | Subarctic & Arctic | Canada | Kutchin (Loucheux) | 4,000 | 1871 | Censuses of Canada, 1665 to 1871 | ||
| 143 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Skitswish | 4,000 | 1800 | James Teit | ||
| 144 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Wappatoo tribes | 3,600 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 145 | Subarctic & Arctic | Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada | Labrador Inuit | 3,600 | 1600 | J. Mooney & Kroeber | ||
| 146 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Nisqually | 3,600 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 147 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Chowanoc | 3,500+ | 1585 | 5 | (1585: 700 warriors just in one of five towns) | Carolina – The Native Americans |
| 148 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Acolapissa | 3,500 | 1600 | 120+ cabins | Acolapissa History | |
| 149 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Colville | 3,500 | 1806 | Isaac Ingalls Stevens | ||
| 150 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Babine (Witsuwitʼen) | 3,500 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 151 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Havasupai and Tonto Apaches | 3,500 | 1854 | Amiel Weeks Whipple | ||
| 152 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Plains Apache (Kiowa-Apache) | 3,375 | 1818 | Jedidiah Morse | ||
| 153 | Subarctic & Arctic | British Columbia, Canada | Sekani (Tse'khene) | 3,200 | 1780 | James Mooney and Sekani Indians of Canada | ||
| 154 | Subarctic & Arctic | Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada | Beothuk | 3,050 | 1500 | Ralph T. Pastore, Leslie Upton | ||
| 155 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Alabama (Alibamu) | 3,000 | 1764 | 6 | (600 warriors) | Henry Bouquet |
| 156 | NE Woodlands | New England | Nantucket | 3,000 | 1660 | 10 | J. Barber in J. Chase and J. R. Swanton | |
| 157 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Nottoway | 3,000 | 1586 | (600 warriors) | R. Lane in Hakluyt, VIII | |
| 158 | Great Plains | Texas Annexation | Tonkawa | 3,000 | 1814 | (600 warriors) | John F. Schermerhorn | |
| 159 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Wallawalla (Walula) | 3,000 | 1848 | Miss A. J. Allen | ||
| 160 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Spokan (Spokane) | 3,000 | 1848 | Joseph L. Meek | ||
| 161 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Okinagan (Syilx) | 3,000 | 1780 | Also spelled Okanagan | James Teit | |
| 162 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Nipissing | 3,000 | 1764 | (600 warriors) | Th. Hutchins in H. R. Schoolcraft | |
| 163 | NE Woodlands | New England | Shawomets and Cowsetts (Cowesets) | 3,000 | 1500 | Capers Jones | ||
| 164 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Halchidhoma | 3,000 | 1799 | 8 | (according to Juan de Onate – 8 towns in 1604) | J. Cortez |
| 165 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Piipaash (Maricopa) | 3,000 | 1799 | J. Cortez and Francisco Garcés | ||
| 166 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Taposa and Ibitoupa | 3,000 | 1699 | Baudry de Lozieres | ||
| 167 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Multnomah | 3,000 | 1830 | (decimated by epidemics in 1830s) | Hall J. Kelley | |
| 168 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Keewatin, Canada | District of Keewatin Inuit | 3,000 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 169 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Potano | 3,000 | 1650 | James Mooney | ||
| 170 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Cocopah | 3,000 | 1775 | 9 | Francisco Garcés and de Oñate | |
| 171 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Kalapuya tribes | 3,000 | 1780 | Eight tribes or bands | James Mooney | |
| 172 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Cajuenche (Cawina) | 3,000 | 1680 | James Mooney | ||
| 173 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Pueblo Picuris | 3,000 | 1680 | 1+ | Agustín de Vetancurt | |
| 174 | NE Woodlands | New England | Martha's Vineyard Wampanoag (Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, Aquinnah) | 3,000 | 1642 | 8 | Lloyd C. M. Hare and J. R. Swanton | |
| 175 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Kickapoo | 3,000 | 1759 | J. R. Swanton | ||
| 176 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Watlala | 2,800 | 1805 | Lewis and Clark | ||
| 177 | Southwest | Texas Annexation | Karankawa | 2,800 | 1690 | James Mooney | ||
| 178 | NE Woodlands | Acadia, Canada | Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) | 2,750 | 1764 | (550 warriors) | Th. Hutchins in H. R. Schoolcraft | |
| 179 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Heiltsuk (Bellabella) and Haisla | 2,700 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 180 | NE Woodlands | New England | Mohegan | 2,500 | 1680 | 21 | (500 warriors) | Mass. Hist. Coll. and J. R. Swanton |
| 181 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Clackamas | 2,500 | 1780 | 11 | James Mooney | |
| 182 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Yavapai | 2,500 | 1869 | J. Ross Browne | ||
| 183 | NE Woodlands | New England | Nipmuc | 2,500 | 1500 | 29 | Capers Jones and J. R. Swanton | |
| 184 | Subarctic & Arctic | Northwest Territories, Canada | Inuvialuit | 2,500 | 1850 | Jessica M. Shadian, Mark Nuttall | ||
| 185 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Manhasset (Manhanset) | 2,500 | 1500 | (500+ warriors) | E. M. Ruttenber | |
| 186 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Snohomish | 2,500 | 1844 | Duflot de Mofras | ||
| 187 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Mosopelea (Ofo), Koroa, and Tioux (Tiou) | 2,450 | 1700 | J. R. Swanton | ||
| 188 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Cowlitz | 2,400 | 1822 | 3 | Jedidiah Morse | |
| 189 | NE Woodlands | New England | Penobscot | 2,250 | 1702 | 14 | (450 warriors) | N. H. Hist. Coll., I and J. R. Swanton |
| 190 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Tunica | 2,250 | 1698 | 7 | 260 cabins and 450 warriors | J. G. Shea and J. R. Swanton |
| 191 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Kalispel | 2,250 | 1835–1850 | (450 warriors) | HBC agents & Joseph Lane | |
| 192 | Great Plains | Alberta, Canada | Sarcee (Tsuutʼina) | 2,200 | 1832 | 220 tents, on average 10 people per tent | George Catlin and John Maclean | |
| 193 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Tillamook | 2,200 | 1820 | 10 | Jedidiah Morse | |
| 194 | Subarctic & Arctic | Yukon, Canada | Yukon Inuit | 2,200 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 195 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Tapanash (Eneeshur) including Skinpah | 2,200 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 196 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Yazoo | 2,000+ | 1700 | Dumont de Montigny | ||
| 197 | Subarctic & Arctic | British Columbia, Canada | Nahani and Tahltan in British Columbia | 2,000 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 198 | NE Woodlands | New England | Nauset | 2,000 | 1600 | 24 | W. M. Denevan & J. R. Swanton | |
| 199 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Wenro | 2,000 | 1600 | J. N. B. Hewitt | ||
| 200 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | Awokanak (Slavey, Etchaottine) | 2,000 | 1857 | Emile Petitot | ||
| 201 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Hualapai (Walapai) | 2,000 | 1869 | J. Ross Browne | ||
| 202 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Cayuse | 2,000 | 1835 | Samuel Parker | ||
| 203 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Sinixt (Senijextee) | 2,000+ | 1780 | 20+ | James Teit | |
| 204 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Nuxalk (Bellacoola) | 2,000 | 1835 | Wilson Duff | ||
| 205 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Quatsino | 2,000 | 1839 | HBC Indian Census 1839 | ||
| 206 | Great Plains | Saskatchewan, Canada | Fall Indians (Alannar) | 2,000 | 1804 | Extinct Native American tribes of North America | ||
| 207 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Samish | 2,000+ | 1845 | Edmund Clare Fitzhugh | ||
| 208 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Athabasca, Canada | Etheneldeli | 2,000 | 1875 | Émile Petitot | ||
| 209 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Klallam | 2,000 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 210 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Chakchiuma | 2,000 | 1702 | 400 families in 1702 | Bienville | |
| 211 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Coos and Miluk | 2,000 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 212 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Qnigyuma (Jalliquamay) | 2,000 | 1680 | James Mooney | ||
| 213 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Cusabo and Cusso | 1,900 | 1600 | (Cusabo 1,300 and Cusso 600) | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 214 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Chimnapum (Chamnapum) | 1,860 | 1805 | 42 lodges | Lewis and Clark | |
| 215 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Wanapum (Wanapam) | 1,800 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 216 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Squamish (Squawmish) | 1,800 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 217 | Subarctic & Arctic | Nunavik, Quebec, Canada | Nunavik Inuit | 1,800 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 218 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Houma | 1,750 | 1699 | 140 cabins and 350 warriors | Pierre d'Iberville | |
| 219 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Shahala | 1,700 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 220 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Sanpoil | 1,700 | 1780 | 45+ houses | Verne F. Ray and George Gibbs | |
| 221 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Coquille | 1,650 | 1800 | 33 | James Owen Dorsey | |
| 222 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Wateree (Guatari) | 1,600 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 223 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Tlatskanai | 1,600 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 224 | NE Woodlands | New England | Passamaquoddy | 1,600 | 1690 | 320 warriors | Wendell | |
| 225 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Westo and Stono | 1,600 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 226 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | Dogrib (Tlicho) | 1,500 | 1875 | Emile Petitot | ||
| 227 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Attacapa (Atakapa) | 1,500 | 1650 | James Mooney | ||
| 228 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Otoe | 1,500 | 1815 | (300 warriors) | William Clark | |
| 229 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Wasco | 1,500 | 1838 | G. Hines | ||
| 230 | Subarctic & Arctic | Yukon, Canada | Hankutchin | 1,500 | 1851 | (three subdivisions x 100 warriors each) | John Richardson | |
| 231 | NE Woodlands | New England | Podunk | 1,500+ | 1675 | (300 warriors fought in King Philip's War) | E. Stiles | |
| 232 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Saponi | 1,500 | 1600 | 2 | Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 233 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Waxhaw and Sugeree | 1,500 | 1600 | 2 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 234 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Manahoac | 1,500 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 235 | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Washo | 1,500 | 1800 | A. L. Kroeber | ||
| 236 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Bayogoula, Mugulasha and Quinipissa | 1,500 | 1650 | James Mooney | ||
| 237 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Tohome | 1,500 | 1700 | 300 warriors | Pierre d'Iberville | |
| 238 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Siletz, Nestucca, Salmon River tribe | 1,500 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 239 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | Mauvais Monde (Etquaotinne) | 1,500 | 1871 | Also spelled Tsethaottine | Censuses of Canada, 1665 to 1871 | |
| 240 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Taensa | 1,500 | 1700 | 120 cabins and 300 warriors | Pierre d'Iberville | |
| 241 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Chatot | 1,500 | 1674 | J. R. Swanton | ||
| 242 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Wishram | 1,500 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 243 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Lummi | 1,300 | 1862 | Myron Eells | ||
| 244 | Subarctic & Arctic | Alberta, Canada | Beaver (Tsattine) | 1,250 | 1670 | Also known as Dane-zaa | James Mooney | |
| 245 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Keewatin, Canada | Caribou-Eaters | 1,250 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 246 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Monacan | 1,200 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 247 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Tutelo | 1,200 | 1600 | Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 248 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Occaneechi | 1,200 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 249 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Cheraw | 1,200 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 250 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Machapunga | 1,200 | 1600 | 3 | Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 251 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Quinaielt | 1,200 | 1805 | 70 houses | Lewis and Clark | |
| 252 | SE Woodlands | Texas Annexation | Arkokisa (Akokisa) | 1,200 | 1746 | 5 | 300 families in 5 rancherias | H. E. Bolton |
| 253 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Kuitsh | 1,200 | 1820 | 21 | Jedidiah Morse and James Owen Dorsey | |
| 254 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Secotan | 1,200 | 1600 | Maurice A. Mook | ||
| 255 | Subarctic & Arctic | Yukon, Canada | Tutchone | 1,100 | 1910 | Frederick Webb Hodge | ||
| 256 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Waccamaw | 1,050 | 1715 | 6 | 210 warriors | W. J. Rivers |
| 257 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Guarugunve & Cuchiyaga | 1,040 | 1570 | (they inhabited Florida Keys) | Lopez de Velasco | |
| 258 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | Hare (Kawchottine) | 1,000+ | 1850 | Ludwik Krzywicki | ||
| 259 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Pamlico (Pomouik) and Bear River | 1,000 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 260 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Neusiok & Coree | 1,000 | 1600 | 5 | James Mooney | |
| 261 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Cape Fear Indians | 1,000 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 262 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Santee | 1,000 | 1600 | 2+ | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 263 | Great Plains | Texas Annexation | Bidai | 1,000+ | 1745 | 7 | (200+ warriors) | Athanase de Mezieres |
| 264 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Ais & Tekesta | 1,000 | 1650 | 6+ | J. R. Swanton & James Mooney | |
| 265 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Jeaga & Mayaimi | 1,000 | 1650 | 5+ | J. R. Swanton & James Mooney | |
| 266 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Tocobaga | 1,000 | 1650 | James Mooney | ||
| 267 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Yustaga | 1,000 | 1650 | James Mooney | ||
| 268 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Biloxi/Pascagoula/Moctobi | 1,000 | 1650 | 4 | James Mooney | |
| 269 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Moratoc | 1,000 | 1600 | Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 270 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Edisto | 1,000 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 271 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Sechelt | 1,000 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 272 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Wahowpum | 1,000 | 1844 | Crawford in G. Wilkes | ||
| 273 | SE Woodlands | Texas Annexation | Yojuane, Deadose | 1,000 | 1745 | H. E. Bolton | ||
| 274 | SE Woodlands | Texas Annexation | Mayeye | 1,000 | 1805 | 200 warriors | J. Sibley | |
| 275 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Dulchioni | 1,000 | 1712 | 200 warriors | Andre Penicaut | |
| 276 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Manso | 1,000 | 1668 | Agustín de Vetancurt | ||
| 277 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Quinault | 1,000 | 1805 | Includes 200 Calasthocle | Lewis and Clark | |
| 278 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Okelousa | 950 | 1650 | Not to be confused with Opelousa | James Mooney | |
| 279 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Cushook | 900 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 280 | SE Woodlands | Texas Annexation | Aranama | 870+ | 1778 | Athanase de Mezieres | ||
| 281 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Sewee | 800+ | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 282 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Congaree | 800 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 283 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Sissipahaw | 800 | 1600 | 1 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 284 | NE Woodlands | New England | Paugussett | 800 | 1600 | C. Thomas in F. W. Hodge | ||
| 285 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Smacksop | 800 | 1805 | 24 houses | Lewis and Clark | |
| 286 | Subarctic & Arctic | Yukon, Canada | Nahani of Yukon | 800 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 287 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Methow | 800 | 1780 | Robert H. Ruby and J. Mooney | ||
| 288 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Snoqualmie | 750 | 1862 | Indian Affairs 1862 | ||
| 289 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Coushatta (Koasati) | 750 | 1760 | John R. Swanton | ||
| 290 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Kaskinampo | 750 | 1700 | 150 warriors | Bienville | |
| 291 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Meherrin | 700 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 292 | Subarctic & Arctic | Ontario, Canada | Abittibi | 700 | 1736 | (140 warriors) | Michel de La Chauvignerie | |
| 293 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Quileute | 650 | 1868 | W. B. Gosnell | ||
| 294 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Skaquamish | 650 | 1862 | Indian Affairs 1862 | ||
| 295 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Appalousa (Opelousa) | 650 | 1715 | 130 warriors, 52 cabins | Baudry de Lozieres | |
| 296 | Subarctic & Arctic | Northwest Territories, Canada | Yellowknives | 600+ | 1877 | 70+ tents | Emile Petitot | |
| 297 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Etiwaw (also Etiwan) | 600 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 298 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Woccon | 600 | 1701 | 2 | (120 warriors) | John Lawson, "History of Carolina" |
| 299 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Peedee (Pedee) | 600 | 1600 | 1 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 300 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Keyauwee | 600 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 301 | Southwest | Mexican Cession | Sobaipuri | 600 | 1680 | James Mooney | ||
| 302 | NE Woodlands | New England | Quinnipiac | 550 | 1730 | John William De Forest | ||
| 303 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Apalachicola | 525 | 1738 | 2 | (105 warriors in two towns) | John R. Swanton |
| 304 | NE Woodlands | New England | Manisses | 500 | 1500 | Capers Jones | ||
| 305 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Takelma and Latgawa | 500 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 306 | NE Woodlands | New England | Tunxis | 500 | 1600 | (100 warriors) | John William De Forest | |
| 307 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Chiaha in South Carolina | 500 | 1600 | Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 308 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Hatteras | 500 | 1600 | Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 309 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Eno | 500 | 1600 | 1 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | |
| 310 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Shakori | 500 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 311 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Adshusheer | 500 | 1600 | James Mooney & Carolina – The Native Americans | ||
| 312 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Twana | 500 | 1841 | Myron Eells | ||
| 313 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Chetco | 500 | 1800 | 9 | 42 houses in 9 villages | James Owen Dorsey and Ludwik Krzywicki |
| 314 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Cahinnio | 500+ | 1687 | 1 | 100 cabins in one village | Ludwik Krzywicki |
| 315 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Shasta Costa | 500+ | 1750 | 33 | 33 small hamlets | James Owen Dorsey and Ludwik Krzywicki |
| 316 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Patuxent | 500 | 1600 | 100 warriors | William Strachey and John Smith | |
| 317 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Mattapanient | 500 | 1600 | 100 warriors | William Strachey and John Smith | |
| 318 | NE Woodlands | Quebec, Canada | Atikamekw (Attikamegue) | 500+ | 1647 | over 30 canoes | Ludwik Krzywicki | |
| 319 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Wicocomoco | 500 | 1600 | 100 warriors | John Smith | |
| 320 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Tsetsaut (Tsesaut) | 500 | 1835 | Ludwik Krzywicki and John R. Swanton | ||
| 321 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Tocwogh | 500 | 1600 | 100 warriors | John Smith | |
| 322 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Sutaio | 500 | 1829 | 100 warriors | Peter Buell Porter | |
| 323 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Musqueam | 500 | 1780 | Ludwik Krzywicki | ||
| 324 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Moyawance | 500 | 1600 | 100 warriors | John Smith | |
| 325 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Quaitso | 500 | 1830 | Hall J. Kelley | ||
| 326 | Subarctic & Arctic | British Columbia, Canada | Strongbow | 500 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 327 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Adai | 500 | 1718 | 100 warriors | Bienville | |
| 328 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Topinish | 450 | 1839 | HBC Indian Census 1839 | ||
| 329 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Nooksak | 450 | 1854 | Isaac Ingalls Stevens | ||
| 330 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Kathlamet (Cathlamet) | 450 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 331 | Subarctic & Arctic | British Columbia, Canada | Ettchaottine | 435 | 1858 | F. W. Hodge | ||
| 332 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Skaddal | 400 | 1847 | W. Robertson | ||
| 333 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Luckton | 400 | 1830 | Hall J. Kelley | ||
| 334 | NE Woodlands | New England | Wangunk | 400 | 1600 | James Mooney | ||
| 335 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Avoyel | 400 | 1698 | 32 cabins (and 80 warriors) | J. R. Swanton | |
| 336 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Chimakum | 400 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 337 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Squaxon | 375 | 1857 | John Ross Browne | ||
| 338 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Kwantlen | 375+ | 1839 | HBC Indian Census 1839 | ||
| 339 | Great Basin | Mexican Cession | Chemehuevi | 355 | 1910 | 1910 Census | ||
| 340 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Ouachita | 350 | 1700 | 1 | 70 warriors | Bienville |
| 341 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Pilalt (Cheam) | 304 | 1839 | HBC Indian Census 1839 | ||
| 342 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Saukaulutucks | 300 | 1860 | R. Mayne | ||
| 343 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Chehalis and Kwaiailk | 300 | 1850 | Joseph Lane | ||
| 344 | Great Plains | Louisiana Purchase | Amahami | 300 | 1811 | H. M. Brackenridge | ||
| 345 | Subarctic & Arctic | Nunavut, Canada | Southampton Island Inuit | 300 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 346 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Clatsop | 300 | 1806 | Lewis and Clark | ||
| 347 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Charcowah | 300 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 348 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | Sheep (Esbataottine) | 300 | 1670 | James Mooney | ||
| 349 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Semiahmoo | 300 | 1843 | John R. Swanton | ||
| 350 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Tawasa | 300 | 1792 | John R. Swanton | ||
| 351 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Amacano, Chine, Caparaz | 300 | 1674 | John R. Swanton | ||
| 352 | NE Woodlands | Middle Colonies | Ozinies | 255 | 1608 | They lived in Delaware and Maryland | Maryland at a glance: Native Americans | |
| 353 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Umatilla | 250 | 1858 | Indian Affairs 1858 | ||
| 354 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Washa | 250 | 1715 | 50 warriors | Baudry de Lozieres | |
| 355 | Subarctic & Arctic | District of Mackenzie, Canada | Nahani in District of Mackenzie | 250 | 1906 | John R. Swanton | ||
| 356 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Naniaba | 250 | 1730 | 50 warriors | Regis de Rouillet | |
| 357 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Squannaroo | 240 | 1847 | W. Robertson | ||
| 358 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Molala | 240 | 1857 | J. W. P. Huntington | ||
| 359 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Nacisi | 230 | 1700 | 23 houses | Bienville | |
| 360 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Secowocomoco | 200 | 1600 | 40 warriors | John Smith | |
| 361 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Copalis | 200 | 1805 | 10 houses | Lewis and Clark | |
| 362 | NE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Ahwajiaway | 200 | 1805 | Extinct Native American tribes of North America | ||
| 363 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Kwalhioqua | 200 | 1780 | James Mooney | ||
| 364 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Juntata | 200 | 1648 | 40 warriors | R. Evelin | |
| 365 | SE Woodlands | Louisiana Purchase | Chawasha | 200 | 1715 | 40 warriors | Baudry de Lozieres | |
| 366 | SE Woodlands | Southern Colonies | Winyaw | 180 | 1715 | 1 | (36 warriors and one village) | Carolina – The Native Americans |
| 367 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Nanoose | 159 | 1839 | HBC Indian Census 1839 | ||
| 368 | NE Woodlands | Ontario, Canada | Totontaratonhronon | 150 | 1640 | 15 houses | J. Lalemant | |
| 369 | Northwest Plateau | British Columbia, Canada | Nicola Athapaskans (Stuichamukh) | 150 | 1780 | 3 | Also spelled Stuwihamuq | Franz Boas & J. Mooney |
| 370 | Northwest Coast | British Columbia, Canada | Sumas | 132 | 1895 | 3 | Canadian Indian Affairs | |
| 371 | Northwest Plateau | Oregon Country | Wiam | 130 | 1850 | Joseph Lane | ||
| 372 | SE Woodlands | Texas Annexation | Cujane | 100 | 1750 | H. E. Bolton | ||
| 373 | Northwest Coast | Oregon Country | Hoh | 100 | 1875 | Indian Affairs 1875 | ||
| 374 | NE Woodlands | Old Northwest | Noquet | 100 | 1721 | N. Y. Col. Dcts., VI. 622 | ||
| 375 | SE Woodlands | Spanish Florida | Pensacola | 100 | 1725 | 20 warriors | Bienville | |
| 376 | SE Woodlands | Old Southwest | Choula | 40 | 1722 | Benard de La Harpe | ||
| 377 | California | Mexican Cession | California Native tribes | 340,000 | 1769 | Cook, Jones & Codding, Field | ||
| 378 | Subarctic & Arctic | Alaska | Alaska Native tribes | 93,800 | 1750 | Steve Langdon |
The total peak population size only for the tribes listed in this table is 3,529,240 in the US and Canada (including 507,675 in Canada). This number is very similar to Snow's estimate for the US and Canada and to Alchon's, Denevan's and Milner's estimates.
Pre-Columbian Americas
Genetic diversity and population structure in the American land mass using DNA micro-satellite markers (genotype) sampled from North, Central, and South America have been analyzed against similar data available from other Indigenous populations worldwide. The Amerindian populations show a lower genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions. Decreasing genetic diversity with increasing geographic distance from the Bering Strait can be seen, as well as a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska (genetic entry point). A higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America is observed. A relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations is a scenario that implies coastal routes were easier than inland routes for migrating peoples (Paleo-Indians) to traverse. The overall pattern that is emerging suggests that the Americas were recently colonized by a small number of individuals (effective size of about 70–250), and then they grew by a factor of 10 over 800–1,000 years. The data also show that there have been genetic exchanges between Asia, the Arctic and Greenland since the initial peopling of the Americas. A new study in early 2018 suggests that the effective population size of the original founding population of Native Americans was about 250 people.
Depopulation by Old World diseases
Early explanations for the population decline of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas include the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores, as recorded by the Spaniards themselves, such as the encomienda system, which was ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion, but in practice was tantamount to serfdom and slavery. The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against the Taínos. The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval, in which God removed the Indigenous peoples as part of His "divine plan" to make way for a new Christian civilization. Many Native Americans viewed their troubles in a religious framework within their own belief systems.
According to later academics such as Noble David Cook, a community of scholars began "quietly accumulating piece by piece data on early epidemics in the Americas and their relation to the subjugation of native peoples." Scholars like Cook believe that widespread epidemic disease, to which the Indigenous peoples had no prior exposure or resistance, was the primary cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis, which were chronic in Eurasia.
However, recently scholars have studied the link between physical colonial violence such as warfare, displacement, and enslavement, and the proliferation of disease among Native populations. For example, according to Coquille scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "In recent decades, however, researchers challenge the idea that disease is solely responsible for the rapid Indigenous population decline. The research identifies other aspects of European contact that had profoundly negative impacts on Native peoples' ability to survive foreign invasion: war, massacres, enslavement, overwork, deportation, the loss of will to live or reproduce, malnutrition and starvation from the breakdown of trade networks, and the loss of subsistence food production due to land loss."
Further, Andrés Reséndez of the University of California, Davis points out that, even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox, there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519, implying that, until that date, epidemic disease played no significant part in the depopulation of the Antilles. The practices of forced labor, brutal punishment, and inadequate necessities of life, were the initial and major reasons for depopulation.Jason Hickel estimates that a third of Arawak workers died every six months from forced labor in these mines. In this way, "slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the Indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, as it set the conditions for diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and malaria to flourish. Unlike the populations of Europe who rebounded following the Black Death, no such rebound occurred for the Indigenous populations.
Similarly, historian Jeffrey Ostler at the University of Oregon has argued that population collapses in North America throughout colonization were not due mainly to lack of Native immunity to European disease. Instead, he claims that "When severe epidemics did hit, it was often less because Native bodies lacked immunity than because European colonialism disrupted Native communities and damaged their resources, making them more vulnerable to pathogens." In specific regard to Spanish colonization of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia, Native peoples there "were subject to forced labor and, because of poor living conditions and malnutrition, succumbed to wave after wave of unidentifiable diseases." Further, in relation to British colonization in the Northeast, Algonquian speaking tribes in Virginia and Maryland "suffered from a variety of diseases, including malaria, typhus, and possibly smallpox." These diseases were not solely a case of Native susceptibility, however, because "as colonists took their resources, Native communities were subject to malnutrition, starvation, and social stress, all making people more vulnerable to pathogens. Repeated epidemics created additional trauma and population loss, which in turn disrupted the provision of healthcare." Such conditions would continue, alongside rampant disease in Native communities, throughout colonization, the formation of the United States, and multiple forced removals, as Ostler explains that many scholars "have yet to come to grips with how U.S. expansion created conditions that made Native communities acutely vulnerable to pathogens and how severely disease impacted them. ... Historians continue to ignore the catastrophic impact of disease and its relationship to U.S. policy and action even when it is right before their eyes."
Historian David Stannard says that by "focusing almost entirely on disease ... contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent—a sad, but both inevitable and "unintended consequence" of human migration and progress," and asserts that their destruction "was neither inadvertent nor inevitable," but the result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem. He also wrote:
...Despite frequent undocumented assertions that disease was responsible for the great majority of indigenous deaths in the Americas, there does not exist a single scholarly work that even pretends to demonstrate this claim on the basis of solid evidence. And that is because there is no such evidence, anywhere. The supposed truism that more native people died from disease than from direct face-to-face killing or from gross mistreatment or other concomitant derivatives of that brutality such as starvation, exposure, exhaustion, or despair is nothing more than a scholarly article of faith...
In contrast, historian Russel Thornton has pointed out that there were disastrous epidemics and population losses during the first half of the sixteenth century "resulting from incidental contact, or even without direct contact, as disease spread from one American Indian tribe to another." Thornton has also challenged higher Indigenous population estimates, which are based on the Malthusian assumption that "populations tend to increase to, and beyond, the limits of the food available to them at any particular level of technology."
The European colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of so many people it contributed to climatic change and temporary global cooling, according to scientists from University College London. A century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, some 90% of Indigenous Americans had perished from "wave after wave of disease", along with mass slavery and war, in what researchers have described as the "great dying". According to one of the researchers, UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin, the large death toll also boosted the economies of Europe: "the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world. It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue that domination."
Biological warfare
When Old World diseases were first carried to the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, they spread throughout the southern and northern hemispheres, leaving the Indigenous populations in near ruins. No evidence has been discovered that the earliest Spanish colonists and missionaries deliberately attempted to infect the American Natives, and some efforts were made to limit the devastating effects of disease before it killed off what remained of their labor force (compelled to work under the encomienda system). The cattle introduced by the Spanish contaminated various water reserves which Native Americans dug in the fields to accumulate rainwater. In response, the Franciscans and Dominicans created public fountains and aqueducts to guarantee access to drinking water. But when the Franciscans lost their privileges in 1572, many of these fountains were no longer guarded and so deliberate well poisoning may have happened. Although no proof of such poisoning has been found, some historians believe the decrease of the population correlates with the end of religious orders' control of the water.
In following centuries, accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common. Well-documented accounts of incidents involving both threats and acts of deliberate infection are very rare, but may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged. Many of the instances likely went unreported, and it is possible that documents relating to such acts were deliberately destroyed, or sanitized. By the middle of the 18th century, colonists had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus. They well understood the concept of quarantine, and that contact with the sick could infect the healthy with smallpox, and those who survived the illness would not be infected again. Whether the threats were carried out, or how effective individual attempts were, is uncertain.
One such threat was delivered by fur trader James McDougall, who is quoted as saying to a gathering of local chiefs, "You know the smallpox. Listen: I am the smallpox chief. In this bottle I have it confined. All I have to do is to pull the cork, send it forth among you, and you are dead men. But this is for my enemies and not my friends." Likewise, another fur trader threatened Pawnee Indians that if they didn't agree to certain conditions, "he would let the smallpox out of a bottle and destroy them." The Reverend Isaac McCoy was quoted in his History of Baptist Indian Missions as saying that the white men had deliberately spread smallpox among the Indians of the southwest, including the Pawnee tribe, and the havoc it made was reported to General Clark and the Secretary of War. Artist and writer George Catlin observed that Native Americans were also suspicious of vaccination, "They see white men urging the operation so earnestly they decide that it must be some new mode or trick of the pale face by which they hope to gain some new advantage over them." So great was the distrust of the settlers that the Mandan chief Four Bears denounced the white man, whom he had previously treated as brothers, for deliberately bringing the disease to his people.
During the siege of British-held Fort Pitt in the Seven Years' War, Colonel Henry Bouquet ordered his men to take smallpox-infested blankets from their hospital and gave them as gifts to two neutral Lenape Indian dignitaries during a peace settlement negotiation, according to the entry in the Captain's ledger, "To convey the Smallpox to the Indians". In the following weeks, Sir Jeffrey Amherst conspired with Bouquet to "Extirpate this Execreble Race" of Native Americans, writing, "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." His Colonel agreed to try.
Most scholars have asserted that the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic was "started among the tribes of the upper Missouri River by failure to quarantine steamboats on the river", and Captain Pratt of the St. Peter "was guilty of contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The law calls his offense criminal negligence. Yet in light of all the deaths, the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans, and the terrible suffering the region endured, the label criminal negligence is benign, hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences." However, some sources attribute the 1836–40 epidemic to the deliberate communication of smallpox to Native Americans, with historian Ann F. Ramenofsky writing, "Variola Major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets. In the nineteenth century, the U. S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." In Brazil, well into the 20th century, deliberate infection attacks continued as Brazilian settlers and miners transported infections intentionally to the Native groups whose lands they coveted.
Vaccination
After Edward Jenner's 1796 demonstration that the smallpox vaccination worked, the technique became better known and smallpox became less deadly in the United States and elsewhere. Many colonists and Natives were vaccinated, although, in some cases, officials tried to vaccinate Natives only to discover that the disease was too widespread to stop. At other times, trade demands led to broken quarantines. In other cases, Natives refused vaccination because of suspicion of whites. The first international healthcare expedition in history was the Balmis Expedition which had the aim of vaccinating Indigenous peoples against smallpox all along the Spanish Empire in 1803. In 1831, government officials vaccinated the Yankton Dakota at Sioux Agency. The Santee Sioux refused vaccination and many died.
Depopulation by European conquest
War and violence
While epidemic disease was a leading factor of the population decline of the American Indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors was warfare. According to demographer Russell Thornton, although many people died in wars over the centuries, and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes, warfare and death by other violent means was a comparatively minor cause of overall Native population decline.
From the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1894, wars between the government and the Indigenous peoples ranged over 40 in number over the previous 100 years. These wars cost the lives of approximately 19,000 white people, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians, including men, women, and children. They safely estimated that the number of Native people who were killed or wounded was actually around fifty percent more than what was recorded.
There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre-Columbian America, but there is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans and their firearms.[citation needed] The South or Central American infrastructure allowed for thousands of European conquistadors and tens of thousands of their Indian auxiliaries to attack the dominant Indigenous civilization. Empires such as the Incas depended on a highly centralized administration for the distribution of resources. Disruption caused by the war and the colonization hampered the traditional economy, and possibly led to shortages of food and materials. Across the western hemisphere, war with various Native American civilizations constituted alliances based out of both necessity or economic prosperity and, resulted in mass-scale intertribal warfare. European colonization in the North American continent also contributed to a number of wars between Native Americans, who fought over which of them should have first access to new technology and weaponry—like in the Beaver Wars.
Genocides
According to the Cambridge World History, the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, and the Cambridge World History of Genocide, colonial policies in some cases included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples in North America. According to the Cambridge World History of Genocide, Spanish colonization of the Americas also included genocidal massacres.
According to Adam Jones, genocidal methods included the following:
- Genocidal massacres
- Biological warfare, using pathogens (especially smallpox and plague) to which the indigenous peoples had no resistance
- Spreading of disease via the 'reduction' of Indians to densely crowded and unhygienic settlements
- Slavery and forced/indentured labor, especially, though not exclusively, in Latin America, in conditions often rivaling those of Nazi concentration camps
- Mass population removals to barren 'reservations,' sometimes involving death marches en route, and generally leading to widespread mortality and population collapse upon arrival
- Deliberate starvation and famine, exacerbated by destruction and occupation of the native land base and food resources
- Forced education of indigenous children in White-run schools ...
Exploitation
Some Spaniards objected to the encomienda system of labor, notably Bartolomé de las Casas, who insisted that the Indigenous people were humans with souls and rights. Because of many revolts and military encounters, Emperor Charles V helped relieve the strain on both the Native laborers and the Spanish vanguards probing the Caribana for military and diplomatic purposes. Later on New Laws were promulgated in Spain in 1542 to protect isolated Native, but the abuses in the Americas were never entirely or permanently abolished. The Spanish also employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the mita, and treated their subjects as something between slaves and serfs. Serfs stayed to work the land; slaves were exported to the mines, where large numbers of them died. In other areas the Spaniards replaced the ruling Aztecs and Incas and divided the conquered lands among themselves ruling as the new feudal lords with often, but unsuccessful lobbying to the viceroys of the Spanish crown to pay Tlaxcalan war demnities. The infamous Bandeirantes from São Paulo, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and Native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Serfdom existed as such in parts of Latin America well into the 19th century, past independence. Historian Andrés Reséndez argues that even though the Spanish were aware of the spread of smallpox, they made no mention of it until 1519, a quarter century after Columbus arrived in Hispaniola. Instead he contends that enslavement in gold and silver mines was the primary reason why the Native American population of Hispaniola dropped so significantly. and that even though disease was a factor, the Native population would have rebounded the same way Europeans did following the Black Death if it were not for the constant enslavement they were subject to. He further contends that enslavement of Native Americans was in fact the primary cause of their depopulation in Spanish territories; that the majority of Indians enslaved were women and children compared to the enslavement of Africans which mostly targeted adult males and in turn they were sold at a 50% to 60% higher price, and that 2,462,000 to 4,985,000 Amerindians were enslaved between Columbus's arrival and 1900.
Massacres
- The Pequot War in early New England.
- In mid-19th century Argentina, post-independence leaders Juan Manuel de Rosas and Julio Argentino Roca engaged in what they presented as a "Conquest of the Desert" against the Natives of the Argentinian interior, leaving over 1,300 Indigenous dead.
- While some California tribes were settled on reservations, others were hunted down and massacred by 19th century American settlers. It is estimated that at least 9,400 to 16,000 California Indians were killed by non-Indians, mostly occurring in more than 370 massacres (defined as the "intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants, including women, children, and prisoners, whether in the context of a battle or otherwise").
Displacement and disruption
Throughout history, Indigenous people have been subjected to the repeated and forced removal from their land. Beginning in the 1830s, there was the relocation of an estimated 100,000 Indigenous people in the United States called the "Trail of Tears". The tribes affected by this specific removal were the Five Civilized Tribes: The Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. The treaty of New Echota, was enacted, which stated that the United States "would give Cherokee land west of the Mississippi in exchange for $5,000,000". According to Jeffrey Ostler, "Of the 80,000 Native people who were forced west from 1830 into the 1850s, between 12,000 and 17,000 perished." Ostler states that "the large majority died of interrelated factors of starvation, exposure and disease".
In addition to the removal of the Southern Tribes, there were multiple other removals of Northern Tribes also known as "Trails of Tears." For example, "In the free labor states of the North, federal and state officials, supported by farmers, speculators and business interests, evicted Shawnees, Delawares, Senecas, Potawatomis, Miamis, Wyandots, Ho-Chunks, Ojibwes, Sauks and Meskwakis." These Nations were moved West of the Mississippi into what is now known as Eastern Kansas, and numbered 17,000 on arrival. According to Ostler, "by 1860, their numbers had been cut in half" because of low fertility, high infant mortality, and increased disease caused by conditions such as polluted drinking water, few resources, and social stress.
Ostler also writes that the areas that Northern tribes were removed to were already inhabited: "The areas west of the Mississippi River were home to other Indigenous nations—Osages, Kanzas, Omahas, Ioways, Otoes and Missourias. To make room for thousands of people from the East, the government dispossessed these nations of much their lands." Ostler writes that when Northern Nations were moved onto their landing 1840, "The combined population of these western nations was 9,000 ... 20 years later, it had fallen to 6,000."
Later apologies by government officials
On 8 September 2000, the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the ethnic cleansing of Western tribes. In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the "California Genocide." Newsom said, "That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books."
Modern Indigenous population by region according to the censuses
| Region | Percentage | Total population | Country | Year | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Between 75% and 100% | |||||||
 Puno | 90.81% | 857,351 |  Peru | 2017 | |||
 Apurímac | 86.97% | 273,947 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Vaupés | 81.68% | 30,787 |  Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Ayacucho | 81.48% | 388,476 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Huancavelica | 80.88% | 215,812 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Cusco | 75.91% | 721,430 | Peru | 2017 | |||
| Between 50% and 75% | |||||||
 Guainía | 74.90% | 33,280 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Potosí | 69.50% | 572,314 |  Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Oaxaca | 69.18% |  Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Yucatán | 65.18% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Vichada | 58.16% | 44,578 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Amazonas | 57.72% | 38,130 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 La Paz | 54.49% | 1,474,654 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Oruro | 51.08% | 252,444 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Chuquisaca | 50.29% | 289,728 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
| Between 25% and 50% | |||||||
 La Guajira | 47.82% | 394,683 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Cochabamba | 47.52% | 835,535 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Campeche | 47.26% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Huanuco | 43.34% | 239,049 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Tacna | 40.32% | 108,469 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Pasco | 39.87% | 78,455 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Madre de Dios | 39.47% | 41,646 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Moquegua | 36.71% | 52,205 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Chiapas | 36.65% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Junin | 36.45% | 353,192 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Arica y Parinacota | 34.89% |  Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Arequipa | 34.74% | 388,476 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Ancash | 34.15% | 290,420 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Araucania | 33.57% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Quintana Roo | 33.23% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Puebla | 33.22% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Guerrero | 33.14% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Beni | 33.14% | 134,025 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Aysén | 28.18% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Los Lagos | 27.61% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Veracruz | 26.90% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Los Ríos | 25.03% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
| Between 10% and 25% | |||||||
 Cauca | 24.81% | 308,455 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Morelos | 24.55% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Tarapacá | 24.22% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Pando | 23.78% | 26,261 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Magallanes | 22.69% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Tabasco | 21.36% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Michoacán | 20.75% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 San Luis Potosí | 20.33% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Santa Cruz | 19.65% | 521,814 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Atacama | 19.36% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Putumayo | 17.90% | 50,694 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Lima | 17.82% | 128,632 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Lima province | 17.16% | 1,211,490 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Tlaxcala | 16.46% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Nayarit | 15.94% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Mexico | 15.75% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Nariño | 15.46% | 206,455 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Chocó | 14.96% | 68,415 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Ica | 14.77% | 97,863 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Tarija | 14.49% | 69,872 | Bolivia | 2012 | |||
 Sucre | 12.14% | 104,890 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Roraima | 14.12% | 89,882 |  Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Antofagasta | 13.57% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Sonora | 13.31% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Colima | 13.17% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Querétaro | 13.15% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Córdoba | 13.03% | 202,621 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Baja California Sur | 11.87% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Callao | 11.02% | 88,081 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Chihuahua | 10.48% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Jujuy | 10.07% | 81,538 |  Argentina | 2022 | |||
| Between 5% and 10% | |||||||
 Salta | 9.96% | 142,870 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Santiago | 9.77% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Guaviare | 9.38% | 6,856 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Sinaloa | 9.35% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Biobío | 9.31% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Mexico City | 9.28% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Durango | 8.87% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Coquimbo | 8.57% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Loreto | 8.10% | 50,493 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Baja California | 7.97% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Chubut | 7.92% | 46,670 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Formosa | 7.84% | 47,459 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Amazonas | 7.74% | 305,243 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Neuquén | 7.68% | 54,436 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Ucayali | 7.06% | 25,181 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Jalisco | 7.04% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Tamaulipas | 6.67% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Valparaíso | 6.59% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Cajamarca | 6.47% | 66,473 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Río Negro | 6.45% | 48,194 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Nuevo León | 6.40% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Guanajuato | 6.39% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 O'Higgins | 6.26% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Aguascalientes | 6.17% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Caldas | 6.04% | 55,801 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 San Martín | 5.85% | 35,613 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Amazonas | 5.04% | 14,182 | Peru | 2017 | |||
| Between 0% and 5% | |||||||
 Zacatecas | 4.88% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Chaco | 4.78% | 53,798 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Lambayeque | 4.77% | 44,613 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Maule | 4.69% | Chile | 2017 | ||||
 Cesar | 4.66% | 51,233 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Catamarca | 4.60% | 19,668 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 La Pampa | 4.36% | 15,659 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Santa Cruz | 3.73% | 12,525 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Tolima | 3.68% | 45,269 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Risaralda | 3.56% | 29,909 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Acre | 3.51% | 29,163 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Mato Grosso do Sul | 3.48% | 96,029 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Tierra del Fuego | 3.21% | 5,942 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 La Libertad | 3.19% | 43,960 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 La Rioja | 2.78% | 10,645 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Arauca | 2.74% | 6,573 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Santiago del Estero | 2.65% | 28,022 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Caquetá | 2.45% | 8,825 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Buenos Aires City | 2.41% | 74,724 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Piura | 2.35% | 33,196 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Mendoza | 2.24% | 45,389 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Meta | 2.23% | 20,528 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Tucumán | 2.18% | 37,646 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Buenos Aires | 2.14% | 371,830 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Coahuila | 2.13% | Mexico | 2020 | ||||
 Tumbes | 2.10% | 3,5946 | Peru | 2017 | |||
 Misiones | 2.04% | 26,006 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Córdoba | 1.82% | 69,218 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Casanare | 1.81% | 6,893 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 San Juan | 1.76% | 14,457 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Atlántico | 1.67% | 39,061 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Magdalena | 1.66% | 20,938 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Santa Fe | 1.63% | 57,193 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Mato Grosso | 1.55% | 56,687 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 San Luis | 1.54% | 8,340 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Amapá | 1.41% | 10,340 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Entre Ríos | 1.32% | 18,693 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Corrientes | 1.31% | 15,808 | Argentina | 2022 | |||
 Tocantins | 1.24% | 18,735 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Huila | 1.21% | 12,194 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Rondônia | 1.09% | 17,278 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Pernambuco | 0.92% | 83,667 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Pará | 0.85% | 25,478 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Valle del Cauca | 0.81% | 30,844 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Maranhão | 0.81% | 54,682 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Alagoas | 0.64% | 20.095 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Paraíba | 0.64% | 25,478 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Antioquia | 0.63% | 37,628 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Boyacá | 0.63% | 7,151 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Bahia | 0.59% | 83,658 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Quindío | 0.57% | 2,883 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Ceará | 0.45% | 39,982 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
 Cundinamarca | 0.36% | 9,949 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Norte de Santander | 0.34% | 4,545 | Colombia | 2018 | |||
 Rio Grande do Sul | 0.31% | 34,184 | Brazil | 2022 | |||
Population figures for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before European colonization have been difficult to establish Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million though many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million by the end of the 20th century Contemporary illustration of the 1868 Washita massacre by the 7th Cavalry against Black Kettle s band of Cheyenne during the American Indian Wars Violence and conflict with colonists were also important causes of the decline of certain Indigenous American populations since the 16th century The monarchs of the nascent Spanish Empire decided to fund Christopher Columbus voyage in 1492 leading to the establishment of colonies and marking the beginning of the migration of millions of Europeans and Africans to the Americas While the population of European settlers primarily from Spain Portugal France England and the Netherlands along with African slaves grew steadily the Indigenous population plummeted There are numerous reasons for the population decline including exposure to Eurasian diseases such as influenza pneumonic plagues and smallpox direct violence by settlers and their allies through war and forced removal and the general disruption of societies Scholarly disputes remain over the degree to which each factor contributed or should be emphasized some modern scholars have categorized it as a genocide claiming that deliberate systematic actions by Europeans were the primary cause Traditional scholars have disputed this characterization maintaining that incidental disease exposure was the primary cause Population overviewIllustration of Indigenous people of North AmericaIllustration of Indigenous people of South America Pre Columbian population figures are difficult to estimate because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence Estimates range from 8 112 million Scholars have varied widely on the estimated size of the Indigenous populations prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact Estimates are made by extrapolations from small bits of data In 1976 geographer William Denevan used the existing estimates to derive a consensus count of about 54 million people Nonetheless more recent estimates still range widely In 1992 Denevan suggested that the total population was approximately 53 9 million and the populations by region were approximately 3 8 million for the United States and Canada 17 2 million for Mexico 5 6 million for Central America 3 million for the Caribbean 15 7 million for the Andes and 8 6 million for lowland South America A 2020 genetic study suggests that prior estimates for the pre Columbian Caribbean population may have been at least tenfold too large Historian David Stannard estimates that the extermination of Indigenous peoples took the lives of 100 million people the total extermination of many American Indian peoples and the near extermination of others in numbers that eventually totaled close to 100 000 000 A 2019 study estimates the pre Columbian Indigenous population contained more than 60 million people but dropped to 6 million by 1600 based on a drop in atmospheric CO2 during that period Other studies have disputed this conclusion The Indigenous population of the Americas in 1492 was not necessarily at a high point and may actually have already been in decline in some areas Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a low point by the early 20th century Using an estimate of approximately 37 million people in Mexico Central and South America in 1492 including 6 million in the Aztec Empire 5 10 million in the Mayan States 11 million in what is now Brazil and 12 million in the Inca Empire the lowest estimates give a population decrease from all causes of 80 by the end of the 17th century nine million people in 1650 Latin America would match its 15th century population early in the 19th century it numbered 17 million in 1800 30 million in 1850 61 million in 1900 105 million in 1930 218 million in 1960 361 million in 1980 and 563 million in 2005 In the last three decades of the 16th century the population of present day Mexico dropped to about one million people The Maya population is today estimated at six million which is about the same as at the end of the 15th century according to some estimates In what is now Brazil the Indigenous population declined from a pre Columbian high of an estimated four million to some 300 000 Over 60 million Brazilians possess at least one Native South American ancestor according to a DNA study While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus estimates range from 3 8 million as mentioned above to 7 million people to a high of 18 million Scholars vary on the estimated size of the Indigenous population in what is now Canada prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact During the late 15th century is estimated to have been between 200 000 and two million with a figure of 500 000 currently accepted by Canada s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health Although not without conflict European Canadians early interactions with First Nations and Inuit populations were relatively peaceful However repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza measles and smallpox to which they had no natural immunity combined with other effects of European contact resulted in a twenty five percent to eighty percent Indigenous population decrease post contact Roland G Robertson suggests that during the late 1630s smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot Huron who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in the area of New France In 1871 there was an enumeration of the Indigenous population within the limits of Canada at the time showing a total of only 102 358 individuals From 2006 to 2016 the Indigenous population has grown by 42 5 percent four times the national rate According to the 2011 Canadian census Indigenous peoples First Nations 851 560 Inuit 59 445 and Metis 451 795 numbered at 1 400 685 or 4 3 of the country s total population The population debate has often had ideological underpinnings Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of cultural and racial superiority Historian Francis Jennings argued Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not possibly have created or sustained large populations In 1998 Africanist Historian David Henige said many population estimates are the result of arbitrary formulas applied from unreliable sources EstimationsEstimates of the pre Columbian pre 1492 population in the Americas millions Author Date US and Canada Mexico Mesoamerica Caribbean Andes Patagonia and Amazonia TotalSapper 1924 2 3 12 15 5 6 3 4 12 15 3 5 37 48 5Kroeber 1939 0 9 3 2 0 1 0 2 3 1 8 4Steward 1949 1 4 5 0 74 0 22 6 13 2 9 15 49Rosenblat 1954 1 4 5 0 8 0 3 4 75 2 03 13 38Dobyns 1966 9 8 12 25 30 37 5 10 8 13 5 0 44 0 55 30 37 5 9 11 25 90 04 112 55Ubelaker 1988 1 213 2 639 Denevan 1992 3 79 17 174 5 625 3 15 696 8 619 53 904Snow 2001 3 44 Alchon 2003 3 5 16 18 5 6 2 3 13 15 7 8 46 5 53 5Thornton 2005 7 Peros 2009 2 5 Milner 2010 3 8 Estimations by tribe Population size for Native American tribes is very difficult to state definitively but at least one writer has made estimates often based on an assumed proportion of the number of warriors to total population for the tribe Typical proportions were 5 people per one warrior and at least 1 up to 5 warriors therefore at least 5 25 people per lodge cabin or house Highest available estimates probable population peaks Rank Cultural Area Region Tribe or nation Highest pop estimate Year Towns villages Lodges cabins houses tents tipis etc Sources of estimates1 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Sioux 150 000 50 000 1841 1762 40 5 000 lodges in 1846 averaging over ten people per lodge Lt James Gorrell and A Ramsey2 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Choctaw 125 000 1718 102 102 towns enumerated by Swanton Le Page du Pratz and J R Swanton3 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Illinois 100 000 1658 60 Jean de Quen4a Great Basin Mexican Cession Shoshone 60 000 1820 number without 20 000 East Shoshone Jedidiah Morse4b Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Eastern Shoshone 20 000 1820 Jedidiah Morse5 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Tigua Tiwa 78 100 1626 20 7 000 houses only in two largest pueblos Alonso de Benavides6a Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Blackfoot in the US 37 500 30 000 1841 1836 60 000 in 1841 amp approx 75 000 in 1836 ca half of them in the US George Catlin6b Great Plains Prairies Canada Blackfoot in Canada 37 500 30 000 1841 1836 60 000 in 1841 amp approx 75 000 in 1836 ca half of them in Canada George Catlin7 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Iroquois 70 000 1690 226 Nearly 60 towns destroyed in 1779 L A de Lahontan and John R Swanton8 Southwest Mexican Cession Apache 60 000 1700 Jose de Urrutia9 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Muscogee confederacy including Hitchiti 50 000 1794 100 at least 100 towns in 1789 per Henry Knox James Seagrove and Henry Knox10 Southwest Mexican Cession Hopi 50 000 1584 7 Antonio de Espejo11 NE Woodlands Old Southwest Shawnee 50 000 15 000 1702 1540 38 at first contact est 50 000 amp 15 000 in 1702 M A Jaimes amp Pierre d Iberville12 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Crow Apsaalooke 45 000 1834 Samuel Gardner Drake13 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Hurons Wyandot 40 000 1632 32 Gabriel Sagard and J Lalemant14 Great Plains Texas Annexation Comanche 40 000 1832 George Catlin and J Morse15 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Tano Maguas including Pecos 40 000 1584 11 Antonio de Espejo16 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Miami 40 000 1657 20 one of their towns had 400 families in 1751 Gabriel Druillettes17 NE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Ioways 40 000 1762 16 at least 16 towns in the early 19th century Lt James Gorrell18a Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Piegan in the US 30 000 1700 ca 3 4 in the US ca 6 000 lodges George Bird Grinnell18b Great Plains Alberta Canada Piegan in Canada 10 000 1700 ca 1 4 in Canada ca 2 000 lodges George Bird Grinnell19 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Pawnee 38 000 1719 38 5 000 6 000 cabins lodges amp 7 600 warriors Claude Du Tisne and L Krzywicki20a NE Woodlands Old Northwest Ojibwe in the US 18 000 1860 half in the US and half in Canada Emmanuel Domenech20b NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Ojibwe in Canada 18 000 1860 half in the US and half in Canada Emmanuel Domenech21a Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Assiniboine in the US 17 500 1823 15 ca half in the US ca 1 500 lodges W H Keating and G C Beltrami21b Great Plains Prairies Canada Assiniboine in Canada 17 500 1823 15 ca half in Canada ca 1 500 lodges W H Keating and G C Beltrami22 NE Woodlands Acadia Canada Mi kmaq 35 000 1500 Virginia P Miller23 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Apalachee 34 000 1635 11 J R Swanton24 Southwest Mexican Cession Navajo Dine 30 000 1626 In 1910 still numbered 29 624 people in Arizona and New Mexico Alonso de Benavides25 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Cherokee 30 000 1735 201 201 towns enumerated by Swanton J Adair and Ga Hist Coll II26 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Tuscarora 30 000 1600 24 D Cusick27 NE Woodlands New England Narragansett 30 000 1642 8 S G Drake and J R Swanton28 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Mohican confederacy 30 000 1600 16 J A Maurault and J R Swanton29 NE Woodlands New England Massachusett 30 000 1600 23 J A Maurault and J R Swanton30 Southwest Mexican Cession Jemez Pueblo 30 000 1584 11 Antonio de Espejo31 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Timucua tribes 30 000 1635 141 44 missions in 1635 30 000 Christian Indians J R Swanton32 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Clayoquot Clayoquat 30 000 1780 30 000 under the rule of chief Wickaninnish Ho Doc 1839 1840 and Meares33a Subarctic amp Arctic Saskatchewan Canada Woods Cree in Saskatchewan 5 600 1670 James Mooney33b Subarctic amp Arctic Manitoba Canada Cree living in Manitoba 4 250 1670 James Mooney33c Subarctic amp Arctic Alberta Canada Woodland Cree in Alberta 3 050 1670 James Mooney33d Subarctic amp Arctic Ontario Canada Swampy Cree in Ontario 2 100 1670 James Mooney33e Subarctic amp Arctic Ontario Canada Moose Cree Monsoni 5 000 1600 James Mooney33f Great Plains Prairies Canada Plains Cree 7 000 1853 David G Mandelbaum34a Great Basin Mexican Cession Ute living in Utah 13 050 1867 Indian Affairs 186734b Great Basin Mexican Cession Ute living in Colorado 7 000 1866 Indian Affairs 186634c Great Basin Mexican Cession Ute living in New Mexico 6 000 1846 1854 H H Davis and Indian Affairs 185435 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Mabila Mobile 25 000 1540 Mississippian chiefdom under chief Tuskaloosa about 5 000 warriors Ludwik Krzywicki36 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Chinook tribes 22 000 1780 1 000 lodges just among the Lower Chinook James Mooney and Duflot de Mofras37 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Mascouten 20 000 1679 They consisted of 12 sub tribes Claude Dablon38 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Chickasaw 20 000 1687 27 Louis Hennepin39 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Neutrals 20 000 1616 40 Samuel de Champlain40 Southwest Mexican Cession Zuni Pueblo 20 000 1584 12 Antonio de Espejo41 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Tewa Ubates 20 000 1584 5 Antonio de Espejo42 NE Woodlands New England Pequots 20 000 1600 21 Daniel Gookin and J R Swanton43 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Skidi 20 000 1687 22 At least 4 400 cabins on average at least 200 per town George Bird Grinnell44 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Natchez 20 000 1715 60 Pierre Charlevoix45 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Punames 20 000 1584 5 Zia was the largest of 5 Puname pueblos Antonio de Espejo46 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Lenape Delaware 18 400 1635 1648 118 3 680 warriors in 27 divisions or kingdoms R Evelin Th Donaldson amp Swanton47 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Mandan 17 500 15 000 1836 1738 17 1 000 lodges and 3 500 warriors W Sanstead amp Indian Affairs 183648 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Atsina Gros Ventre 16 800 1837 Still reported at 16 800 in 1841 Indian Affairs 183749 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Powhatan confederacy 16 600 1616 161 3 320 warriors in 1616 William Strachey and John Smith50 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Nanticoke confederacy 16 500 1600 16 1 100 warriors in 4 tribes in total 12 tribes John Smith and J R Swanton51 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Arikaras 16 000 1700 48 Kinglsey M Bray52 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Vancouver Island Salish 15 500 1780 Coast Salish on Vancouver Island Herbert C Taylor53 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Arapaho 15 250 1812 M R Stuart54 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Wichita confederacy 15 000 1772 3 000 warriors Juan de Ripperda55 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Keres 15 000 1584 7 Antonio de Espejo56 NE Woodlands New England Abenaki 15 000 1600 31 J A Maurault and J R Swanton57 NE Woodlands New England Pennacook confederacy 15 000 1674 Daniel Gookin58 NE Woodlands New England Wampanoag mainland 15 000 1600 30 Daniel Gookin and J R Swanton59 NE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Missouria 15 000 1764 H Bouquet and J Buchanan60 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Hidatsa 15 000 1835 William M Denevan61 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Ottawa Odawa 15 000 13 150 1825 1777 3 000 warriors in 1777 L Houck and J C Colhoun62 Southwest Texas Annexation Coahuiltecan tribes 15 000 1690 James Mooney63 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Mishinimaki 15 000 1600 30 Claude Dablon64 Southwest Mexican Cession Taos Pueblo Yuraba 15 000 1540 1 Relacion del Suceso65 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Erie 14 500 1653 J N B Hewitt66 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Kwakiutl tribes excluding Haisla 14 500 1780 Herbert C Taylor67 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Nootka Nutka tribes 14 000 1780 Herbert C Taylor68 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Wappinger confederacy 13 500 1600 68 E J Boesch and J R Swanton69 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Mississaugas Messassagnes 12 000 1744 3 2 400 warriors in 3 large towns Arthur Dobbs70 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Coast Salish except VI 12 000 1835 includes 7 100 mainland Cowichan Stalo and 1 400 mainland Comox Wilson Duff amp J Mooney71 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Franklin Canada District of Franklin Inuit 12 000 1670 James Mooney72 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Lekwiltok 10 520 1839 HBC Indian Census 183973 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Puget Sound Salish Lushootseed tribes 10 300 1780 Herbert C Taylor74 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Catawba 10 000 1700 R Mills and H Lewis Scaife75 Southwest Mexican Cession Akimel O odham Pima 10 000 1850 S Mowry76 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Cheyenne 10 000 1856 1 000 lodges and 2 000 warriors Thomas S Twiss77 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Chilkat 10 000 1869 F K Louthan78 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Tompiro 10 000 1626 15 Alonso de Benavides79 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Menominee 10 000 1778 2 000 warriors H R Schoolcraft80 Southwest Mexican Cession Mohave Mojave 10 000 1869 William Abraham Bell81 Southwest Texas Annexation Jumanos 10 000 1584 5 5 large towns Antonio de Espejo82 SE Woodlands Florida Purchase Seminole 10 000 1836 93 other figures 4 883 people in 1821 and 6 385 people in 1822 N G Taylor and Capt Hugh Young83 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Calusa 10 000 1570 56 Lopez de Velasco amp J R Swanton84 Great Plains Texas Annexation Kichai Waco Tawakoni 10 000 1719 2 000 warriors Benard de La Harpe85 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Pisquow Piskwau and Sinkiuse Columbia 10 000 1780 including Wenatchi Wenatchee James Teit86 NE Woodlands Quebec Canada St Lawrence Iroquoians 10 000 1500 Also known as Laurentians Gary Warrick amp Louis Lesage87 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Bitterroot Salish Flathead Salish 9 000 1821 1 800 warriors M R Stuart88 Great Basin Oregon Country Bannock and Diggers 9 000 1848 1 200 lodges of southern Bannock in 1829 Joseph L Meek and Jim Bridger89 Southwest Mexican Cession Piro Pueblo 9 000 1500 14 John R Swanton and Alonso de Benavides90 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Caddo tribes 8 500 1690 James Mooney91 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Haida except Kaigani 8 400 1787 42 C F Newcombe92 Great Basin Mexican Cession Paiute 8 200 1859 John Weiss Forney93 NE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Osage 8 000 1819 17 1 500 families in 1702 1 600 warriors in 1764 and 8 000 people in 1819 Th Nuttall Iberville and H Bouquet94 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Kansa Kaw 8 000 1764 1 600 warriors Henry Bouquet95 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Nez Perce 8 000 1806 Isaac Ingalls Stevens96 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Tionontati Petun 8 000 1600 9 9 towns 600 families in the main town James Mooney amp Jes Rel XXXV97 Subarctic amp Arctic Canada Chipewyan 7 500 1812 Samuel Gardner Drake98 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Secwepemc Shuswap 7 200 1850 James Teit and A C Anderson99 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Omaha Ponca 7 200 1702 Pierre d Iberville100 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Yamasee 7 000 1702 10 1 400 warriors Guillaume Delisle101 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Conoy Piscataway 7 000 1600 13 W M Denevan amp J R Swanton102 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Umpqua 7 000 1835 Samuel Parker103 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Tsimshian of British Columbia and Nisga a 7 000 1780 includes Kitksan Gitxsan and Kitsun tribes James Mooney104 Southwest Mexican Cession Tohono Oʼodham Papago 6 800 1863 19 Indian Affairs 1863105 NE Woodlands Quebec Canada Algonquin Anicinape 6 500 1860 Emmanuel Domenech106 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Sauk Sac 6 500 1786 Wisconsin Hist Coll XII107 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Potawatomi 6 500 1829 Peter Buell Porter amp McKenney108 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Meskwaki Fox 6 400 1835 Cutting Marsh in Wisconsin Hist Coll XV109 Southwest Mexican Cession Acoma Pueblo 6 000 1584 1 500 houses Antonio de Espejo110 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Wea 6 000 1718 5 1 200 warriors N Y Col Dcts IX111 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Quapaw Arkansa 6 000 1541 4 Fidalgo D Elvas112 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Yakama 6 000 1857 1 200 warriors A N Armstrong113 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Montauk 6 000 1600 20 J R Swanton114 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Alsea Siuslaw Yaquina and Luckton 6 000 1780 110 tribes of Yakonan language family James Mooney and James Owen Dorsey115 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Ho Chunk Winnebago 5 800 1818 Jedidiah Morse116 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Rogue River Indians Tututni tribes 5 600 1780 James Mooney117 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Kutenai Ktunaxa 5 600 1820 Jedidiah Morse118 Southwest Mexican Cession Quechan Yuma 5 500 1775 1855 A F Bandelier Ten Kate119 Subarctic amp Arctic Quebec Canada Innu and Naskapi 5 500 1600 17 James Mooney and J R Swanton120 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Kiowa 5 450 1805 1807 Z M Pike121 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Palouse Palus 5 400 1780 James Mooney and J R Swanton122 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Susquehanna Conestoga 5 000 1600 20 James Mooney and J R Swanton123 NE Woodlands New England Pocumtuk 5 000 1600 Pocumtuc History124 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Nlaka pamux 5 000 1858 James Teit amp A C Anderson125 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Dakelh Carrier 5 000 1835 A C Anderson and J Mooney126 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Klikitat Klickitat 5 000 1829 1 000 warriors under chief Casanow Paul Kane127 SE Woodlands Texas Annexation Hasinai confederacy 5 000 1716 Herbert Eugene Bolton128 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Makah 5 000 1805 more than 1 000 warriors John R Jewitt129 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Yuchi Euchee also known as Chisca 5 000 2 500 in 1777 1550 at least 500 warriors in year 1777 William Bartram amp Carolina The Native Americans130 Southwest Mexican Cession Halyikwamai 5 000 1605 Juan de Onate131 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada District of Mackenzie Inuit 4 800 1670 James Mooney132 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Chilcotin Tsilkotin 4 600 1793 by 1888 population was 10 of 1793 level A G Morice and HBC employees133 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Chopunnish 4 300 1806 Extinct native American tribes of North America134 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Honniasont 4 000 1662 800 warriors John R Swanton135 NE Woodlands New England Niantic 4 000 1500 Capers Jones136 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Chitimacha 4 000 1699 300 cabins and 800 warriors Benard de La Harpe137 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Lillooet Stʼatʼimc 4 000 1780 James Mooney and J Teit138 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Modoc amp Klamath 4 000 1868 Indian Affairs 1868139 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Weapemeoc Yeopim 4 000 1585 5 800 warriors S R Grenville140 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Sahaptin 4 000 1857 Tenino Tygh Wyam John Day Tilquni A N Armstrong141 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Guale 4 000 1650 J R Swanton142 Subarctic amp Arctic Canada Kutchin Loucheux 4 000 1871 Censuses of Canada 1665 to 1871143 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Skitswish 4 000 1800 James Teit144 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Wappatoo tribes 3 600 1780 James Mooney145 Subarctic amp Arctic Nunatsiavut Labrador Canada Labrador Inuit 3 600 1600 J Mooney amp Kroeber146 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Nisqually 3 600 1780 James Mooney147 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Chowanoc 3 500 1585 5 1585 700 warriors just in one of five towns Carolina The Native Americans148 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Acolapissa 3 500 1600 120 cabins Acolapissa History149 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Colville 3 500 1806 Isaac Ingalls Stevens150 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Babine Witsuwitʼen 3 500 1780 James Mooney151 Southwest Mexican Cession Havasupai and Tonto Apaches 3 500 1854 Amiel Weeks Whipple152 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Plains Apache Kiowa Apache 3 375 1818 Jedidiah Morse153 Subarctic amp Arctic British Columbia Canada Sekani Tse khene 3 200 1780 James Mooney and Sekani Indians of Canada154 Subarctic amp Arctic Newfoundland and Labrador Canada Beothuk 3 050 1500 Ralph T Pastore Leslie Upton155 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Alabama Alibamu 3 000 1764 6 600 warriors Henry Bouquet156 NE Woodlands New England Nantucket 3 000 1660 10 J Barber in J Chase and J R Swanton157 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Nottoway 3 000 1586 600 warriors R Lane in Hakluyt VIII158 Great Plains Texas Annexation Tonkawa 3 000 1814 600 warriors John F Schermerhorn159 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Wallawalla Walula 3 000 1848 Miss A J Allen160 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Spokan Spokane 3 000 1848 Joseph L Meek161 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Okinagan Syilx 3 000 1780 Also spelled Okanagan James Teit162 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Nipissing 3 000 1764 600 warriors Th Hutchins in H R Schoolcraft163 NE Woodlands New England Shawomets and Cowsetts Cowesets 3 000 1500 Capers Jones164 Southwest Mexican Cession Halchidhoma 3 000 1799 8 according to Juan de Onate 8 towns in 1604 J Cortez165 Southwest Mexican Cession Piipaash Maricopa 3 000 1799 J Cortez and Francisco Garces166 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Taposa and Ibitoupa 3 000 1699 Baudry de Lozieres167 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Multnomah 3 000 1830 decimated by epidemics in 1830s Hall J Kelley168 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Keewatin Canada District of Keewatin Inuit 3 000 1670 James Mooney169 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Potano 3 000 1650 James Mooney170 Southwest Mexican Cession Cocopah 3 000 1775 9 Francisco Garces and de Onate171 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Kalapuya tribes 3 000 1780 Eight tribes or bands James Mooney172 Southwest Mexican Cession Cajuenche Cawina 3 000 1680 James Mooney173 Southwest Mexican Cession Pueblo Picuris 3 000 1680 1 Agustin de Vetancurt174 NE Woodlands New England Martha s Vineyard Wampanoag Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah 3 000 1642 8 Lloyd C M Hare and J R Swanton175 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Kickapoo 3 000 1759 J R Swanton176 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Watlala 2 800 1805 Lewis and Clark177 Southwest Texas Annexation Karankawa 2 800 1690 James Mooney178 NE Woodlands Acadia Canada Wolastoqiyik Maliseet 2 750 1764 550 warriors Th Hutchins in H R Schoolcraft179 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Heiltsuk Bellabella and Haisla 2 700 1780 James Mooney180 NE Woodlands New England Mohegan 2 500 1680 21 500 warriors Mass Hist Coll and J R Swanton181 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Clackamas 2 500 1780 11 James Mooney182 Southwest Mexican Cession Yavapai 2 500 1869 J Ross Browne183 NE Woodlands New England Nipmuc 2 500 1500 29 Capers Jones and J R Swanton184 Subarctic amp Arctic Northwest Territories Canada Inuvialuit 2 500 1850 Jessica M Shadian Mark Nuttall185 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Manhasset Manhanset 2 500 1500 500 warriors E M Ruttenber186 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Snohomish 2 500 1844 Duflot de Mofras187 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Mosopelea Ofo Koroa and Tioux Tiou 2 450 1700 J R Swanton188 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Cowlitz 2 400 1822 3 Jedidiah Morse189 NE Woodlands New England Penobscot 2 250 1702 14 450 warriors N H Hist Coll I and J R Swanton190 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Tunica 2 250 1698 7 260 cabins and 450 warriors J G Shea and J R Swanton191 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Kalispel 2 250 1835 1850 450 warriors HBC agents amp Joseph Lane192 Great Plains Alberta Canada Sarcee Tsuutʼina 2 200 1832 220 tents on average 10 people per tent George Catlin and John Maclean193 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Tillamook 2 200 1820 10 Jedidiah Morse194 Subarctic amp Arctic Yukon Canada Yukon Inuit 2 200 1670 James Mooney195 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Tapanash Eneeshur including Skinpah 2 200 1780 James Mooney196 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Yazoo 2 000 1700 Dumont de Montigny197 Subarctic amp Arctic British Columbia Canada Nahani and Tahltan in British Columbia 2 000 1780 James Mooney198 NE Woodlands New England Nauset 2 000 1600 24 W M Denevan amp J R Swanton199 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Wenro 2 000 1600 J N B Hewitt200 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada Awokanak Slavey Etchaottine 2 000 1857 Emile Petitot201 Southwest Mexican Cession Hualapai Walapai 2 000 1869 J Ross Browne202 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Cayuse 2 000 1835 Samuel Parker203 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Sinixt Senijextee 2 000 1780 20 James Teit204 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Nuxalk Bellacoola 2 000 1835 Wilson Duff205 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Quatsino 2 000 1839 HBC Indian Census 1839206 Great Plains Saskatchewan Canada Fall Indians Alannar 2 000 1804 Extinct Native American tribes of North America207 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Samish 2 000 1845 Edmund Clare Fitzhugh208 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Athabasca Canada Etheneldeli 2 000 1875 Emile Petitot209 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Klallam 2 000 1780 James Mooney210 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Chakchiuma 2 000 1702 400 families in 1702 Bienville211 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Coos and Miluk 2 000 1780 James Mooney212 Southwest Mexican Cession Qnigyuma Jalliquamay 2 000 1680 James Mooney213 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Cusabo and Cusso 1 900 1600 Cusabo 1 300 and Cusso 600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans214 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Chimnapum Chamnapum 1 860 1805 42 lodges Lewis and Clark215 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Wanapum Wanapam 1 800 1780 James Mooney216 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Squamish Squawmish 1 800 1780 James Mooney217 Subarctic amp Arctic Nunavik Quebec Canada Nunavik Inuit 1 800 1600 James Mooney218 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Houma 1 750 1699 140 cabins and 350 warriors Pierre d Iberville219 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Shahala 1 700 1780 James Mooney220 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Sanpoil 1 700 1780 45 houses Verne F Ray and George Gibbs221 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Coquille 1 650 1800 33 James Owen Dorsey222 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Wateree Guatari 1 600 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans223 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Tlatskanai 1 600 1780 James Mooney224 NE Woodlands New England Passamaquoddy 1 600 1690 320 warriors Wendell225 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Westo and Stono 1 600 1600 James Mooney226 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada Dogrib Tlicho 1 500 1875 Emile Petitot227 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Attacapa Atakapa 1 500 1650 James Mooney228 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Otoe 1 500 1815 300 warriors William Clark229 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Wasco 1 500 1838 G Hines230 Subarctic amp Arctic Yukon Canada Hankutchin 1 500 1851 three subdivisions x 100 warriors each John Richardson231 NE Woodlands New England Podunk 1 500 1675 300 warriors fought in King Philip s War E Stiles232 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Saponi 1 500 1600 2 Carolina The Native Americans233 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Waxhaw and Sugeree 1 500 1600 2 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans234 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Manahoac 1 500 1600 James Mooney235 Great Basin Mexican Cession Washo 1 500 1800 A L Kroeber236 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Bayogoula Mugulasha and Quinipissa 1 500 1650 James Mooney237 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Tohome 1 500 1700 300 warriors Pierre d Iberville238 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Siletz Nestucca Salmon River tribe 1 500 1780 James Mooney239 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada Mauvais Monde Etquaotinne 1 500 1871 Also spelled Tsethaottine Censuses of Canada 1665 to 1871240 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Taensa 1 500 1700 120 cabins and 300 warriors Pierre d Iberville241 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Chatot 1 500 1674 J R Swanton242 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Wishram 1 500 1780 James Mooney243 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Lummi 1 300 1862 Myron Eells244 Subarctic amp Arctic Alberta Canada Beaver Tsattine 1 250 1670 Also known as Dane zaa James Mooney245 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Keewatin Canada Caribou Eaters 1 250 1670 James Mooney246 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Monacan 1 200 1600 James Mooney247 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Tutelo 1 200 1600 Carolina The Native Americans248 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Occaneechi 1 200 1600 James Mooney249 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Cheraw 1 200 1600 James Mooney250 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Machapunga 1 200 1600 3 Carolina The Native Americans251 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Quinaielt 1 200 1805 70 houses Lewis and Clark252 SE Woodlands Texas Annexation Arkokisa Akokisa 1 200 1746 5 300 families in 5 rancherias H E Bolton253 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Kuitsh 1 200 1820 21 Jedidiah Morse and James Owen Dorsey254 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Secotan 1 200 1600 Maurice A Mook255 Subarctic amp Arctic Yukon Canada Tutchone 1 100 1910 Frederick Webb Hodge256 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Waccamaw 1 050 1715 6 210 warriors W J Rivers257 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Guarugunve amp Cuchiyaga 1 040 1570 they inhabited Florida Keys Lopez de Velasco258 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada Hare Kawchottine 1 000 1850 Ludwik Krzywicki259 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Pamlico Pomouik and Bear River 1 000 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans260 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Neusiok amp Coree 1 000 1600 5 James Mooney261 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Cape Fear Indians 1 000 1600 James Mooney262 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Santee 1 000 1600 2 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans263 Great Plains Texas Annexation Bidai 1 000 1745 7 200 warriors Athanase de Mezieres264 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Ais amp Tekesta 1 000 1650 6 J R Swanton amp James Mooney265 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Jeaga amp Mayaimi 1 000 1650 5 J R Swanton amp James Mooney266 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Tocobaga 1 000 1650 James Mooney267 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Yustaga 1 000 1650 James Mooney268 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Biloxi Pascagoula Moctobi 1 000 1650 4 James Mooney269 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Moratoc 1 000 1600 Carolina The Native Americans270 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Edisto 1 000 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans271 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Sechelt 1 000 1780 James Mooney272 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Wahowpum 1 000 1844 Crawford in G Wilkes273 SE Woodlands Texas Annexation Yojuane Deadose 1 000 1745 H E Bolton274 SE Woodlands Texas Annexation Mayeye 1 000 1805 200 warriors J Sibley275 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Dulchioni 1 000 1712 200 warriors Andre Penicaut276 Southwest Mexican Cession Manso 1 000 1668 Agustin de Vetancurt277 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Quinault 1 000 1805 Includes 200 Calasthocle Lewis and Clark278 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Okelousa 950 1650 Not to be confused with Opelousa James Mooney279 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Cushook 900 1780 James Mooney280 SE Woodlands Texas Annexation Aranama 870 1778 Athanase de Mezieres281 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Sewee 800 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans282 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Congaree 800 1600 James Mooney283 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Sissipahaw 800 1600 1 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans284 NE Woodlands New England Paugussett 800 1600 C Thomas in F W Hodge285 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Smacksop 800 1805 24 houses Lewis and Clark286 Subarctic amp Arctic Yukon Canada Nahani of Yukon 800 1670 James Mooney287 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Methow 800 1780 Robert H Ruby and J Mooney288 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Snoqualmie 750 1862 Indian Affairs 1862289 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Coushatta Koasati 750 1760 John R Swanton290 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Kaskinampo 750 1700 150 warriors Bienville291 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Meherrin 700 1600 James Mooney292 Subarctic amp Arctic Ontario Canada Abittibi 700 1736 140 warriors Michel de La Chauvignerie293 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Quileute 650 1868 W B Gosnell294 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Skaquamish 650 1862 Indian Affairs 1862295 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Appalousa Opelousa 650 1715 130 warriors 52 cabins Baudry de Lozieres296 Subarctic amp Arctic Northwest Territories Canada Yellowknives 600 1877 70 tents Emile Petitot297 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Etiwaw also Etiwan 600 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans298 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Woccon 600 1701 2 120 warriors John Lawson History of Carolina 299 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Peedee Pedee 600 1600 1 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans300 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Keyauwee 600 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans301 Southwest Mexican Cession Sobaipuri 600 1680 James Mooney302 NE Woodlands New England Quinnipiac 550 1730 John William De Forest303 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Apalachicola 525 1738 2 105 warriors in two towns John R Swanton304 NE Woodlands New England Manisses 500 1500 Capers Jones305 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Takelma and Latgawa 500 1780 James Mooney306 NE Woodlands New England Tunxis 500 1600 100 warriors John William De Forest307 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Chiaha in South Carolina 500 1600 Carolina The Native Americans308 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Hatteras 500 1600 Carolina The Native Americans309 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Eno 500 1600 1 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans310 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Shakori 500 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans311 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Adshusheer 500 1600 James Mooney amp Carolina The Native Americans312 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Twana 500 1841 Myron Eells313 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Chetco 500 1800 9 42 houses in 9 villages James Owen Dorsey and Ludwik Krzywicki314 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Cahinnio 500 1687 1 100 cabins in one village Ludwik Krzywicki315 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Shasta Costa 500 1750 33 33 small hamlets James Owen Dorsey and Ludwik Krzywicki316 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Patuxent 500 1600 100 warriors William Strachey and John Smith317 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Mattapanient 500 1600 100 warriors William Strachey and John Smith318 NE Woodlands Quebec Canada Atikamekw Attikamegue 500 1647 over 30 canoes Ludwik Krzywicki319 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Wicocomoco 500 1600 100 warriors John Smith320 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Tsetsaut Tsesaut 500 1835 Ludwik Krzywicki and John R Swanton321 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Tocwogh 500 1600 100 warriors John Smith322 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Sutaio 500 1829 100 warriors Peter Buell Porter323 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Musqueam 500 1780 Ludwik Krzywicki324 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Moyawance 500 1600 100 warriors John Smith325 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Quaitso 500 1830 Hall J Kelley326 Subarctic amp Arctic British Columbia Canada Strongbow 500 1780 James Mooney327 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Adai 500 1718 100 warriors Bienville328 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Topinish 450 1839 HBC Indian Census 1839329 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Nooksak 450 1854 Isaac Ingalls Stevens330 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Kathlamet Cathlamet 450 1780 James Mooney331 Subarctic amp Arctic British Columbia Canada Ettchaottine 435 1858 F W Hodge332 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Skaddal 400 1847 W Robertson333 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Luckton 400 1830 Hall J Kelley334 NE Woodlands New England Wangunk 400 1600 James Mooney335 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Avoyel 400 1698 32 cabins and 80 warriors J R Swanton336 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Chimakum 400 1780 James Mooney337 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Squaxon 375 1857 John Ross Browne338 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Kwantlen 375 1839 HBC Indian Census 1839339 Great Basin Mexican Cession Chemehuevi 355 1910 1910 Census340 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Ouachita 350 1700 1 70 warriors Bienville341 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Pilalt Cheam 304 1839 HBC Indian Census 1839342 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Saukaulutucks 300 1860 R Mayne343 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Chehalis and Kwaiailk 300 1850 Joseph Lane344 Great Plains Louisiana Purchase Amahami 300 1811 H M Brackenridge345 Subarctic amp Arctic Nunavut Canada Southampton Island Inuit 300 1670 James Mooney346 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Clatsop 300 1806 Lewis and Clark347 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Charcowah 300 1780 James Mooney348 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada Sheep Esbataottine 300 1670 James Mooney349 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Semiahmoo 300 1843 John R Swanton350 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Tawasa 300 1792 John R Swanton351 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Amacano Chine Caparaz 300 1674 John R Swanton352 NE Woodlands Middle Colonies Ozinies 255 1608 They lived in Delaware and Maryland Maryland at a glance Native Americans353 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Umatilla 250 1858 Indian Affairs 1858354 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Washa 250 1715 50 warriors Baudry de Lozieres355 Subarctic amp Arctic District of Mackenzie Canada Nahani in District of Mackenzie 250 1906 John R Swanton356 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Naniaba 250 1730 50 warriors Regis de Rouillet357 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Squannaroo 240 1847 W Robertson358 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Molala 240 1857 J W P Huntington359 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Nacisi 230 1700 23 houses Bienville360 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Secowocomoco 200 1600 40 warriors John Smith361 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Copalis 200 1805 10 houses Lewis and Clark362 NE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Ahwajiaway 200 1805 Extinct Native American tribes of North America363 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Kwalhioqua 200 1780 James Mooney364 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Juntata 200 1648 40 warriors R Evelin365 SE Woodlands Louisiana Purchase Chawasha 200 1715 40 warriors Baudry de Lozieres366 SE Woodlands Southern Colonies Winyaw 180 1715 1 36 warriors and one village Carolina The Native Americans367 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Nanoose 159 1839 HBC Indian Census 1839368 NE Woodlands Ontario Canada Totontaratonhronon 150 1640 15 houses J Lalemant369 Northwest Plateau British Columbia Canada Nicola Athapaskans Stuichamukh 150 1780 3 Also spelled Stuwihamuq Franz Boas amp J Mooney370 Northwest Coast British Columbia Canada Sumas 132 1895 3 Canadian Indian Affairs371 Northwest Plateau Oregon Country Wiam 130 1850 Joseph Lane372 SE Woodlands Texas Annexation Cujane 100 1750 H E Bolton373 Northwest Coast Oregon Country Hoh 100 1875 Indian Affairs 1875374 NE Woodlands Old Northwest Noquet 100 1721 N Y Col Dcts VI 622375 SE Woodlands Spanish Florida Pensacola 100 1725 20 warriors Bienville376 SE Woodlands Old Southwest Choula 40 1722 Benard de La Harpe377 California Mexican Cession California Native tribes 340 000 1769 Cook Jones amp Codding Field378 Subarctic amp Arctic Alaska Alaska Native tribes 93 800 1750 Steve Langdon The total peak population size only for the tribes listed in this table is 3 529 240 in the US and Canada including 507 675 in Canada This number is very similar to Snow s estimate for the US and Canada and to Alchon s Denevan s and Milner s estimates Pre Columbian AmericasBust of Cuauhtemoc in el Zocalo Mexico City Genetic diversity and population structure in the American land mass using DNA micro satellite markers genotype sampled from North Central and South America have been analyzed against similar data available from other Indigenous populations worldwide The Amerindian populations show a lower genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions Decreasing genetic diversity with increasing geographic distance from the Bering Strait can be seen as well as a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska genetic entry point A higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America is observed A relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations is a scenario that implies coastal routes were easier than inland routes for migrating peoples Paleo Indians to traverse The overall pattern that is emerging suggests that the Americas were recently colonized by a small number of individuals effective size of about 70 250 and then they grew by a factor of 10 over 800 1 000 years The data also show that there have been genetic exchanges between Asia the Arctic and Greenland since the initial peopling of the Americas A new study in early 2018 suggests that the effective population size of the original founding population of Native Americans was about 250 people Depopulation by Old World diseasesOne estimate of population collapse in Central Mexico brought on by successive epidemics in the early colonial period Note Other scholars estimates vary widely Early explanations for the population decline of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas include the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores as recorded by the Spaniards themselves such as the encomienda system which was ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion but in practice was tantamount to serfdom and slavery The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolome de las Casas whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against the Tainos The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval in which God removed the Indigenous peoples as part of His divine plan to make way for a new Christian civilization Many Native Americans viewed their troubles in a religious framework within their own belief systems According to later academics such as Noble David Cook a community of scholars began quietly accumulating piece by piece data on early epidemics in the Americas and their relation to the subjugation of native peoples Scholars like Cook believe that widespread epidemic disease to which the Indigenous peoples had no prior exposure or resistance was the primary cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox but other deadly diseases included typhus measles influenza bubonic plague cholera malaria tuberculosis mumps yellow fever and pertussis which were chronic in Eurasia However recently scholars have studied the link between physical colonial violence such as warfare displacement and enslavement and the proliferation of disease among Native populations For example according to Coquille scholar Dina Gilio Whitaker In recent decades however researchers challenge the idea that disease is solely responsible for the rapid Indigenous population decline The research identifies other aspects of European contact that had profoundly negative impacts on Native peoples ability to survive foreign invasion war massacres enslavement overwork deportation the loss of will to live or reproduce malnutrition and starvation from the breakdown of trade networks and the loss of subsistence food production due to land loss Further Andres Resendez of the University of California Davis points out that even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519 implying that until that date epidemic disease played no significant part in the depopulation of the Antilles The practices of forced labor brutal punishment and inadequate necessities of life were the initial and major reasons for depopulation Jason Hickel estimates that a third of Arawak workers died every six months from forced labor in these mines In this way slavery has emerged as a major killer of the Indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550 as it set the conditions for diseases such as smallpox influenza and malaria to flourish Unlike the populations of Europe who rebounded following the Black Death no such rebound occurred for the Indigenous populations Similarly historian Jeffrey Ostler at the University of Oregon has argued that population collapses in North America throughout colonization were not due mainly to lack of Native immunity to European disease Instead he claims that When severe epidemics did hit it was often less because Native bodies lacked immunity than because European colonialism disrupted Native communities and damaged their resources making them more vulnerable to pathogens In specific regard to Spanish colonization of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia Native peoples there were subject to forced labor and because of poor living conditions and malnutrition succumbed to wave after wave of unidentifiable diseases Further in relation to British colonization in the Northeast Algonquian speaking tribes in Virginia and Maryland suffered from a variety of diseases including malaria typhus and possibly smallpox These diseases were not solely a case of Native susceptibility however because as colonists took their resources Native communities were subject to malnutrition starvation and social stress all making people more vulnerable to pathogens Repeated epidemics created additional trauma and population loss which in turn disrupted the provision of healthcare Such conditions would continue alongside rampant disease in Native communities throughout colonization the formation of the United States and multiple forced removals as Ostler explains that many scholars have yet to come to grips with how U S expansion created conditions that made Native communities acutely vulnerable to pathogens and how severely disease impacted them Historians continue to ignore the catastrophic impact of disease and its relationship to U S policy and action even when it is right before their eyes Historian David Stannard says that by focusing almost entirely on disease contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent a sad but both inevitable and unintended consequence of human migration and progress and asserts that their destruction was neither inadvertent nor inevitable but the result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem He also wrote Despite frequent undocumented assertions that disease was responsible for the great majority of indigenous deaths in the Americas there does not exist a single scholarly work that even pretends to demonstrate this claim on the basis of solid evidence And that is because there is no such evidence anywhere The supposed truism that more native people died from disease than from direct face to face killing or from gross mistreatment or other concomitant derivatives of that brutality such as starvation exposure exhaustion or despair is nothing more than a scholarly article of faith Chief Sitting Bull In contrast historian Russel Thornton has pointed out that there were disastrous epidemics and population losses during the first half of the sixteenth century resulting from incidental contact or even without direct contact as disease spread from one American Indian tribe to another Thornton has also challenged higher Indigenous population estimates which are based on the Malthusian assumption that populations tend to increase to and beyond the limits of the food available to them at any particular level of technology The European colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of so many people it contributed to climatic change and temporary global cooling according to scientists from University College London A century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus some 90 of Indigenous Americans had perished from wave after wave of disease along with mass slavery and war in what researchers have described as the great dying According to one of the researchers UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin the large death toll also boosted the economies of Europe the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue that domination Biological warfare When Old World diseases were first carried to the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century they spread throughout the southern and northern hemispheres leaving the Indigenous populations in near ruins No evidence has been discovered that the earliest Spanish colonists and missionaries deliberately attempted to infect the American Natives and some efforts were made to limit the devastating effects of disease before it killed off what remained of their labor force compelled to work under the encomienda system The cattle introduced by the Spanish contaminated various water reserves which Native Americans dug in the fields to accumulate rainwater In response the Franciscans and Dominicans created public fountains and aqueducts to guarantee access to drinking water But when the Franciscans lost their privileges in 1572 many of these fountains were no longer guarded and so deliberate well poisoning may have happened Although no proof of such poisoning has been found some historians believe the decrease of the population correlates with the end of religious orders control of the water In following centuries accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common Well documented accounts of incidents involving both threats and acts of deliberate infection are very rare but may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged Many of the instances likely went unreported and it is possible that documents relating to such acts were deliberately destroyed or sanitized By the middle of the 18th century colonists had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus They well understood the concept of quarantine and that contact with the sick could infect the healthy with smallpox and those who survived the illness would not be infected again Whether the threats were carried out or how effective individual attempts were is uncertain One such threat was delivered by fur trader James McDougall who is quoted as saying to a gathering of local chiefs You know the smallpox Listen I am the smallpox chief In this bottle I have it confined All I have to do is to pull the cork send it forth among you and you are dead men But this is for my enemies and not my friends Likewise another fur trader threatened Pawnee Indians that if they didn t agree to certain conditions he would let the smallpox out of a bottle and destroy them The Reverend Isaac McCoy was quoted in his History of Baptist Indian Missions as saying that the white men had deliberately spread smallpox among the Indians of the southwest including the Pawnee tribe and the havoc it made was reported to General Clark and the Secretary of War Artist and writer George Catlin observed that Native Americans were also suspicious of vaccination They see white men urging the operation so earnestly they decide that it must be some new mode or trick of the pale face by which they hope to gain some new advantage over them So great was the distrust of the settlers that the Mandan chief Four Bears denounced the white man whom he had previously treated as brothers for deliberately bringing the disease to his people During the siege of British held Fort Pitt in the Seven Years War Colonel Henry Bouquet ordered his men to take smallpox infested blankets from their hospital and gave them as gifts to two neutral Lenape Indian dignitaries during a peace settlement negotiation according to the entry in the Captain s ledger To convey the Smallpox to the Indians In the following weeks Sir Jeffrey Amherst conspired with Bouquet to Extirpate this Execreble Race of Native Americans writing Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them His Colonel agreed to try Most scholars have asserted that the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic was started among the tribes of the upper Missouri River by failure to quarantine steamboats on the river and Captain Pratt of the St Peter was guilty of contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people The law calls his offense criminal negligence Yet in light of all the deaths the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans and the terrible suffering the region endured the label criminal negligence is benign hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences However some sources attribute the 1836 40 epidemic to the deliberate communication of smallpox to Native Americans with historian Ann F Ramenofsky writing Variola Major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets In the nineteenth century the U S Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans especially Plains groups to control the Indian problem In Brazil well into the 20th century deliberate infection attacks continued as Brazilian settlers and miners transported infections intentionally to the Native groups whose lands they coveted Vaccination After Edward Jenner s 1796 demonstration that the smallpox vaccination worked the technique became better known and smallpox became less deadly in the United States and elsewhere Many colonists and Natives were vaccinated although in some cases officials tried to vaccinate Natives only to discover that the disease was too widespread to stop At other times trade demands led to broken quarantines In other cases Natives refused vaccination because of suspicion of whites The first international healthcare expedition in history was the Balmis Expedition which had the aim of vaccinating Indigenous peoples against smallpox all along the Spanish Empire in 1803 In 1831 government officials vaccinated the Yankton Dakota at Sioux Agency The Santee Sioux refused vaccination and many died Depopulation by European conquestWar and violence An 1899 chromolithograph of U S cavalry pursuing American Indians artist unknown An 1899 chromolithograph from the Werner Company of Akron Ohio titled Custer Massacre at Big Horn Montana 25 June 1876 While epidemic disease was a leading factor of the population decline of the American Indigenous peoples after 1492 there were other contributing factors all of them related to European contact and colonization One of these factors was warfare According to demographer Russell Thornton although many people died in wars over the centuries and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes warfare and death by other violent means was a comparatively minor cause of overall Native population decline From the U S Bureau of the Census in 1894 wars between the government and the Indigenous peoples ranged over 40 in number over the previous 100 years These wars cost the lives of approximately 19 000 white people and the lives of about 30 000 Indians including men women and children They safely estimated that the number of Native people who were killed or wounded was actually around fifty percent more than what was recorded There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre Columbian America but there is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans and their firearms citation needed The South or Central American infrastructure allowed for thousands of European conquistadors and tens of thousands of their Indian auxiliaries to attack the dominant Indigenous civilization Empires such as the Incas depended on a highly centralized administration for the distribution of resources Disruption caused by the war and the colonization hampered the traditional economy and possibly led to shortages of food and materials Across the western hemisphere war with various Native American civilizations constituted alliances based out of both necessity or economic prosperity and resulted in mass scale intertribal warfare European colonization in the North American continent also contributed to a number of wars between Native Americans who fought over which of them should have first access to new technology and weaponry like in the Beaver Wars Genocides According to the Cambridge World History the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies and the Cambridge World History of Genocide colonial policies in some cases included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples in North America According to the Cambridge World History of Genocide Spanish colonization of the Americas also included genocidal massacres According to Adam Jones genocidal methods included the following Genocidal massacres Biological warfare using pathogens especially smallpox and plague to which the indigenous peoples had no resistance Spreading of disease via the reduction of Indians to densely crowded and unhygienic settlements Slavery and forced indentured labor especially though not exclusively in Latin America in conditions often rivaling those of Nazi concentration camps Mass population removals to barren reservations sometimes involving death marches en route and generally leading to widespread mortality and population collapse upon arrival Deliberate starvation and famine exacerbated by destruction and occupation of the native land base and food resources Forced education of indigenous children in White run schools Exploitation D Albertis Castle Genoa Museum of World Cultures Some Spaniards objected to the encomienda system of labor notably Bartolome de las Casas who insisted that the Indigenous people were humans with souls and rights Because of many revolts and military encounters Emperor Charles V helped relieve the strain on both the Native laborers and the Spanish vanguards probing the Caribana for military and diplomatic purposes Later on New Laws were promulgated in Spain in 1542 to protect isolated Native but the abuses in the Americas were never entirely or permanently abolished The Spanish also employed the pre Columbian draft system called the mita and treated their subjects as something between slaves and serfs Serfs stayed to work the land slaves were exported to the mines where large numbers of them died In other areas the Spaniards replaced the ruling Aztecs and Incas and divided the conquered lands among themselves ruling as the new feudal lords with often but unsuccessful lobbying to the viceroys of the Spanish crown to pay Tlaxcalan war demnities The infamous Bandeirantes from Sao Paulo adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and Native ancestry penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves Serfdom existed as such in parts of Latin America well into the 19th century past independence Historian Andres Resendez argues that even though the Spanish were aware of the spread of smallpox they made no mention of it until 1519 a quarter century after Columbus arrived in Hispaniola Instead he contends that enslavement in gold and silver mines was the primary reason why the Native American population of Hispaniola dropped so significantly and that even though disease was a factor the Native population would have rebounded the same way Europeans did following the Black Death if it were not for the constant enslavement they were subject to He further contends that enslavement of Native Americans was in fact the primary cause of their depopulation in Spanish territories that the majority of Indians enslaved were women and children compared to the enslavement of Africans which mostly targeted adult males and in turn they were sold at a 50 to 60 higher price and that 2 462 000 to 4 985 000 Amerindians were enslaved between Columbus s arrival and 1900 Massacres Mass grave of Lakota dead after the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre Conquest of Mexico citation needed The Pequot War in early New England In mid 19th century Argentina post independence leaders Juan Manuel de Rosas and Julio Argentino Roca engaged in what they presented as a Conquest of the Desert against the Natives of the Argentinian interior leaving over 1 300 Indigenous dead While some California tribes were settled on reservations others were hunted down and massacred by 19th century American settlers It is estimated that at least 9 400 to 16 000 California Indians were killed by non Indians mostly occurring in more than 370 massacres defined as the intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants including women children and prisoners whether in the context of a battle or otherwise Displacement and disruption Throughout history Indigenous people have been subjected to the repeated and forced removal from their land Beginning in the 1830s there was the relocation of an estimated 100 000 Indigenous people in the United States called the Trail of Tears The tribes affected by this specific removal were the Five Civilized Tribes The Cherokee Creek Chickasaw Choctaw and Seminole The treaty of New Echota was enacted which stated that the United States would give Cherokee land west of the Mississippi in exchange for 5 000 000 According to Jeffrey Ostler Of the 80 000 Native people who were forced west from 1830 into the 1850s between 12 000 and 17 000 perished Ostler states that the large majority died of interrelated factors of starvation exposure and disease In addition to the removal of the Southern Tribes there were multiple other removals of Northern Tribes also known as Trails of Tears For example In the free labor states of the North federal and state officials supported by farmers speculators and business interests evicted Shawnees Delawares Senecas Potawatomis Miamis Wyandots Ho Chunks Ojibwes Sauks and Meskwakis These Nations were moved West of the Mississippi into what is now known as Eastern Kansas and numbered 17 000 on arrival According to Ostler by 1860 their numbers had been cut in half because of low fertility high infant mortality and increased disease caused by conditions such as polluted drinking water few resources and social stress Ostler also writes that the areas that Northern tribes were removed to were already inhabited The areas west of the Mississippi River were home to other Indigenous nations Osages Kanzas Omahas Ioways Otoes and Missourias To make room for thousands of people from the East the government dispossessed these nations of much their lands Ostler writes that when Northern Nations were moved onto their landing 1840 The combined population of these western nations was 9 000 20 years later it had fallen to 6 000 Later apologies by government officials On 8 September 2000 the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs BIA formally apologized for the agency s participation in the ethnic cleansing of Western tribes In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019 California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the California Genocide Newsom said That s what it was a genocide No other way to describe it And that s the way it needs to be described in the history books Modern Indigenous population by region according to the censusesRegion Percentage Total population Country YearBetween 75 and 100 Puno 90 81 857 351 Peru 2017Apurimac 86 97 273 947 Peru 2017 Vaupes 81 68 30 787 Colombia 2018 Ayacucho 81 48 388 476 Peru 2017Huancavelica 80 88 215 812 Peru 2017Cusco 75 91 721 430 Peru 2017Between 50 and 75 Guainia 74 90 33 280 Colombia 2018 Potosi 69 50 572 314 Bolivia 2012 Oaxaca 69 18 Mexico 2020 Yucatan 65 18 Mexico 2020 Vichada 58 16 44 578 Colombia 2018Amazonas 57 72 38 130 Colombia 2018La Paz 54 49 1 474 654 Bolivia 2012 Oruro 51 08 252 444 Bolivia 2012 Chuquisaca 50 29 289 728 Bolivia 2012Between 25 and 50 La Guajira 47 82 394 683 Colombia 2018 Cochabamba 47 52 835 535 Bolivia 2012 Campeche 47 26 Mexico 2020 Huanuco 43 34 239 049 Peru 2017 Tacna 40 32 108 469 Peru 2017 Pasco 39 87 78 455 Peru 2017 Madre de Dios 39 47 41 646 Peru 2017 Moquegua 36 71 52 205 Peru 2017 Chiapas 36 65 Mexico 2020 Junin 36 45 353 192 Peru 2017 Arica y Parinacota 34 89 Chile 2017Arequipa 34 74 388 476 Peru 2017 Ancash 34 15 290 420 Peru 2017 Araucania 33 57 Chile 2017 Quintana Roo 33 23 Mexico 2020 Puebla 33 22 Mexico 2020 Guerrero 33 14 Mexico 2020 Beni 33 14 134 025 Bolivia 2012 Aysen 28 18 Chile 2017Los Lagos 27 61 Chile 2017 Veracruz 26 90 Mexico 2020 Los Rios 25 03 Chile 2017Between 10 and 25 Cauca 24 81 308 455 Colombia 2018 Morelos 24 55 Mexico 2020 Tarapaca 24 22 Chile 2017 Pando 23 78 26 261 Bolivia 2012 Magallanes 22 69 Chile 2017 Tabasco 21 36 Mexico 2020 Michoacan 20 75 Mexico 2020 San Luis Potosi 20 33 Mexico 2020Santa Cruz 19 65 521 814 Bolivia 2012 Atacama 19 36 Chile 2017 Putumayo 17 90 50 694 Colombia 2018Lima 17 82 128 632 Peru 2017Lima province 17 16 1 211 490 Peru 2017 Tlaxcala 16 46 Mexico 2020 Nayarit 15 94 Mexico 2020Mexico 15 75 Mexico 2020 Narino 15 46 206 455 Colombia 2018 Choco 14 96 68 415 Colombia 2018 Ica 14 77 97 863 Peru 2017 Tarija 14 49 69 872 Bolivia 2012 Sucre 12 14 104 890 Colombia 2018 Roraima 14 12 89 882 Brazil 2022 Antofagasta 13 57 Chile 2017 Sonora 13 31 Mexico 2020 Colima 13 17 Mexico 2020 Queretaro 13 15 Mexico 2020Cordoba 13 03 202 621 Colombia 2018 Baja California Sur 11 87 Mexico 2020 Callao 11 02 88 081 Peru 2017 Chihuahua 10 48 Mexico 2020 Jujuy 10 07 81 538 Argentina 2022Between 5 and 10 Salta 9 96 142 870 Argentina 2022 Santiago 9 77 Chile 2017 Guaviare 9 38 6 856 Colombia 2018 Sinaloa 9 35 Mexico 2020Biobio 9 31 Chile 2017 Mexico City 9 28 Mexico 2020 Durango 8 87 Mexico 2020 Coquimbo 8 57 Chile 2017 Loreto 8 10 50 493 Peru 2017 Baja California 7 97 Mexico 2020 Chubut 7 92 46 670 Argentina 2022 Formosa 7 84 47 459 Argentina 2022 Amazonas 7 74 305 243 Brazil 2022 Neuquen 7 68 54 436 Argentina 2022 Ucayali 7 06 25 181 Peru 2017 Jalisco 7 04 Mexico 2020 Tamaulipas 6 67 Mexico 2020 Valparaiso 6 59 Chile 2017 Cajamarca 6 47 66 473 Peru 2017Rio Negro 6 45 48 194 Argentina 2022 Nuevo Leon 6 40 Mexico 2020 Guanajuato 6 39 Mexico 2020 O Higgins 6 26 Chile 2017 Aguascalientes 6 17 Mexico 2020 Caldas 6 04 55 801 Colombia 2018San Martin 5 85 35 613 Peru 2017Amazonas 5 04 14 182 Peru 2017Between 0 and 5 Zacatecas 4 88 Mexico 2020 Chaco 4 78 53 798 Argentina 2022 Lambayeque 4 77 44 613 Peru 2017Maule 4 69 Chile 2017 Cesar 4 66 51 233 Colombia 2018 Catamarca 4 60 19 668 Argentina 2022 La Pampa 4 36 15 659 Argentina 2022 Santa Cruz 3 73 12 525 Argentina 2022 Tolima 3 68 45 269 Colombia 2018 Risaralda 3 56 29 909 Colombia 2018 Acre 3 51 29 163 Brazil 2022 Mato Grosso do Sul 3 48 96 029 Brazil 2022 Tierra del Fuego 3 21 5 942 Argentina 2022La Libertad 3 19 43 960 Peru 2017La Rioja 2 78 10 645 Argentina 2022 Arauca 2 74 6 573 Colombia 2018 Santiago del Estero 2 65 28 022 Argentina 2022 Caqueta 2 45 8 825 Colombia 2018Buenos Aires City 2 41 74 724 Argentina 2022 Piura 2 35 33 196 Peru 2017 Mendoza 2 24 45 389 Argentina 2022 Meta 2 23 20 528 Colombia 2018 Tucuman 2 18 37 646 Argentina 2022Buenos Aires 2 14 371 830 Argentina 2022 Coahuila 2 13 Mexico 2020 Tumbes 2 10 3 5946 Peru 2017 Misiones 2 04 26 006 Argentina 2022 Cordoba 1 82 69 218 Argentina 2022 Casanare 1 81 6 893 Colombia 2018 San Juan 1 76 14 457 Argentina 2022 Atlantico 1 67 39 061 Colombia 2018 Magdalena 1 66 20 938 Colombia 2018 Santa Fe 1 63 57 193 Argentina 2022 Mato Grosso 1 55 56 687 Brazil 2022 San Luis 1 54 8 340 Argentina 2022 Amapa 1 41 10 340 Brazil 2022 Entre Rios 1 32 18 693 Argentina 2022 Corrientes 1 31 15 808 Argentina 2022 Tocantins 1 24 18 735 Brazil 2022 Huila 1 21 12 194 Colombia 2018 Rondonia 1 09 17 278 Brazil 2022 Pernambuco 0 92 83 667 Brazil 2022 Para 0 85 25 478 Brazil 2022 Valle del Cauca 0 81 30 844 Colombia 2018 Maranhao 0 81 54 682 Brazil 2022 Alagoas 0 64 20 095 Brazil 2022 Paraiba 0 64 25 478 Brazil 2022 Antioquia 0 63 37 628 Colombia 2018 Boyaca 0 63 7 151 Colombia 2018 Bahia 0 59 83 658 Brazil 2022 Quindio 0 57 2 883 Colombia 2018 Ceara 0 45 39 982 Brazil 2022 Cundinamarca 0 36 9 949 Colombia 2018 Norte de Santander 0 34 4 545 Colombia 2018 Rio Grande do Sul 0 31 34 184 Brazil 2022 img
