California Athabascan Groups

by Martin A. Baumhoff

SOURCES

The earliest serious effort to estimate the aboriginal population of California was made by Powers (1877, pp. 415-416), who arrived at a figure of 750,000 persons for the entire state. This effort was followed in 1905 by a more sophisticated attempt on the part of C. Hart Merriam, whose figure for the state was 260,000 persons. Merriam's figures were based on an estimate of the population of the mission strip, from Spanish data, and a gross extrapolation from that to the remainder of the state.

The first attempt at population estimates in detail and with the use of a variety of data was made by Kroeber (1925). The figure he got for the whole state was 133,000 persons, and he still used that figure, although with some reservations, as late as 1939 (see Kroeber, 1939, pp. 178-179).

The problem has recently been reopened by S. F. Cook. In 1943 he published an evaluation of Kroeber's estimates, based on essentially the same data, and the result was to increase the estimate by about 10 per cent. In the last two years Cook has begun a more intensive investigation, the results thus far being new estimates for the San Joaquin Valley (1955) and for the Northern California coast (1956). The upshot of these last papers has been to double Kroeber's estimates in the areas under consideration. The basis of the new estimate suggested by Cook is a more intensive use of historical sources and readier acceptance of the observations found there. He says, "Evidence of misstatement should be looked for and, if found, should be discounted or discredited. Otherwise it should be admitted at face value."

Kroeber has recognized the discrepancy between his estimates and those based on historical statements. He agrees that, if the extrapolations from the latter are accepted, the Merriam figure of 260,000 persons would probably be more accurate. The difficulty there is that "if we accept 260,000, one-quarter of all United States Indians were in California; and this seems unlikely enough. Shall we then assume that Mooney and practically all American anthropologists computed far too low?" (1939, p. 179). Kroeber leaves the question unanswered but Cook's recent work carries the implication that the answer is decidedly affirmative.

The estimate in this paper of the population of the California Athabascans agrees with Cook's results, raising Kroeber's estimates; in fact, it goes even further than Cook in that direction. But the estimates here, with one exception, have been based on village counts by ethnographers rather than on historical data. The fact that the estimates run so high tends to bear out Cook's contention that the Kroeber estimates should be raised.

In basing population estimates on village counts there are several sources of error. Among these are assumptions regarding the number of persons per house and the number of houses per village. I believe that all the assumptions I have made in this regard have been conservative and therefore would not result in overestimates. The number of houses per village can sometimes be calculated rather closely from the number of house pits seen in the sites. That is, the houses can be calculated closely if the assumption is correct that four-fifths of the number of house pits in a site represents the number of simultaneously occupied houses. Admittedly, this figure is rather speculative, but the best opinions I have been able to get grant that it is probably conservative.

A more serious possible source of error concerns the question of which and how many sites were simultaneously occupied. When there is a complete village count, I have excluded from consideration known summer villages, villages not on main salmon streams, and other villages of doubtful status. Even so, the villages run about one per mile along the salmon streams and the possibility presents itself of movement from site to site, perhaps in response to varying fishing conditions. If this was the practice, then the population estimates might have to be reduced by half or even more. But there is no concrete evidence to support such a theory and it is a fact that the Goddard material gives quite complete information of this kind. Therefore, if the present calculation is an overestimate, it is not a very great one.