THE POPULATION IN PREHISTORIC TIMES
We should first consider a subject which has been given, it would seem, scant attention. I refer to the fact that generally throughout the American continent are unmistakable evidences of a considerable population in ancient times. At present there are about three hundred and sixty thousand Indians in the United States and Canada. Perhaps more than half of these show the effects of marriage with whites or negroes. The population of to-day is no criterion of that in ancient times. In studying field evidence of population, we must bear in mind that the Indian of both periods made use of perishable materials. This is an essential fact to be noted during the course of our studies. Much that both the historic and prehistoric Indian made use of was composed of cloth, iron, wood, brass, leather, etc. It is quite true that the wood, leather, cloth, etc., of prehistoric times would disappear, but the stone, bone, shell, clay, and copper objects remained. Iron rusts quickly, and the use of iron was widespread from the time of the settlement on the New England coast (1620) down to the present. A great deal of iron was introduced by De Soto in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas; and by Coronado in the Southwest. Both of these expeditions were in the years 1540–1543, and on them hundreds of Spaniards penetrated into the interior carrying thousands of objects, chiefly of iron. All of this must have had an effect on the natives throughout a considerable portion of North America.
I have elsewhere referred to the difference between historic and modern sites, but the subject is important and has been, it seems to me, passed over or not appreciated by others, and it is necessary to emphasize the difference between the ancient and the modern again. The significant fact is that all of this iron has disappeared leaving here and there a streak of rust, and that upon the modern sites were left quantities of glass beads and other objects that are not perishable. These were in use among the natives, yet few of these things remain; the only exception being noted in the sites of the Iroquois of western New York, where the modern artifacts predominate.
In previous articles I have called attention to the fact that on the four or five Shawano sites in the State of Ohio, there were large bodies of Indians assembled during the period embraced between (roughly) 1700 and 1812. These Indians helped to make American history. They were fairly numerous, of unquestioned ability, and produced such men as Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet. Their leaders, Tecumseh and Cornstalk, were engaged in twenty-two actions with our troops; numerous traders were among them, and they sent many expeditions against the frontiers. Yet, if one walks over these populous sites of historic times, one finds practically nothing save here and there a glass bead or a broken tomahawk.
In any one of perhaps two or three hundred places where prehistoric villages occurred, an observer may find great quantities of chips, spawls, broken implements, broken pottery, etc. The needs of ancient man were few, his implements simple and confined to the types illustrated in this work. Therefore, the presence of the unnumbered evidences of human residence indicates either a great length of occupation, or large numbers of Indians for a short period of time.
I never believed that the population in America exceeded one million (north of Mexico) at any time, assuming that the field evidence is against the statement so often made that there are as many Indians in America to-day as at the time of the discovery.
If the Ohio Valley had been occupied by mound-building people when La Salle and Hennepin made their voyages of discovery, these worthy and zealous explorers would have made reference to it in their reports. But La Salle and Hennepin heard of the great Illinois towns on the river of the same name in that state and journeyed from Quebec to visit those towns. There were thousands of Indians living in the Illinois country, but Ohio appears to have had little population—that is of Indians, and none whatsoever of mound-building people.
Between Aurora and Lawrenceburg, Indiana, if the Ohio River has not during a recent flood covered the bottoms with silt, there may be seen a village-site nearly three miles in extent. I visited it in 1898 and collected upwards of three thousand specimens from the surface in a week’s time.
The Indian population was most numerous on that great artery, the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Perhaps we have not fully recognized the importance played by this “Father of Waters” in prehistoric times. Throughout the Mississippi Valley are several climates varying from extreme cold in northern Minnesota to the semi-tropical of Louisiana; from the aridity of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the salubrious climate of Tennessee; from the cold of the extreme Northwest to that of Pennsylvania. The Mississippi Valley comprises altitude and sea level, mountains and plains, every kind of soil and every specimen of plant and animal life found in North America above the City of Mexico.
It would appear that man had penetrated to the heads of every stream tributary to the Mississippi. Through the Colorado basin, throughout the length and breadth of all the Southern rivers; to the rivers of New England, the great St. Lawrence basin, and the Red River of the North, and even far Yukon in Alaska,—these primitive stone-age people carried their simple arts and established their villages. In the Cumberland and Tennessee valleys such multitudes of them lived that even after a hundred years of ruthless destruction of the stone grave cemeteries, there still remain thousands of unopened sepulchres.
Apropos of these stone graves, General Gates P. Thruston, of Nashville, who has studied ancient man in Tennessee more than forty years, reports by letter to me as follows: “I think that there must have been forty thousand graves within twenty-five miles of Nashville. I should think there were probably at one time as many as one hundred thousand prehistoric inhabitants in the two valleys. The village-sites and cemeteries cannot be numbered.”
The officials at Washington have underestimated, it seems to me, the number of Indians in the United States, because they have recorded the Indian of the historic period rather than the Indian of the past. De Soto and Coronado both reported continuous population throughout the regions traversed by them. Yet shortly after the year 1700 small-pox, measles, cholera, and other diseases destroyed entire tribes. Untold thousands of our Indians perished during these epidemics. The case of the Mandans is well known. The early colonists made frequent reference to the spread of these plagues throughout the country.
Fig. 722. (S. 1–2.) Views of an unknown object of stone, found in 1885 on a ranch on the Columbia River, Oregon. W. F. Parker’s collection, Omaha.
Fourteen years ago I compiled an archæologic map for the State of Ohio; the last entry being made in 1897. At that time there were 3292 various monuments and village-sites recorded. Since then Professor Mills has continued the work and added to the total. Constant travel over the State of Ohio in the past years leads me to believe that there were in ancient times at least twenty thousand monuments great and small in that state.
All considered, the population in North America in pre-Columbian times must have been considerable during two or three thousand years, if not for a longer period.