The total aboriginal population of North America in 1900, as nearly as it is now practicable to ascertain, is shown in the following table:
| Eskimos. | Canada, Arctic coast | 1,000 | |
| Newfoundland (Labrador coast) | 800 | ||
| United States, Alaska (1890) | 14,000 | ||
| ———— | |||
| Total Eskimo population, about | 15,800 | ||
| Indians. | Canada | 99,010 | |
| United States, exclusive of Alaska | 270,544 | ||
| United States Alaska | 15,500 | ||
| Mexico (1895) | 5,000,000 | ||
| Central America (largely estimated) | 1,600,000 | ||
| ———— | |||
| Total Indian population, about | 6,985,054 | ||
| ======== | |||
| Total aboriginal population, about | 7,000,800 |
In this enumeration no account is taken of the Indians of the West Indies, for the reason, so far as can be learned, that there are few, if any, of pure blood remaining.
LITERATURE
Vast stores of information concerning the aborigines of America have been published by the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.; the Peabody Museum of Archæology, Cambridge, Mass.; the American Museum of Natural History, New York, N. Y.; the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, Ill.; and in the American Archæologist, a monthly magazine now printed by Putnam's Sons, New York.
Readily accessible books relating to the Eskimos of Alaska are:
- Dall, W. H. Alaska and its Resources. Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1870.
- Petroff, Ivan. Reports on the Population, Resources, etc., of Alaska. In the reports of the tenth and eleventh censuses of the United States.
The condition of the Indians in the United States during the past half century is recorded in the annual reports on Indian affairs published by the Department of the Interior, Washington, D. C. Similar information concerning the natives of Canada may be found in the reports on Indian affairs issued by the Canadian Government at Ottawa.
Of the numerous books on ethnology in which the relation of the aborigines of America to other peoples is discussed, perhaps the most useful to the general reader is A. H. Keane's Man Past and Present, printed at the University Press, Cambridge, England.