Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/738

476 Clallams :

Port Discovery 150

Port Townseucl 70

New Dungeness 200

Walla Walla, including- the Nez Perces, Snakes, etc 1,100

Killamouks, north of Umpqua 400

Closset tribe ; Capt. Flattery, Quiniault, to Pt. Grenville .... 1,250 Blackfeet tribes that make excursions west of the Rocky

Mountains 1,000

Birch Bay 300

Fraser"s River 500

Chenooks 209

Clatsops 220

At the Cascades 150 i

At The Dalles 250

Yakima River 100

Shutes River (Des Chutes) 125

Umpquas 400

Rogue Rivers 500

Klamets. (Klamaths) 300

Shastys. (Shastas) 500

Kalapuyas. (Calapooias) 600

Nisqually 200

Chikeeles and Puget Sound 700

Cowlitz Klackatacs. (Klickitats) 350

Port Orford Suquamish 150

Total 19,204

As the Indians in accounting for their people counted only the adult males and took no aecomit of women and children it is probable that the real popula- tion of all the Indian tribes depending ^^pon nature for support was about fifty thousand. This would give to the Indian estimate one woman to each man, and ten thousand children. Indian families were never large anywhere in North America. The stress of barbaric life, which placed upon the mother not only the burden of child-bearing, but also the greater labor in providing food and clothing and moving from i^lace to place, powerfully repressed any increase of population.

But as it is, it is easy to see what a bountiful provision nature had made for the support of man. And if unaided nature could support the improvidence of fifty thousand Indians, what might have been done with the same resources if they had been thoughtfully conserved and supplemented with the cultivation of the soil and the protecting care of common sense? The white man reversed all the ideas and traditions of the red man in the conservation of natural re- sources. He turned his battery of fire-arms on the half tame elk, deer, and ante- lope, and soon well nigh exterminated the natural stock. He hooked, netted, seined, trapped by every conceivable device, the fish, and sold the pack to foreign lands. He fired the grassy prairies and drove away the pheasants, grouse and quail ; he fired the timber and drove out other game and destroyed their coverts