Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/243

Rh believes that some 10,000 or more of the tribe are elsewhere than in the Indian Territory, making 30,000 in all, and cites an enumeration by the War Department in 1827, preparatory to their removal, showing 13,567 individuals at that time. If we do not accept the view of an increase of one hundred per cent in a hundred years, we must at least concede a gain of fifty per cent in the last fifty years, and it is probable that the increase has occurred mainly in that time. The same authority says the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws are increasing in numbers. The fifth tribe, the Seminoles, who, after our war with them, in 1842, were reduced to three hundred, now number 2,560. The "Six Nations," who remained by preference in New York, rather than migrate, are of course under circumstances permitting an accurate census, and their numbers seem to remain constant at about 7,000.

The remainder of the tribes are decreasing in numbers. This can not be doubted. The figures of the Government reports of the aggregate Indian population within the last fifty years are as follows: 1822, 457,000; 1830, 313,000; 1840, 400,000; 1855, 350,000; 1872, 300,000; 1879, 252,897. Even if we were to admit with Colonel Otis that such enumerations are vague and unreliable, and that the aggregate number of Indians remains about the same that it has been for the past two centuries, the increase of the civilized tribes necessarily implies the decrease of the remainder to keep the total unchanged.

The same thing is shown directly by the history of such of the uncivilized tribes as by reason of fortuitous historical associations have been brought under special observation. For instance, the Delaware Indians, made famous by Penn's negotiations with them, were, two hundred and fifty years ago, undoubtedly a large and powerful tribe, occupying much of the present States of Pennsylvania (Central) and New Jersey. In 1703 they had six hundred warriors, and it was even proposed to organize this tribe into a fourteenth State of the American Confederation, in 1778. After the Revolution, they removed to Ohio, then to Missouri, then to Kansas, then to the Cherokee country. Now the remains of the tribe in the Indian Territory number only about a thousand. The history of the Pueblo tribes confirms the same view. In 1540 the Spanish explorers found these people as a large and flourishing kingdom. Even making the great allowance which modern investigation seems to show necessary for the exaggeration of the Spaniards as to the power and wealth of the aborigines, even admitting that there was never any Aztec or Maya empire, and that what did exist was only a military democracy or league of free tribes, it can not be doubted that the tribes were of great strength and importance. The ruined Pueblos themselves bear witness to this. In fact, it is only twelve years ago (1872) since a census showed these Indians as