Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/114

94 An equally perplexing and distracting inquiry with that of the origin of the Indians has now become another question, as to the number of them when the country was reached and occupied by Europeans. Of course, this question was not intelligently asked by the first whites who came here, though they ventured, all at random, upon guesses and estimates. Those who entered upon the continent at different points naturally drew widely contrasted inferences on the subject, according as they encountered what they call “swarms” of the natives, on island or mainland, or passed long reaches of territory wholly tenantless.

It is only within the last dozen years that rigid and rational tests have been applied to the statements and traditions which have found their admission into our histories, as to the probable numbers of the native race on this continent when it was opened to Europeans. Wholly conjectural as the estimates were, the measure of the extravagance or the fancy introduced into them depended upon the range or license indulged in by those who ventured to make them. The admission is now yielded, without exception or qualification, by all intelligent authorities, that the number of the natives in each of the best-known tribes, and their whole number on the continent at the time of its discovery have been vastly overestimated. All the Spanish chroniclers were mere romancers on this point. The soldier Baron La Hontan was a specimen of the same class among the French. John Smith, of Virginia, who tells us that that country produced pearl, coral, and metallic copper, and that the natives planted and harvested three crops of corn in five months, also multiplies the numbers of the Pamunkeys, to exalt the state of their “emperor” Powhatan. Our own artist, Catlin, allowed his imagination to create some sixteen millions of Indians as once roaming here, when it is more than doubtful if a single million were ever living at the same time on the soil.

Hispaniola, or Little Spain, the name given by Columbus