American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the historical demography of American Indians. Early attempts at reconstructing Native American demography and estimating population sizes at European contact (e.g., Mooney 1928; Kroeber 1939) were followed by an era "when such studies were not only unfashionable but even a bit unrespectable" (Meister 1980:153). Such a bias against historical reconstruction of American Indian populations may be attributed in large part to the incompleteness and inadequacies of the data available to the researcher in historical demography of the New World. In response, however, Henry Dobyns (1976:7), following Sherburne Cook (1960), succinctly observes, "one either uses such data as may be available and learns something, however inad- equate, or abjures such data and learns nothing." A major concern of most researchers in American Indian historical demography has been that of estimating the aboriginal population of the New World and tracing the effects of European contact on Native populations. In pursuit of these objectives, however, there are strong differences of opinions. Donald Joralemon (1982:108) neatly summarizes the issues: There are few who would doubt that the indigenous population of the New World suffered a severe decline as a result of the arrival of European conquerors and settlers. How much of a decline, and its causes, remain subjects of controversy. In both cases debate arises from the simple fact that in the absence of reliable historical data, researchers must devise methods of retrospective projections