brief perspective on a scholarly transformation - widowing the virgin land

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The American Society for Ethnohistory

Brief Perspective on a Scholarly Transformation: Widowing the "Virgin" LandAuthor(s): Henry F. DobynsSource: Ethnohistory, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring, 1976), pp. 95-104Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/481510.Accessed: 25/08/2011 14:14

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BRIEF PERSPECTIVE ON A SCHOLARLYTRANSFORMATION: WIDOWING THE VIRGIN LAND

byHenryF. Dobyns

ABSTRACTThe analyses of historical population dynamics collected here testify to therapid development of sound scholarship in this field since 1966. Recentstudies have overturned the stereotype that Europeans colonized a virginNorth American continent. Instead, they settled a widowed land. Recentand some significant earlier contributions to this research frontier areevaluated.

Thiscollection of essayshasbeen writtenby agroupof myth-destroyers.That makesthe severalcontributionsboth interesting reading,and for somemindscomfortably sliding along accustomedgrooves,disturbingreading.Thestatements that follow are both scientific and humanistic. A physicist mayfind the quality of quantification n what follows frustrating but that is amatter of refractory evidence, not the abilities of the investigators.Theliterary scholar may regardthe compassion contained in these chapters ofpopulation history stiff - but this is the compassionthat faces humanreality.For many years, anthropologistsand historians in North America,andelsewhere, typically oversimplified he stark reality of Indoamericanpopula-tion trends. All too often, authorswrote, whether they viewedthemselvesasscientists or humanists,as thoughtribalpopulationshad remained verstablein aboriginal times. All too many writers ignored or guessed at historicpopulationtrendsrather hansearched or evidence about them.In recent years, fortunately for both science and humanism, bothanthropologistsand historians n increasingnumbershave startedcoming togripswith the realcomplexitiesof historicpopulation trends.They havedoneso primarilybecause of perceptibleproddingfrom the pioneeringanalysesofdocumented data and the startlingconclusionsreachedby SherburneF. Cookand WoodrowW.Borah(Dobyns 1976:14ff).The American Society for Ethnohistory meeting at Albuquerqueinmid-Octoberof 1976 witnesseddramatic estimony as to the recentscholarlyETHNOHISTORY 23/2 (Spring 1976) 95


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transformation.That was the tenth anniversaryof the appearanceof theauthor's (Dobyns 1966) methodological assessment of earlierestimates ofNew World populations. After decades of stagnation of thought aboutIndoamericanpopulation, that essay had apparentlystirred the researchofsome anthropologistsand historians.A day-longsymposiumon research ntopopulation trends reflected the marked increase in researchand reporting.One half-day session focused upon books published during 1976 that dealtwith historic population trends in the Americas.The other half-daysessionoffered a room full of avidlistenersthe resultsof additionalnew researchonthe topic.The present collection of papersmakes availableto those unable toattend the fascinatingresearch ession in Albuquerque he findingsof most ofthe investigatorswho spoke there.Unfortunately,not all of the reportsmadeat Albuquerque could be included in this collection. That lack has beenremedied n a way by addingone report(by Stoffle and Evans)firstpresentedat the 1977 annualmeetingof the Society for Applied Anthropologyat SanDiego.Like other collections of reports on researchby severalinvestigators,this one may appear lacking a certain unity beyond the examination ofhistoricpopulation trends.Geographically, hese reportsrangefrom Englandto the SouthwesternUnited States.Temporally, hey scatter fromA.D. 1086to the present day. That very diversity actually constitutes the real strengthof this collection of research indings.The variation n area, time, andethnicgroups examined reflects the new found analytical capacity and vigor ofinvestigationof historicpopulationdynamicsnow underway. Thiscollectionassuredlyconstitutes a most encouragingharbinger f even firmerfindings nthe future.

These papers testify to the rapiditywith which able investigatorsarereformulating scholarly thought about the magnitude of aboriginal Indo-american population. They discuss processes that drasticallyaltered Indo-americanpopulationduringthe ColumbianExchange.They explorerelation-ships between factors as different as land tenure customs and local insectaggregateso humanpopulation.Researchprogress n historic demography s so rapidthat any attemptat bibliographicsummationis obsolescent by the time it appearsin print.Such was the fate of my recent bibliographic essay (Dobyns 1976).Consequently, this introductorycomment closes with some concise evalua-tions of new studies.This is one meansof bringingbibliographic ontrol overthis researchfrontier more nearly up-to-date. Some earlierstudies are alsomentioned (1) to make partialamends for not includingthem in the 1976essay, and (2) because added temporalperspectivehas persuadedme thatthey belong in the manifestbibliography f this burgeoningresearch ield.


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Scholarly Transformation: WIidowinghe Virgin Land 97

AboriginalPopulationA posthumous S. F. Cook (1976b) analysisof California ndoamericanpopulation dealt with the question of the magnitude of the pre-contactpopulace. Another Cook (1976c) study took up the question of NewEngland's Indoamericanpopulation during the seventeenth century. Thatmeant that Cook also estimated aboriginaltribal populations. He acknowl-

edged that his figureswere far too low if late eighteenth centurycounts wereaccurate, and the magnitudeof decline were as great as Dobyns suggested.Jennings (1975) countered a preliminaryCook analysis of New Englandpopulation in his cutting evaluationof Puritansources. Jenningsalso coinedthat most felicitous label, the widowed land to characterize whatAnglo-Americanshave self-servingly abeled virgin. For, Europeansdidnot find a wildernesshere; rather,however involuntarily, they made one.That is only one of Jennings' many eloquent epigrams. Jennings is thegreatestmyth-debunker o come down the pike in many a long year;his bookis must reading or anyone involved n seriousstudy of Indoamericans.

GeographerWilliamM. Denevan 1976a) continued to spreadawarenessof the expanding research frontier dealing with Indoamericanpopulationtrends. He directed a methodological synthesis toward other geographers.Moreover, Denevan (1976b) made a major contribution to this expandingfield by bringingout a volume of readingsuseful for instructionalpurposes.Denevan (1976b:291) arrived at a hemispheric estimate of 57,300,000persons living in the Americas in 1492. He allocated 4,400,000 to NorthAmerica;21,400,000 to Mexico;5,560,000 to CentralAmerica;5,850,000 tothe Caribbeanislands; only 11,500,000 to the Andes; and 8,500,000 tolowland South America. He was, in a word, cautious. Denevan(1976:299-331) ended this volume with an exhaustive, albeit unannotated,bibliographythat helps to keep track of recent developments,especially inthe Latin Americanarea.

Some manuscripts or the projectedSmithsonian Institution handbookon American Indians contain new tribal population estimates. Exploitingthese re-estimatesfor 45 tribes, Ubelaker(1976) calculated an estimate ofNorth Americanpre-Columbianpopulation. He estimates 2,171,125 personswhere Mooney had 1,152,950. Until the studies on which Ubelaker'scalculationsare based can be methodologicallyevaluated,his estimate seemsworthy of minimal confidence. Whether Daniel Gookin's New Englandpopulation figureswere reliablebecausehe was a contemporaryobserver,or greatly exaggerated as Mooney believed (Ubelaker 1976:665) begs thecriticalpoint. In the 1670s, Gookin and the Indoamericanshe knew lived wellover half a century after recordedmajordiseaseepidemic episodesandon theeve of the Second PuritanConquest (Jennings 1975:325). Gookin and his


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informants could, therefore, provide only the indirect evidence of oraltradition concerning tribal population magnitudesprior to the devastatingepidemics of 1616-1620 that opened the Massachusettscoast to Englishcolonization. That date came long after the ColumbianExchangebeganonthe north Atlantic coast of North America, as Miller'sthought-provokingcontributionto the presentcollection emphasizes.An anthropologist with much field researchexperience among con-temporary ungle tribesmenchallengedtheoreticians to confront the ecologi-cal issue posed by Cook's and Borah'sestimatesof pre-1519 centralMexicanpopulation. Harner (1977) roused an immediate storm of protest fromcolleagues when newspaperspublicized his The EcologicalBasis for AztecSacrifice prior to its publication. Yet human sacrifice on the Aztec scalemust be incorporated nto ecological theory if it is to encompass he knownrangeof human behavior.An earlier analysis of The Aboriginal Population of TidewaterVirginia, by Mook (1944) dealt with a key area for assessinghistoricIndoamericanpopulation trends in the eastern woodlands. Mook's analysisresembledUbelaker's n not recognizingthat virusesandgermscould and didmove from tribe to tribe even priorto Europeancontact with a given group.Drawingdata from early seventeenthcentury documents,Mook ignoredtheimpact of 1585-1586 Englishcolonization and 1570-1572 Spanishabortivemissionization in the area. Thus, his assumption that Jamestown was thebeginning of the period of disturbancecaused by white settlement was anerror. Aboriginal imes endedmuchearlieron this vulnerablecoast.An even earlierwork by Hinsdale(1932) dealt with only the limitedarea of Michigan. It correlated types of vegetative cover with humanpopulation density measured n terms of the numbersof known archaeologi-cal sites. Such a method suffersan obvioushandicap:one can neverbe certainwhether known sites accurately represent all sites. The study remainsimportant for anotherreason. It documentedhigh levels of consumptionofwild game - passengerpigeons, fish, venison - as late as 1878. Those whodoubt the high pre-plow agriculture game productivity of North Americamust read this study.An intellectual predecessorof James Mooney and Alfred L. Kroeberwhose early formulation of the question of the size of pre-ColumbianIndoamericanpopulationneeds to be taken into account wasGarrickMallery(1877). Whilehis attempt wasmethodologicallydefective, apparentlyno onechallenged it. So Mallery must share the blame for helping to establishlong-accepted concepts only recently questioned. Mallery mentioned nodisease save smallpox, and discounted that as a depopulatingagent. On thisscore, Malleryprovedto be a poor predictorof diseaseerradication,nasmuch


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Scholarly Transformation: Widowing the Virgin Land 99

as the Pueblos suffered high epidemic smallpox mortality in 1898-1899(ARCIA 1899), not to mention other late nineteenth century outbreaks.Long before Kroeber, Mallery assumed that Indoamerican populationincreasedduringhistoric times, and he uniformly discounted early estimatesof largeIndoamericanpopulations.

EpidemicHistoryThe most important new work on historical epidemiologyis syntheticas well as substantive,and generalrather than regional. Only one chapter ofWilliam McNeil's (1976) Plagues and Peoples deals with transoceanicexchanges of diseases. The book's real contribution lies in propoundingageneral theory of history that recognizes the fundamental importance ofdisease and epidemic episodes in determining events. McNeil takes otherprofessional historians to task for havingomitted the diseasefactor in theirenchantmentwith less importantfactors in humanhistory.A very significantarticleappeared n a majorhistorical ournalin 1976.Writtenby an outstanding ecological historian, it spoke persuasively o theaudience of professional historians of North America. Alfred W. Crosby(1976) made explicit the fundamentalimportance of initial exposure to anew disease - especially one caused by a virus - of an entirely susceptiblepopulation.The opening of the Alcan Highway during World War II exposedpreviously relatively isolated rural Indoamerican populations to measles,Germanmeasles, dysentery, whooping cough, mumps, tonsillitis, meningitis,and catarrhal aundice within one year. John F. Marchand 1943) reportedthat airliftingpatients to modernhospitalssavedall but seven of 130 affected

individuals.Before airlifts, earlierEuroamerican apidincursions nto isolatedIndoamericanpopulations clearly resulted in much higher mortality. Thereport is meaningful both as a specific case study, and more as awell-documented basis for extrapolation to earlier times in othercommunities.Because the clinical symptoms of the very lethal epidemicepisode inthe Pacific Northwest in 1830-1833 had been misinterpreted,Boyd (1975)reaffirmed he malariadiagnosis.Dollar(1977) retold the story of The HighPlainsSmallpoxEpidemicof 1837-38. It bearsrememberinghat a soon-after-the-event ccount of thatepisode among the Mandanappeared n Catlin(1841). Mooney(1911) notedDelaware oral tradition of three seventeenth century smallpox epidemicepisodes.


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100 HENRY F. DOBYNSEndemicDiseases,Warfare nd Famine

What happened to the Yuki of Coast Range Californiaafter 1854amounted to genocide, according o new documentaryevidence Miller 1975)presents. Where Kroeber estimated 2,000 and Cook 6,880, the firstAnglo-Americanparty in 1854 guessed 20,000 and an early local historianestimated 12,000. Settlers kidnappedYuki girlsto sell to Mexican-Americancowboys. They fenced off largeareasfor cattle andhog pastures,prohibitingYuki access to natural resources. With state financing, settlers organizedmilitia units to hunt Yukiswhom they killedat an apparentrate of 5,200 peryear.

Rutman and Rutman(1976) discussat considerableength malariaas adebilitatingdisease endemicamongnon-Indoamericannhabitantsof Virginia.Yet, Plasmodium bearing mosquitoes were unlikely to make ethnic distinc-tions when seekinghumanblood. In analyzingwhen malariareached the area,the Rutmans gnoreits Spanishcolonialhistory.Medical researchersHealy et al. (1976) have identified a malaria-likedisease now endemic on Nantucket Island. It may have been there for a longtime, and could have struck argernumbersof individuals han it has in recenttimes.

DepopulationTrendsA majorevent in historicaldemography n 1976 wasthe re-publicationof SherburneF. Cook'sTheConflictBetween the California ndianand WhiteCivilization.This time, the University of CaliforniaPress bound as a singlevolume what originally appearedas Ibero-Americana umbers21, 22, 23 and24. Inasmuchas Dobyns (1976:37-38) evaluatedthese monographs,nothingneed be added here. A valuable new Cook (1976b) work analyzed theCaliforniaIndian population trends between 1860 and 1970, taking up agedistribution,vital statistics,andgeographicdistribution.Heizer(1974) hasedited a grimvolumedealingwith Californiarelationsbetween Anglo-Americans nd Indoamericansbetween 1847 and 1865. Heused letters from army officers and Indian Agents supplemented with a

sampling of newspaper accounts and photographs.Perhaps 50,000 Indo-americansdied in Californiaduring hat period.June Helm and colleagues (1975) have made a brave beginning atanalyzing epidemiological factors among sub-Arctic Athapaskan-speakingIndoamericans.They succeed in shaking the assumption that EuropeanorEuroamerican ontact with these peoples occurred oo late in tine to exposethem to significantdenmoraphic hanges.


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Scholarly Transformation: Widowingthe Virgin Land 101In a quantitative,cross-cultural tudy, Divale and Harris 1976) foundcertain mechanismshold down population,and generate very high male sex

ratiosamongyouths. They identifiedwarfare,female infanticide and malignor benign neglect as the key mechanisms.Their North Americansample isheavily weighed with Eskimogroups,but their hypotheses nonetheless bearfurther nvestigation.Worth rememberingas a sketch of one amalgamatinggroup of tribalsurvivorsis Mooney's (1911) Passingof the DelawareNation. It tracedDelaware population history, including migrations, from the early seven-teenth century to virtualdisappearancen the nineteenthcentury.The Illinois tribes were amongthose most severelydepopulatedduringhistoric times. Blasingham 1956) ably examined the role of diseasesin theprocess. She identified at least smallpox,measles, gonorrheaand malaria ashavingaided in the virtual extinction of the Illinois. She found documentaryevidence for seven majorepidemic episodesof Old World diseaseamong theIllinois. Famines and the fur trade also contributed to the downfall of theIllinois, but Blasingham achieved less in analyzing those depopulationdynamics.

The New AmericanRaceThe very small handful of historians who are willing to deal franklywith the phenomenon of mixture of European, African,and Indoamerican

genes to form a New AmericanRace continue to stand out for their rarityand ability. That stellar historian of historic population events,WoodrowW.Borah (1976) summarized the principal trends in the mixing of geneticheritages n the New World n a largemulti-authorsurveyof the impactof theNew World on the Old. He considered the numerical size and rate ofemigration from Spain, Portugal, France, England and Africa to the NewWorld.He also took into account the reverse movement. Borah concludedthat racialprejudiceappears o havedevelopedin the New World.Cook (1976b) delved into the matter of genetic mixture of so-calledIndians n California.WilliamE. Unrau 1976) becamepersonally nvolvedas expert witness and advisor n litigation eadingto the legal reincarnationof the Kawpeople. His vivid account deals with severalsignificantfactors inthe emergenceof a Kaw variantof the New AmericanRace.

CaseStudiesA volume of Anthropological Studies of Human Fertility (Kaplan1976) contains case studies of Navajosand Hopis by Stephen J. Kunitz and


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John C. Slocumb; one contrasting rural and urban Omahas by MargotLiberty,DavidV. Hugheyand RichardScaglion;and of Eskimosby GeorgeS.Masnickand Solomon H. Katz; and by Phyllis J. McAlpine and Nancy E.Simpson. In the same volume, Andrew E. Abelson discusses the importantrelationship between altitude and fertility. Other contributions deal withLatinAmericanpopulations.

EnumerationsGrowing concern among policy makersabout increasingsize of urban

Indoamerican populations was reflected in Chaudhuri's 1974) secondaryanalysis of 1970 United States Census data. Chaudhuri supplementedstatistics with personal interviews with Indoamerican eaders in Phoenix,Tucson, and Flagstaff. He emphasizedunder-enumeration,and the povertyandlack of political mobilization ' nongArizona'surbanIndoamericans.

REFERENCESARCIA1899 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Part I. Washington:56th Congress, 1st Session, House Document 5.Blasingham, Emily J.1956 The Depopulation of the Illinois Indians. Part I. Ethnohistory, 3:3(Summer) 193-224; Part II, Ethnohistory, 3:4 (Fall) 361-412.Borah, Woodrow W.1976 The Mixing of Populations, in Fredi Chiappelli (ed.) Michael J. B. Allen andRobert L. Benson (co-eds.) First Images of America: The Impact of the NewWorldon the Old. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 707-722.Boyd, Robert T.1975 Another Look at the 'Fever and Ague' of Western Oregon. Ethnohistorv,22:2 (Spring) 135-154.Catlin, George1841 The Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians.London:Chaudhuri, Joyotpaul1974 Urban Indians of Arizona: Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff. Tucson: Universityof Arizona, Institute of Government Research, Arizona GovernmentStudies 11.Cook, Sherburne F.1976a The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley:University of California Press.1976b T77ePopulation of the California Indians 1769-1970. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.1976c The Indian Population of New England in the Seventeenth Century. Universityof California, Publications in Anthropology Volume 12.Crosby, Alfred W., Jr.1976 Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal D)epopulation inAmerica. lWilliam nd Marl Quarterly. 3d ser., 33:2 (April) 289-299.


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Denevan, WilliamM.1976a Estimating the Aboriginal Population of Latin America in 1492: Methodolog-ical Synthesis, in Robert J. Tata (ed.). Latin America: Search for GeographicExplanations. East Lansing: Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers,Publication N? 5, pp. 125-132.1976bThe Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Madison: University ofWisconsin Press.Divale, WilliamTulio and MarvinHarris1976 Population, Warfare, and the Male Supremacist Complex. AmericanAnthropologist, 78:2 (Sept.) 521-538.Dobyns, Henry F.1966 Estimating Aboriginal American Population: An Appraisal of Techniqueswith a New Hemispheric Estimate. Current Anthropology, 7:4 (October)395-416.

1976 Native American Historical Demography: A Critical Bibliography. Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press for the Newberry LibraryCenter for the Historyof the American Indian.Dollar, Clyde D.1977 The High Plains Smallpox Epidemic of 1837-38. Western HistoricalQuarterly, 8:1 (January) 15-38.Harner, Michael1977 The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice. American Ethnologist, 4:1(February) I17-135.Healy, George R., Andrew Spielman and Neva Gleason1976 Human Babesiosis: Reservoir of Infection on Nantucket Island. Science,192:4238 (30 April) 479-480.Heizer, Robert F. (ed.)1974 The Destruction of California Indians. Salt Lake City and Santa Barbara:PeregrineSmith, Inc.Helm, June, Terry Alliband, Terry Birk, Virginia Lawson, Suzanne Reisner, CraigSturtevant, and Stanley Witkowski1975 The Contact History of the Subarctic Athapaskans: An Overview, in A.McF. Clark (ed.) Proceedings, Northern A thapaskan Conference, 1971. Vol. I.Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, Mercury Series, Canadian EthnologyService, Source Paper 27, pp. 302-349.Hinsdale, W. B.1932 Distribution of the Aboriginal Population of Michigan. Occasional Contribu-tions from the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan, N? 2(reprinted 1968).Jennings, Francis1975 The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of EarlyAmerican History and Culture.Kaplan, Bernice (ed.)1976 Anthropological Studies of Human Fertility. Detroit: Wayne State UniversityPress. (Reprinted from Human Biology, 48:1).Mallery, Garrick1877 The Former and Present Number of Our Indians. American Association forthe Advancement of Science, Proceedings, 26:340-366.Marchand,John I:.1943 Tribal Epidemics in the Yukon. Journal of the American MedicalAssociation, 12 (Dec. 18).McNeil, WilliamH.1976 Plagues and Peoples. Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday.Miller, Virginia P.1975 WhatevertHappenedto the Yuki? The Indian Historian, 8:2 (lall) 6-12.


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Mook, Maurice A.1944 The Aboriginal Population of Tidewater Virginia. American Anthropologist,46:2 (April-June) 193-208.Mooney, James1911 Passing of the Delaware Nation, in B. F. Shambaugh (ed.) Proccedings ofthe Mississippi Valley Historical Association. Cedar Rapids: Torch Press,3:329-340.Rutman, Darrett B. and Anita H. Rutman1976 Of Agues and Fevers: Malaria in the Early Chesapeake. William and MaryQuarterly, 3d Ser., 33:1 (January) 31-60.

brief perspective on a scholarly transformation - widowing the virgin land

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