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

In recent years an increasing number of scholars have directed attention toward Native American historical demography. Much of this effort has centered on discerning the size of Indian populations prior to European contact. The question no longer appears to be whether or not Indian groups experienced a demographic disaster when exposed to European diseases and domination but how extensive the resulting depopulation was. While these discussions of cataclysmic demographic catastrophes retain their positions in the limelight, other important questions are upstaged. This is not meant to suggest that these avenues of inquiry be abandoned, only that other important questions exist that may be easier to answer and crucial in determining later Indian experiences.

In the 1840s Captain John A. Sutter transformed part of the Sacramento Valley Indian population into a work force for his New Helvetia settlement and the surrounding ranchos. Formerly the Nisenan and Miwok population had a hunting and gathering economy that apportioned labor between the sexes and followed a well-defined seasonal round. Formerly their work directly benefited them, providing sustenance, a basis for biological survival and the continuation of traditional lifeways. Suter and his White associates depended on Indian labor and altered the economic and social fabric of Indian communities to make Native people useful to them. Under Mexican law the newcomers had acquired title to huge tracts of land along the Sacramento River and its tributaries, but as late as 1847 there were fewer than 300 Whites in the valley while there were more than 20,000 Indians. With limited White labor resources available, landholders had no choice but to rely on Indians for their labor requirements. Sutter explicitly recognized the value of Indian labor when he advised one of his White overseers on the treatment of Indian livestock thieves. The guilty should receive "severe punishment but he advised against actions that would eliminate the Indian population. He thought it was preferable "for those who have land" that Indians were "saved so much as possible for labor." To that end Sutter and other settlers used the Native population, converting it into a resource at their disposal. The ways that they did so and the effects on the Indian population are the two subjects of this paper.

Recently (Thornton 1981) differential participation of American Indian tribes in the 1890 Ghost Dance was analyzed. Viewing the movement as an attempted demographic revitalization in response to population decimations, tribal participation was predicted to be related positively to preceding population declines and negatively to absolute population size. A strong negative relationship between size and participation was found, with smaller tribes participating almost always. Population changes were found to have also influenced participation but very differently for tribes of different sizes. The 1890 Ghost Dance was actually a separate, later manifestation of an earlier Ghost Dance of 1870. The two movements had the same central objective of restoring to life deceased American Indian populations by the performance of prescribed dances (Kroeber, 1904:34-35; 1925:868). Both also emanated from the same location in western Nevada. They spread in basically different directions, however. The 1890 movement spread primarily into the great plains, the Southwest and what is now western Oklahoma. The 1870 one, in contrast, was limited primarily to western Nevada and portions of Oregon and California (Kroeber, 1925:868-73; Mooney, 1896:Plate LXXXV).

Reported in Table 1 are advanced population counts, ranked by state, from the 1980 Census for American Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts obtained from the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The total number enumerated of 1,418,195 includes 1,361,869 American Indians, 42,149 Eskimos and 14,177 Aleuts. This contrasts with the total enumeration of 827,268 (792,730 American Indians) in the 1970 Census, and the reported 9,900,000 Americans with some degree of American Indian ancestry reported by the Census Bureau in 1979.

Virginia P. Miller. Ukomno'm: The Yuki Indians of Northern California. Los Altos, CA: BaHena Press, 1979. 112 pp. Paper. $6.95 This potent book is the most recent publication on the Ukomno'm (The People of the Valley, trans.), who are indigenous to Round Valley in the redwood bio-region of the coastal mountain ranges in Northwest California for at least 10,000 years. The first half of Ukomno'm is a condensed synopsis of the literature on this People. In the second half the book finds its essential significance and primary importance by filling one of many glaring gaps in what is known of the Yukian people: their demographic history and decimation. Virginia P. Miller's sources for the illumination of this macabre historical period (1855-65) of the Yuki tribe are the federal records and correspondences of government agents previously closed to the public and researchers alike; these sources and the uniqueness of chapter one makes Dr. Miller's Ukomno'm an example of the state of the art in indigenous demographic studies and a guide for further studies of the Yukian culture and in North American ethnohistory. Stephen Powers (Tribes of California 1877) is the first published writer to observe the People popularly known as the Yuki Indians. It seems he did not take into much consideration that this People had only been in contact with Euro-America since the autumn of 1851 when Indian Commissioner Colonel Redick McKee first came upon them along the Eel River, nor that they had been relegated to reservation life since 1856 when the decimation of their numbers, and their "dark age;' began. Consequently, Powers's derogatory commentary on this People in the early 1870s is at least unbecoming of the "healthy, vigorous" people of which Colonel KcKee wrote in September 1851, the "more intelligent and better formed" people in the Heintzelman letter of November 1855, and the "generally better looking set of Indians" reported by Simmon P. Storms in 1856. From Powers until the turn of the century there is nothing published specifically on the Yukian people by research scholars, although Alfred Kroeber, Pliny Goddard, Edward Gifford and others had made their acquaintance with this tribe.