It was several hundred years ago that the system of higher education in the United States commenced with the founding of Harvard, William and Mary, Dartmouth, and other institutions to educate Indian and non-Indian youth of this land. During ensuing centuries, these colleges and the over two thousand that came later concentrated on the education of non-Indians. The education of Indians occurred in missions schools, in schools Indian peoples themselves established, and in government and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, but seldom in these colleges and universities. In the last decade, however, the national system of higher education sought to return partially to its original mandate to enfranchise American Indians within its realm by recruiting and admitting increased numbers of Indian students. Concomitant with this renewed mandate was a realization that it is both legitimate and desirable to include the endogenous consideration of American Indian societies and concerns as an important and pervasive activity within academia. As a method of accomplishing this, a myriad of Indian studies programs were created in colleges and universities. The creation of these programs is in contrast to the history of most existing disciplines. The typical historical pattern is that first came the discipline as an intellectual entity, that is, as a distinct body of knowledge and interests; then came its development as a structural entity, that is, as facuIties, courses, programs of study, degrees, and departments. The structural entity of American Indian studies came several years ago. Its intellectual entity at that time was not distinct, but merely a loose composite of existing academic disciplines (most notably anthropology, law, and history of Indian cultures, especially their language, art, and music) and of contemporary issues and problems of Indian peoples. Today, American Indian studies is only slightly beyond this initial point. to It has not yet embraced fully the higher order scholarly and academic functions of the contemporary university system. The development of American Indian studies has been characterized by a concentration on teaching and service activities, not on scholarly ones characteristic of other disciplines. Consequently, American Indian studies is only really a quasi -discipline and its existence as a separate area within academia therefore problematic. This paper addresses the disciplinary nature and possibilities of American Indian studies, issues which seemingly are important to its existence as a distinct entity within the academic system. The discussion is accomplished through the format of examining American Indian studies in light of some disciplinary criticisms leveled against it and suggesting some possible directions it might follow.

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).

American Indian Historical Demography: A Review Essay with Suggestions for Future Research Russell Thornton Sherburne F. Cook. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 522 pp. $6.95 Sherburne F. Cook. The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 222 pp. $13.95 Sherburne F. Cook. The Indian Population of New England in the Seventeenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 91 pp. $5.75 The year 1976 might very well be considered a landmark in the study of historic North American Indian populations. It was the publication date of Dobyns' Native American Historical Demography; A Critical Bibliography, Denevan's The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 and a special volume of Ethnohistory devoted to American Indian historical demography, as well as of various journal articles 4 related to this topic. It was also the year of the posthumous publication of the three books by Sherburne F. Cook discussed in this essay: The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970, and The Indian Population of New England in the Seventeenth Century. Surely, no other past year has yielded so many significant publications on historic American Indian populations. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization reprints in one volume six of Cook's essays published initially between 1940 and 1943 as separate volumes in the Ibero-Americana monograph series. The publication is significant simply by making these out-of-print essays available once again, and available widely as a single publication. The six essays forming the book are: "The Indian Versus the Spanish Mission," "The Physical and Demographic Reaction of the Nonmission Indians in Colonial and Provincial California' "The American Invasion, 1848-1870," "Trends in Marriage and Divorce since 1850," "Population Trends Among the California Mission Indians" and "The Mechanism and Extent of Dietary Adaptation Among Certain Groups of California and Nevada Indians." The first four essays focus on various aspects of Indian-white relations and conflicts and are more or less a subunit themselves; the last two essays may be seen as another subunit, complementary to the first four essays but not related directly. To varying extents, all of these six reprinted essays had achieved notoriety as pioneering efforts long before this recent publication. AlI should prove of interest and importance to contemporary scholars.

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.