The Present Indian Population of the Americas

Abstract

This paper is essentially a preliminary abstract of one portion of a monographic study on the population of the New World upon which the writer has been working for several years. For presentation to this congress, within the space and time allowed, bibliographic references have been omitted and discussion of details has been reduced to a minimum. The determination of the Indian population of the Americas, both absolute and comparative, must be based upon (a) total population by political entities, (b) distribution of national populations among constituent ethnic or racial groups. When the writer attempted an appraisal of the ethnic composition of New World population, he was confronted by a varied set of national censuses, partial censuses, and official and private estimates. Only a few countries undertake a complete national census at regularly repeated intervals, as does the United States which in 1940 took its sixteenth decennial census. Chile has done well in this century with complete national censuses in 1907, 1920, 1930, and 1940. Colombia has a recent history of censuses in 1918, 1928 (incomplete), and 1938; Mexico's most recent censuses were taken in 1900, 1910, 1921, 1930, and 1940; and Venezuela has taken a number of incomplete censuses during this century, the most recent being 1936 and 1941. The last two censuses of Argentina were 1895 and 1914; of Brazil 1920 and 1940; of Cuba 1919 and 1931; of the Dominican Republic 1920 and 1935; and of Peru 1876 and 1940. Haiti has not had a census since 1918; Uruguay not since 1908; Bolivia not since 1900; Paraguay not complete since 1899 (an incomplete census in 1936); and Ecuador never has taken a census. The Central American republics have an especially poor record of few and commonly incomplete censuses. This forces one to use estimates in order to obtain a fairly up-todate and synchronous picture of New World population. Official estimates cannot be used uncritically since these often have been disproved by actual count, even in the United States where there is a large corps of experienced estimators with the greatest amount of material upon which to base estimates. The writer examined the literature of censuses, estimates, and travelers' guesses, and then worked out the figures presented in Table I. These figures represent what the writer considers the most authoritative estimates, modified for time differential or from the writer's own observations. They must be considered to be only estimates, subject to varied modification, but essential as bases for the determination of approximate ethnic composition. Most of the estimates for the total population of the New World range between 260,000,000 and 290,000,000. The writer believes