Yea, well, my kids are old enough to be working so that finally gives me some free time! I also took a 2 hour nap today (not really).
Anyways, today’s topic is native populations in the 1600s. Seriously. For most of my life, I’ve heard several things about diseased blankets, population declines of the natives, etc. It sounds pretty plausible, and there’s lot of research and videos on how and why those things happened. But one thing always kind of caught my attention when discussing how white people took over the United States was how, and that’s basically the population rates.
There’s lots of suggestions because there’s no written word on native populations from the native’s themselves, but this guy: https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/1734, did a ton of work on that and cited lots of sources that made a bunch of different suggestions like the disease theory and more. In about page 100 (I skimmed a lot) of his report, he states that the populations of the Iroquois, one of the most powerful nations in the eastern woodlands, was about 20k at it’s height. That’s between 5 tribes and a wide swath of area that encompasses northern Pennsylvania and New York/Ohio areas. After a probable “contact” event-the disease thing, it was reduced to maybe 6k members between 1600-1660. Populations grew again after that, but that’s a major difference in population. Obviously disease is a heck of a crippling indication, but it’s also a far cry from a population of 1 million (which isn’t supported by archeological data in any sense), or even a population that could have resisted the westward expansion of the rising white population. Even at the google’d height of 12k members, that would be nowhere near the ability to match the 250k US population in the 13 colonies by the 1700s.
So knowing that- it’s pretty simple to realize that the reason the native were pushed out is simply because they were outbred. In fact, they were outbred pretty quickly, judging from assumed population rates. In 1620, the white settler population was close to 2300, but by 1640, it was already at 25,000, and over the capacity and capability of the native population (the Iroquois specifically, but there probably was similar rates for the general area). Even doubling those rates to account for all the eastern tribes, you still would have the natives overwhelmed by the 1670 settler population of 111,000 and then doubled again to 250k by 1700. This just goes to show how the white population continued to breed much faster than the native population so that when it came down to it, they were easily able to outnumber the natives and consequently push westward into new territories and land grabs and claims. The fact that native still only number less than 1% of the population seems accurate with the growth rates that white people have. They are popping out the kids en masse. And while that’s not really a foregone conclusion to many people, it’s interested to me to finally solve that problem in a way-the natives were no match for the sheer numbers and probably never would have been. Even if they were to repel the white settlers, more could come and there’s not even natives to defend the shore line that is America.
And yes, that is idiotcracy posted up there, just because the joke is that the stupid outbred the smart, and maaaybe that’s close parallels to what happened here. I dunno. You choose, I’m just being cheeky.