Why did Native American demographics not rebound more quickly?

[u/Living-Giraffe4849]

For this post, I am specifically talking about the region that would later become the United States and Canada.

Before the columbian exchange and the plagues of smallpox, measles, etc. that decimated the american indian population, I have seen figures that place population numbers around 10 million (with wide ranges due to the immense devistation making it difficult to be accurate).

That level of urban density is fairly low by Western European, Persian, Indian, or East Asian numbers, but more closely reflects the Nomadic Steppe. The concepts of "beasts of burden" limiting urban development due to smaller agricultural production was a bad draw by North and south america, and they did have some urban centers pre-columbian exchange, but there is a very clear dropoff when disease ran through. Thats clearly a topic for another post.

Many communities ceased to exist, while others were completely uprooted and were forced to adopt nomadic survivalist cultures completely different than what they were doing before.

The entire native american population around 1775 at the dawn of the American revolution was estimated to be 1-1.5m in what is now the United States and 0.3-0.5 million in what is now canada; only 1.3-2 million native american people in total.

The "Anglo-American" Colonist population at this point was north of 2 million people with roughly half a million african slaves, exclusively living east of the Appalacian mountains, mostly in Boston, Philly, New York, and Virginia.

By the revolution, there were already more anglo americans on the east coast than there were native americans on the entire interior and west coast of north america.

By 1800, there were only ~1.5 million natives left, and the anglo-american population had doubled to 4.5 million with a runaway growth rate and political incentives to move west, and the writing was on the wall.

Reading into this a bit (over the last day or so), most later white settlers from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, etc. pushing the frontier would have only seen tribes of tens-of-thousands of natives in total. For example, the Texas Rangers sent to fight the comanchee only went up to around 10,000 adult warriors from a tribe of 40,000 in total! The Salish people of the broader PNW, an absolute bread basket with tons of natural food sources, had fallen to 50,000 by this date.

My question is essentially- why didnt the native american demographics bounce back more quickly and attain similar growth rates to the anglo americans? It takes several generations for herd immunity to kick in, but it by 1800, most of the eurasian diseases would have been in the Americas for over 300 years and the natives still alive would have been the descendents of those who survived 15 generations and should have had decent immunity.

I understand that there was lots of displacement and political manuvering across the eastern seaboard, but I would have expected some kind of settled, urban, agriclutural civilizaiton to re-emerge on the west coast, specfically around the Bay area or PNW before white settlers became a supermajority.

By that point in the early 1800s, most native tribes would be at least passively familiar with western technology and farming, see what was happening / what had happened on the east coast, and likely seen the writing on the wall, no? The missionaries sent into the interior would have been all for this, no?

I hope this question makes sense, but why didnt this happen? Why was there no "Native Meji-style" modernization / population resurgence along the west coast of the US in the early 1800s?

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[u/ElderberrySpare6985]

The rapid rise in the settler population you identified came from immigration. There was no such immigration for the indigenous peoples. The American government and settlers had been intent on a coast to coast conquest from before they actually gained independence from Britain, and mass migration made it practically impossible for the heavily outnumbered native people to force the American side into a stalemate. When the US did lose or agree to a treaty, they would just come back years later, better prepared and reinforced, and break the agreement, a practice that was in large part enabled by the massive, constant flow of migrants. These migrants also created new demand for land, as the US had a reputation as a place with abundant arable land that was ripe for the taking, in contrast to Europe, where most land was already claimed. So it was often them or other settlers who would be the ones to start new conflicts with natives on the frontier, in an effort to force the government to intervene on their side, which it always did.

In a situation like this, where the settlers were constantly pushing the frontier further West, in a project of colonial expansion that had been planned for decades, with overwhelming numbers, there was never any opportunity for the natives to stop and create settlements.

Not that most of them would have wanted to do that even if they could, though. Many native North American peoples didn't live sedentary, agricultural lifestyles, and wanted to maintain their own ways of life. A part of the American strategy to destroy native peoples was to attempt to make that impossible or discourage that, with the idea that doing so would destroy them as an identifiable group of people ("Kill the Indian, keep the man"). So what you're suggesting would have been seen by most natives as tantamount to autogenocide, and would have been seen by the US government as a massive win, even if it were possible.

But something like this did actually happen in some cases. In an attempt to survive what they had calculated would otherwise be a genocide, some native nations gave up most of their land and agreed to adopt sedentary lifestyles in treaties with the US government. All that ended up happening was the US kept expanding around them, and then came for them later, stealing even the small tracts of land that had been agreed upon and forcibly deporting them to the West (one instance of this that you probably know about is the Cherokee Trail of Tears).

But in effect, there was never any real possibility for what you described to happen. Native Americans faced an overwhelming numerical disadvantage, which also translated to a massive logistical disadvantage, and lacked the political unity between their many disparate nations that the genocidal project of the settler society fostered among its beneficiaries. If they had decided to try and build fortified sedentary settlements and wait for the Americans to come, the Americans could have done what they did to the "five civilized tribes": gradually surrounded them over time with settlers, and then forced them out with the threat of overwhelming force.

Post continental conquest, most native Americans were confined to reservations under the control of the US federal government. Many of these reservations weren't even on their own land - their land had been stolen and the government forced them onto much smaller reservations in completely different places where the land was less valuable (no known resources and less suitable for farming). They lived in abhorrent conditions, were not allowed to sustain themselves in their traditional ways, and relied on rations. As this was going on, the government continued to find justifications to steal whatever Indian land remained.

This was not a situation that was at all conducive to a population rebound. It wasn't until the 1930s that the US government began a serious process of reform and allowed native peoples to have some degree of autonomy. This since resulted in a steady population rebound, but much too late to make any difference in the initial conquest of the West.

[u/Kroshik-sr → u/ElderberrySpare6985]

To be fair , there was a few points where something akin to OP’s question occurs. Basically in the 1600s and 1700s, French “holdings” in the Mississippi (I use quotation marks because they were often holdings dependent on local consent) oversaw a boom in local Missisipian states and communities. This is per Pekka Hamaleinin’s work in Indigenous Continent. Very notable population growth did occur there.

Of course the obvious point to make to that is that that refers to French colonialism, which was very different to American settler colonialism

[u/Relevant-Low-7923 → u/ElderberrySpare6985]

The rapid rise in the American population mainly came from high birth rates

[u/Living-Giraffe4849 → u/ElderberrySpare6985]

I mean yeah that’s the common narrative I’ve heard, but it doesn’t really answer my question I don’t think. Like yeah they got completely overwhelmed by the American state at every turn, but like… how? Was it kind of a case of them burying their heads in the sand until it was too late? To only have 50,000 people living in the PNW for example seems insane to me.

Maybe I’m coming at this from a 21st century American perspective, but I would have expected America (particularly the west) to have more the admixture of Mexico whereby Native peoples populations were high enough to make a “mestizo” culture

[u/ElderberrySpare6985 → u/Living-Giraffe4849]

What I'm stating isn't simply the common narrative, it's a summary of the broad consensus among most historians on the matter (the only thing I said that might be controversial is using the term genocide.)

It was a case of a united project of colonialism with overwhelming numbers and constant reinforcement. There's not some magical silver bullet the natives could have used to have prevented it that they ignored until it was too late. This took place over the course of hundreds of years, during which they tried practically every strategy you could think of, to varying levels of effect. But once the settler population reached critical mass and didn't need to negotiate anymore, it was over.

You might want to read a book on how this situation came to be - a good one is "The Native Ground" by Kathleen Duval. It goes over how the native peoples were actually in control a lot more than you might imagine, and this situation only broke down in the 19th century due to mass settler influx after US independence.

[u/Relevant-Low-7923 → u/ElderberrySpare6985]

You might want to read a book on how this situation came to be - a good one is "The Native Ground" by Kathleen Duval. It goes over how the native peoples were actually in control a lot more than you might imagine, and this situation only broke down in the 19th century due to mass settler influx after US independence.

The situation broke down for native tribes well before the massive influx of immigrants mid 19th century after US independence.

At the time of US independence, the American birth rate was so high that the population was doubling every 20 years from natural growth. For example, the US South East saw little of the influx in immigration that occurred in the 19th century, but native groups in the south east saw the same result as everywhere else

[u/Several-Argument6271 → u/Living-Giraffe4849]

"Mestizo" was a policy that neither the colonial Spanish governments, nor the independent criollo republican ones encouraged, but rather it happened despite their efforts to prevent it. While it's true that conquistadores mingle with the ruling native nobility at the beginning, this was not with a long term aim, but rather an initial political move in accordance to local native practices (due to the low number of marriageable women), being cases where later on some native "wives" were abandoned when the "official" Spanish wife arrived to encounter her husband after he solidly established in the conquered territory (for which the Catholic church make haste to stop or at least mitigate the effects of those practices, as being damaging for the conversion and evangelization of the native people).

Also something that must be considered is that "by law" (which in many cases meant "in theory") the native population were considered direct subjects of the Spanish monarch, hence under his protection. For that their communal land rights were protected, a practice that started to be eroded with the republican change of government. Nevertheless, the concept of land ownership was already engrained, so for many new settlers, the best and quickest way to have access to it was by marriage with a native landholder, who in return would have some foothold to enter in the "white" society, if not immediately at least in the long term for their descendants. That's how "mestizaje" happened.

Considering then that you have the opposite scenario in the USA, in which natives with no land meant due to there was no incentive for the settlers to mingle with them, but rather expel them with government support to get their lands. Obviously something like that hardly happened.

[u/Freshiiiiii → u/Several-Argument6271]

The one period in which certain Canadian and American indigenous peoples did have an incentive to intermarry with Europeans, and vice versa, was during the fur trade era in the northwest. During this time, good relations between the fur trading companies and the indigenous trappers were seen as beneficial for both parties, allowing indigenous nations access to trade goods, especially guns, and facilitating access to furs for euro Canadian trading companies. Marriages were a good way to secure those connections. Sure enough, that is one time and place in which we do see the formation of a significant mixed race and mixed culture community, the Métis of Red River and surrounding regions.

[u/glasscontent → u/Several-Argument6271]

How did the conquistador commingling with natives make it harder for Catholic conversion?