Population of Native California facts for kids
The population of Native California refers to the number of Native people living in California. Before Europeans arrived, there were many different ideas about how many people lived here. Some experts thought there were between 133,000 and 705,000 people. Some newer studies even suggest these numbers might be too low.
After Europeans came to California, the number of Native people dropped sharply. This was mainly due to diseases and violence. This period is sometimes called the California Genocide. During the California Gold Rush, from 1849 to 1870, it's believed that miners and others killed about 4,500 Native Californians. By the late 1800s, the population was as low as 25,000. Today, California has the largest self-identified Native American population in the U.S., with about 696,600 people in 2005.
How Many People Lived Here Before Europeans?
Historians have tried to figure out how many Native Californians lived here before Europeans. They use different ways to guess these numbers:
- They look at old mission records. These records show births, baptisms, and deaths.
- They count old villages. Then they guess how many people lived in each village.
- They study the environment. They try to see how many people the land could support.
- They compare well-known areas to less known ones.
- They use old population counts. Then they guess how fast the population decreased.
These methods don't give exact numbers. Different experts often come up with very different guesses. For example, Stephen Powers first thought there were 1,520,000 people. Later, he changed his guess to 705,000.
C. Hart Merriam was one of the first to study this in detail. He used mission records and guessed for areas without missions. He estimated about 260,000 people for the whole state. Later, Alfred L. Kroeber looked at the numbers again. He lowered Merriam's guess by about half, to 133,000 Native Californians in 1770.
Martin A. Baumhoff used the idea of how much the land could support. He estimated about 350,000 Native people.
Sherburne F. Cook studied this problem for a long time. He looked at both the numbers before Europeans and how the population changed later. Cook first estimated 133,550 people in 1943. Later, he increased his estimate to 310,000.
Some experts now think that diseases reached California even before the first Spanish missions in 1769. If this is true, it means the population before Europeans might have been much higher than we thought.
What Happened After Europeans Arrived?
The number of Native Californians dropped a lot in the late 1700s and 1800s. Cook studied why this happened. He found that diseases from the Old World, violence, changes in food, and cultural shock were big reasons. The population dropped fastest in areas near the missions and during the Gold Rush.
The Native Californian population reached its lowest point, around 25,000 people, by the end of the 1800s. If we use Kroeber's guess of 133,000 people in 1770, this is a drop of more than 80%. If we use Cook's higher guess, it's a drop of over 90%. Cook was very critical of what happened:
The first (reason) was the food supply. The second reason was disease.
A third reason, which made the other two worse, was the social and physical harm done to the Indian. <...> They were not helped against foreign diseases. They were also stopped from getting food, clothing, and shelter. The complete destruction caused by the white man was truly unbelievable. You can only see how bad it was when you look at the population numbers.
The population started to grow again throughout the 1900s. This growth could be from more births. It could also be because more people started to identify as Native American. Today, after many generations, it's hard to count exactly how many people are Native Californian. But records from reservations and census self-descriptions give us some information.
