The Pre-COlUmb IaN W Orl D
Before the European colonization of the Americas, in that time of life
scholars refer to as “Pre-history” or “Pre-Columbian”, the Western
hemisphere was a densely populated land. A land with its own peoples
and ways of life, as varied and diverse as any of the other lands in the
world. In fact, it was not even called “America” by those peoples. If
there was any reference to the land as a whole it was as Turtle Island, or
Cuscatlan, or Abya-Yala.
The First Peoples inhabited every region of the Americas, living
within the diversity of the land and developing cultural lifeways depen-
dent on the land. Their numbers approached 70–100 million peoples
prior to the European colonization.^1
Generally, the hundreds of different nations can be summarized
within the various geographical regions they lived in. The commonality
of cultures within these regions is in fact a natural development of people
building lifeways dependent on the land. As well, there was extensive in-
teraction and interrelation between the people in these regions, and they
all knew each other as nations.
In the Arctic region live(d) the Inuit and Aleut, whose lifeways revolve(d)
around the hunting of sea mammals (Beluga whales, walruses, etc.) and cari-
bou, supplemented by fishing and trading with the people to the south.
South of the Arctic, in the Subarctic region of what is today Alaska,
the Northwest Territories, and the northern regions of the Canadian
provinces, live(d) predominantly hunting and fishing peoples. The varia-
- Sources for the population of Indigenous peoples prior to 1492 include:
• Henry F. Dobyns, Native American Historical Demography: A Critical
Bibliography, University of Indiana Press, 1976; “Estimating Aboriginal
Population: An Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Esti-
mate”, Current Anthropology, No. 7, 1966.
• Pierre Chanu, Conquête et Exploitation de Nouveaux Mondes (XVIe
Siecle), Paris, 1969 (estimates population at 80–100 million).
• William R. Jacobs, “The Tip of an Iceberg; Revisionism”, in William and
Mary Quarterly, No. 31, 1974 (estimates population at 50–100 million).
• Woodrow Wilson Borah, “America as Model: The Demographic Impact
of European Expansion Upon the Non-European World”, in Actas y
Memorias XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Mexico, 1962
(estimates population at 100 million). Source: Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz,
Indians of the Americas, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1984.