AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIESWeinberg, Daniel H. 1996 A Brief Look at U.S. Income
Inequality. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Popu-
lation Reports, Series P60–191. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
Wolf, Douglas A., Vicki Freedman, and Beth J. Soldo
1997 ‘‘The Division of Family Labor: Care for Elderly
Parents.’’ Journals of Gerontology 52B:102–109.
Zinn, Maxine Baca, and D. Stanley Eitzen 1987 Diversity
in American Families. New York: Harper and Row.
LAURIE RUSSELL HATCHAMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES
American Indian Studies blends many fields in the
social sciences and humanities; history and an-
thropology have been especially prominent, along
with education, sociology, psychology, economics,
and political science. For convenience, this litera-
ture can be grouped into several subject areas:
demographic behavior, socioeconomic conditions,
political and legal institutions, and culture and
religion. Of course, there is a great deal of overlap.
To date, this literature deals mostly with aboriginal
North Americans and their descendants. As the
field has evolved, little attention has been devoted
to the natives of South America or the Pacific
Islanders. However, there is a growing interest in
common experiences of indigenous peoples around
the world (e.g. Fleras and Elliot 1992).
DEMOGRAPHYHistorical Demography. Historical demography
is important for understanding the complexity of
indigenous North American societies and for as-
sessing the results of their contacts with Europe-
ans. For example, complex societies require large
populations to generate economic surpluses for
trade, and large populations often entail highly
developed systems of religion, culture, and gov-
ernance. Because American Indians almost disap-
peared in the late nineteenth century, large num-
bers of pre-Columbian Indians would indicate that
devastating mortality rates and profound changes
in native social organization followed the arrival of
Europeans.
No one knows with certainty when popula-
tions of Homo sapiens first appeared in the Western
Hemisphere. The first immigrants to North Ameri-
ca probably followed game from what is now
Siberia across the Beringia land bridge, now sub-
merged in the Bering Sea. This land bridge has
surfaced during several ice ages, leading to specu-
lation that the first populations arrived as early as
40,000 years ago or as recently as 15,000 years
ago—25,000 years ago is a credible estimate
(Thornton 1987, p. 9).
In 1918 a Smithsonian anthropologist, James
Mooney, published the first systematic estimates
of the American Indian population. He reckoned
that 1.15 million American Indians were living
around 1600. Alfred Kroeber (1934) subsequently
reviewed Mooney’s early estimates and deemed
them correct, though he adjusted the estimate
downward to 900,000 (Deneven 1976). The Mooney-
Kroeber estimates of approximately one million
American Indians in 1600 have been the bench-
mark for scholars throughout most of this century.
These estimates were flawed, however, because
they failed to take epidemic disease into account;
European pathogens devastated native populations.
Noting the shortcomings of the Mooney-
Kroeber figures, Henry Dobyns (1966) revised the
estimate for the 1492 precontact population, sug-
gesting that it was as large as twelve million. His
article ignited an intense debate that is still not
fully resolved. Conservative estimates now num-
ber the indigenous 1492 population at approxi-
mately three to five million (Snipp 1989). Dobyns
(1983) later raised his estimate to eighteen million.
Population estimates substantially larger than
the Mooney-Kroeber figures are consistent with
the archaeological record, which indicates that
relatively complex societies occupied the South-
west, the Pacific Northwest, and the Mississippi
River valley before the Europeans arrived (Thornton
1987). The effects of European contact were cer-
tainly greater than once believed. European dis-
eases, slavery, genocidal practices, and the intensi-
fication of conflicts nearly exterminated the native
people. Huge population losses undoubtedly caused
large-scale amalgamation and reorganization of
groups struggling to survive and wrought pro-
found changes in their cultures and social structures.
Despite long and heated debates about the
likely number of pre-Columbian North Ameri-
cans, there is relatively little consensus about this
figure. It seems likely that it will never be known