AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIESwith certainty. As scholars realize the elusiveness
of this number, there is less interest in trying to
establish the definitive estimate and more in at-
tempting to understand the complex demograph-
ic behavior related to depopulation (Thornton et
al. 1991; Verano and Ubelaker 1992).
Contemporary Demography. During the twen-
tieth century, the American Indian population
grew very quickly, from about 228,000 in 1890 to
about 1.96 million in 1990 (Shoemaker 1999).
American Indian fertility is exceedingly high (Snipp
1996). Indians often have better access to health
care (from the Indian Health Service) than other
equally impoverished groups, and they are experi-
encing diminishing infant mortality and increas-
ing longevity (Young 1994; Snipp 1996).
A peculiar characteristic of American Indian
population growth, at least since 1970, is that a
large share of the increase has resulted from per-
sons switching the racial identification they report
to the census from another category (such as black
or white) to American Indian (Passell and Berman
1986; Harris 1994). The U.S. census, virtually the
only comprehensive source of data for American
Indians, depends on voluntary racial self-identifi-
cation. Declining racial discrimination, growing
ethnic pride, and resurgence in tribal organization
have been cited as reasons that persons of mixed
heritage may choose to report themselves as Ameri-
can Indian (Passell and Berman 1986). Evidence
indicates that persons who change their identity so
they may claim their Native-American heritage
tend to be relatively well-educated (Eschbach et
al. 1998).
The fluidity of the American Indian popula-
tion underscores a particularly problematic con-
cern for demographers: namely, defining popula-
tion boundaries. Definitions abound, and there is
no single agreed-upon standard. Some federal
agencies and a number of tribes use an arbitrary
measure of descent, such as one-fourth blood
quantum; standards for tribal membership vary
greatly from one-half to one-sixty-fourth Indi-
an blood.
For many other applications, genealogical verifi-
cation of blood quantum standards is too com-
plex. Agencies such as the U.S. Bureau of the
Census thus simply rely on self-identification. By
default, most studies of American Indians also rely
on self-identification, especially if they use second-
ary data from federal government sources. To
complicate the matter, the Canadian government
uses a somewhat different set of standards to
define the boundaries of its native Indian popula-
tion (Boldt 1993).Beyond the complexities of counting, studies
show that American Indians, more than other
minorities, are concentrated in rural areas; slightly
less than one-half reside in cities. Most live west of
the Mississippi River, primarily because nineteenth-
century removal programs were directed at east-
ern American Indians. A large number of studies
document that American Indians are one of the
least educated, most often unemployed, poorest,
and least healthy groups in American society (see
Sandefur et al.1996). Nonetheless, American Indi-
ans are more likely than other groups, especially
blacks, to live in a large husband-wife household,
and about one-third of them speak an Indian
language—provisional evidence of the continuing
influence of traditional culture in family organiza-
tion and language use (Sandefur and Liebler 1996).STUDIES OF SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC STATUSStudies of the early social and economic status of
American Indians focus on the historical develop-
ment of so-called dependency relations between
them and Euro-Americans (White 1983, 1991;
Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998). Dependency theo-
ry, a variant of neo-Marxist World Systems Theory,
has been widely criticized for its shortcomings, but
it has gained some acceptance among scholars of
white-Indian relations (Wolf 1982; White 1983;
Hall 1989). In this view, economic dependency
arose from trade relations in which Euro-Ameri-
cans enjoyed disproportionate economic advan-
tage stemming from a near monopoly over items
such as manufactured goods and rum (Wolf 1982;
White 1983). European business practices, such as
the use of credit, also fostered dependency.Dependency relations promoted highly ex-
ploitative conditions that were a frequent source
of conflict and periodically erupted into serious
violence. Unscrupulous traders and a growing com-
merce in Indian captives, for example, spawned
the Yamassee War, which ended Indian slavery in