American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century (review)

American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century. By Nancy Shoemaker (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1999) 156 pp. $39.95

As Shoemaker points out, historians and demographers have been far more interested in measuring and explaining American Indian population decline than in following its consequent recovery, which began c. 1900, if the U.S. census is to be believed. American Indian Population Recovery is an attempt to redress the balance. To carry out her plan, Shoemaker offers five case studies, widely separated geographically: the Senecas of New York, the Cherokees of Oklahoma, the Ojibways of Minnesota, the Yakamas of Washington, and the Navajo of Arizona and New Mexico.

Shoemaker has a vast topic, since the number of people identified as, or identifying themselves as, Native Americans increased nearly fivefold between 1900 and 1980. Why 1980 and not 1990? Because "the massive undercounting" in the 1990 census "convinced [her] that [she] would be better off ending the study with what many analysts consider the census Bureau's best products: the 1980 census and the Public Use Sample drawn from it" (xiii). Even stopping at 1980 presents epistemological problems: The number of people classified as Native American increased by 314 percent between 1950 and 1980, 72 percent between 1970 and 1980, and another 38 percent between 1980 and 1990--the year of the undercount! As Shoemaker notes, this population surge cannot result from natural increase and did not result from in-migration; rather, "the reasons for recent Indian population growth must be changes in racial identifications, census procedures, and, most importantly, ethnic identity," that is, changes in self-categorization (4-5).

Turning to her case studies, Shoemaker finds that four of the five tribes' population history between 1970 and 1980 conformed to the overall trend, ranging from a 56 percent to 251 percent increase. In contrast, the Ojibways increased only 3 percent, owing to the fact that Ojibways not living on the reservation were not counted, or at least were not treated as Ojibways.

Chapter 3 is devoted to mortality and fertility in 1900. Shoemaker concludes that "Indian populations [i.e., the case study tribes]" had both higher fertility and higher mortality than blacks or whites and, hence, a roughly similar growth pattern. However, the degree of mortality and fertility varied among the five groups. The Cherokees had the most favorable balance and the Yakama and Senecas the least. Chapter 4 treats economic and cultural variables such as Westernization, age at marriage, degree of intermarriage, household structure, and the like. Since these variables all affect fertility and mortality, this chapter would have simplified matters for readers had it been transposed with the previous one, which it helps to explain.

At c. 1940, life expectancy increased, while fertility at first stayed constant, resulting in sharp increases in population. In Chapter 5, Shoemaker assesses the cost. More people, but not more resources, led to high levels of rural-urban migration; proportionately, six times as many American Indians lived in towns of 2,500 or more in 1980 than in 1940--a notable increase even granting that there were more such places in 1980. Since these people tended to be wage earners, "economic disadvantagement" worsened, poverty levels increased, and extended-family households decreased, while single-parent households, and intermarriage, increased. Fertility inevitably began to decline with all this separation, though still remaining higher than in other racial populations. In short, "traditional" Indian society was all but transformed to resemble that of whites and blacks more closely.

The United States currently has about eight times as many inhabitants who are called Indian, by whatever name, in the census than in 1900--all without benefit of massive immigration. With pardonable exaggeration, Shoemaker sees this change as "the most significant demographic development of the twentieth century" (99). Whether true or not, it certainly collides with the fact that public policymakers were imagining, if not predicting, the disappearance of the American Indian at the...