My hypothesis of demographic revitalization suggests that the occurrence of the Ghost Dances was linked closely to American Indian depopulation. It follows that if the movements were efforts toward such revitalization, then they would seemingly have occurred close to the time of greatest American Indian population depletion. To investigate this possibility, I here examine the historical demographic context of American Indians in the United States, particularly those living in the geographical areas of the Ghost Dances at the approximate time they occurred.

Pre-European American Indian population

Twentieth-century scholarly estimates of the aboriginal (i.e., 1492) American Indian population of the Western Hemisphere have varied widely. In the 1920s most such estimates were around 50 million; by the 1930s and 1940s scholars aimed considerably lower, around 10 million or slightly more. However, more recent estimates are even higher than those of the 1920s; they approach and sometimes surpass 100 million (Ubelaker, 1976:table 1).

In contrast, estimates of the pre-European population north of the Rio Grande River, in what is now called the United States, Canada, and Greenland, have been more stable and even proportionately much lower. Until the mid-1960s, most estimates were in the neighborhood of 1 million (Ubelaker, 1976:table 1). In 1966, however, Dobyns (1966) estimated a population range of from 9.80 to 12.25 million for 1492. More recent estimates have been considerably lower, despite Dobyns's work, but well above the earlier figure of 1 million.