Russell Thornton
American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since
1492
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.
Russell Thornton takes an incisive look at the wholesale decline
of the native population, chronicling losses that began with the
European invasion in 1492. His reassessment, using contemporary
measures, of the aboriginal Indian population results in a much
larger (1 million more) American Indian population than was
previously thought. Increases in mortality due to disease, warfare
and genocide, removal and relocation, destruction of ways of life
and a decline in fertility all led to the decimation of the
American Indian population. Thornton's measures, however, show
reassuring growth, though slow, in the twentieth century, which
gives us hope for the future.
