Americas: Census at contact myth

More silly assertions without foundation, based on your own prejudices that are contradicted by the evidence.

Many faculty members of Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkley who deal in history, ethnic studies, etc., have been recruited from Latin America, (including Chile). No ivory towers. No yanquis posing as latino experts.

@MichaelQReilly

That’s why is so important to read and analyze chronicles of Spanish explorers. I read Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios, and the impression that produced to me it was a low density continent.

Now, with respect to the mortality of Indians, did you know that Pocahontas had the time to reproduce with Rolfe? Even more, she only died of a contagious disease after she went to Britain, and she didn’t die immediately after arrival! Many natives went to Europe, and came back alive!

I don’t deny natives were more fragile than Europeans to contagious diseases, but you well know that when mortality increase in a population, fertility also increase, cancelling the impact out. I know a decline of population existed, anyways, but nobody will convince me that “95%” of the population died. That’s exagerated.

Not even in the Caribbean, the more affected region, the natives disappeared by mixed with the newcommers, as the genetical studies show.

Now, if you accept the population of North American indians had relatively low density, you would easily match that number with the number of incomming immigrants, and model the actual amerindian genetics of White and Black Americas (which is not null). However, of all the Americas, the only place that hasn’t make a full mtDNA study of its whole population is the U.S.A. Brazil has it, Colombia, Cuba, DR, Chile and all the countries of the region had them, except the U.S.
What we see elsewhere is that the genetical proportions match history.

I won’t answer silly assertions without foundation. Thanks. :rolleyes:

Really, was that so hard?

Here’s what pops up on the first page of a Google (English) search for “Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca”

Seems like plenty of translations are available. So far, nothing to indicate an unusually low population density, unless you make some stretches.

Wait. That’s only the first quotation. Besides, I didn’t say it was an “unusually low” densidy. Just a low density.

Of course, to a person of the 21th century, low densities are a lot higher than in the 15th century! Just remember that at that time Europe had 1/10 of today population, and China also had about 1/10 of theirs current one. If the Americas had 1/10, that would give 60 millions, but you shouldn’t forget the average food productor in the Americas wasn’t much efficient at all, compared with Eurasia. With the exception of Mesoamerica and the Inca, the rest of the Americas were a lot less efficient in food production.

Otherwise, just read the book and convince yourself.

First, you can read the entirety of the de Vaca’s Le Relacion here.

After looking through it I will say that in the vast majority of de Vaca’s travels he is pretty much constantly in the presence of natives. He makes few statements about the actual populations involved, and thus I don’t see how his narrative can be used to meaningfully come to any valid conclusions about the population of the entire continent.

While the text has many quotes you could use to support the idea that the regions de Vaca was traveling through were heavily populated, there are also others that could argue the converse. Of course, traveling along the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Mexico City even in the year 2011 you will see massive variations in population. Focusing on the sparsely populated portions would, of course, give you a totally ignorant view of what the total population of the region was (as would focusing only on the major cities.)

So what it really boils down to is de Vaca’s account just genuinely doesn’t seem that useful to me as a tool for coming to a scientific number of population in the region. Certainly I can’t imagine the mindset that goes into supporting it over archaeological studies. Cabeza de Vaca’s account is the account of one very lost, sometimes starving, always struggling Spaniard in a land as foreign to him as an alien planet would be to us; while it’s an amazing account with great value especially in the practices of the various native tribes he describes, it is not a dispassionate or particularly fact-laden account (de Vaca claims at various points to have healed all individuals who ask for it satisfactorily, and at one point to have raised a dead man back to life.) The thing about archaeology is you can actually study the physical remnants of a culture, you can study the size of their communities, you can make scientific arguments about what sort of agricultural population you would need to support a village of a certain size, and how many people lived in the villages themselves and et cetera. You can go from there to creating relatively sophisticated estimates of population.

Arguing that Cabeza de Vaca’s solitary account should serve as superior evidence for population estimates than the diligent work of individuals who have done massive amounts of archaeological research is ludicrous. It’s like using Marco Polo’s book as an estimate for the population of China, you wouldn’t get anywhere with that, either, because it isn’t a book that was about collecting census data.

First, La Vaca didn’t claim he raised a man from the dead. He explains very clearly he played the role of Shaman, and that role allowed them to survive and getting free food, and that he become famous in a large region.

You presured me for two days to look for quotations of Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios. Now that I started, you get back and claim Vaca’s accounts aren’t valid. Yes, you can’t estimate the exact figure from his comment, but you can get informed that the populations were small, and that living was hard. Hunger and poverty was quite common in several populations he described.

At least Vaca was present on the events. All the modern calculators and scientists haven’t had the chance to see the reality with theirs very eyes.

For instance, all the chronicles point to the fact during colonial times the Amazons was a region with a low density, no matter than indigenous were violent against outsiders. I don’t know why we have to change that model only because some people claim the population was huge.

pinguin what is the largest city you have ever been to during your life? What is the population of the largest city you have ever been to during your life?

Second, don’t act put out because we kept asking you for quotations. You are the one that are claiming de Vaca as your source. This forum is about debating ideas, and just because you find something to support your argument does not mean it will be immediately accepted.

My argument is that a single man’s account is not the same as a census, and that it is actually less useful for making determinations about large-scale things such as estimations of an entire region’s population. Single accounts such as these are very useful for learning about the culture, day-to-day life and etc of peoples from the past, but they are not the same as large scale archaeological and demographic analysis.

You’re essentially saying that me writing a short tale about how I walked through the abandoned factories of Detroit, Detroit is depopulated and a small city and etc, when in fact it still has 700,000 residents.

As for de Vaca’s healing, you are correct he did not originally start doing it out of choice but because the natives who captured him would not feed him otherwise. However this passage clearly shows he is genuinely claiming he healed and raised the dead:

We don’t have a census. Where do you want I found a census on pre-Columbian times? Inca quipus had some figures, but Spaniards ignored those so much very few translations survived at all! That would be the closest to a census I could figure it out. As far as I know, there aren’t census figures in wampus.

The chronicle of Cabeza de Vaca is the closest we have to a “picture” to pre-Contact North America. We have nothing less.

With respect to largest cities, I have lived in Chile and Canada during my life. The city where I live has 7 million people. Remember than in South America our cities are quite large.

Now, in pre-Columbian time, a city of 100.000 was huge and extraordinary, both in Europe and in the Americas. Only China has larger cities during the Middle Ages. Now, the Indigenous town didn’t have much than 50 to 100 people.

In Southern Chile, Indigenous lived in a network of farms, without a single small town. The total population has been estimated between 200.000 to 500.000 people, stretching the figures.

Did he said “He” raised the dead? I don’t read that there. I read Cabeza de Vaca, fervent believer as all the Spaniards of the time, asked God to help him in that situation, and God helped him.

Simple enough. The merit wasn’t of De Vaca but God.

If De Vaca had claimmed in his book he raised dead people from the grave, he would have been burned by the Inquisition.

How do you know the city you live in has 7 million people?

Because I hardly fit in the subway train.

He claimed a man had no pulse, that they had torn down his home as those people did when someone was dead, that his eyes were lifeless. He then says he prayed over the man and the man rose from the dead.

If someone is without pulse and laying there dead, they do not come back to life. So whether de Vaca genuinely believed he raised the person from the dead or that “God worked through him” doesn’t matter, I find that whole part of the tale highly suspicious. Throughout his account de Vaca often speaks of incidents in which God essentially works miracles that save de Vaca or help de Vaca out (often these miracles are things such as providing healing to people who cannot walk and et cetera.) We can thus say that either de Vaca genuinely witnessed dead people come back to life, crippled people walk again, or that he just made those parts of his tale up to spice up the book that he wrote.

So it is your contention that if you can hardly fit in a subway train, the city must have 7 million people?

People can hardly fit in the trains in Tokyo, does Tokyo have 7 million people?

I know my city, fellow. What kind of question is that? South America, unlike North America, has very large urban centers, where cities above 5 millions are common, and even there are some reaching 20 millions, and lot of places where density is still very low. South American largest population, as a general rule, but not without exceptions, are about two hundred miles from the coast, and the interior, still today, has smaller populations. Still today we have more highways following the contours of the region that crossing straight ahead from the Pacific to the Atlantic. There are still projects to connect Brazil to the Pacific coast with better highways than today.

Here’s a good thought exercise.

Without specifically mentioning the number of people you see, the number of buildings you see, the specific size of those buildings, the specific size (in square miles/kilometers) describe a city in such a way that we could reliably tell how many people lived there. For bonus points do so in such a way that we could distinguish between say, one city with 1,000,000 people and a city with 5,000,000. Or between one city with 15,000 people and one city with 60,000 people.

The truth of the matter is that is an insanely difficult task. When de Vaca came to a village he often did not describe how large it was. He would occasionally mention numbers, but usually did not. He would occasionally mention number of houses, but usually did not. When he just spoke of villages generically he did often did not mention how many houses were there or how many people. Meaning it could have been 10 people or 100. When they fought large groups of natives, he often did not tell how many natives were attacking. When he traveled for extensive periods of time and spoke of seeing lots of inhabited land, he often did not mention the relative density.

And finally, he cut a path from Florida to Mexico, stayed for some 6-7 years as a slave in one region, and probably did not visit many settlements that he traveled very closely to, so even if he had accurately told the size of every single village he visited we still would not have an easy time getting an accurate count based on de Vaca’s observations.

What is interesting to note is that the region de Vaca traveled through could have had 5 million people and it would not conflict with his tales. Five million people spread from Florida to Mexico is not very many, and would look very sparse. Even 10 million would.

You realize Florida today has 20 million people? I can take you to parts of Florida that are extremely sparsely populated, I could walk you 100 miles in around Florida in a path in which you would see few people. Is that evidence Florida has a low population? Of course not.

At the same time, I wouldn’t suggest we accept that Florida has 20 million people just based on walking around Miami and Orlando. I would instead say that such voyages are not an accurate way to come about population estimates. We should instead look at the cities, how many streets are there, how many buildings, you can start to make estimates based on that. (Of course in the modern world we just send out census workers.) What’s interesting is the “Census at contact” premise you’ve started with is essentially a giant straw man. Who has ever claimed there was a census at contact? The work of all professionals I have ever seen in this field instead focuses on archaeological data, conclusions based on long accepted methods of estimating for example how many people would live in a village of x size, how many people would require farmland of x area.

Why are you so suspicious? Perhaps because you ignore the mentality of the time.
One thing is what De Vaca made Indians to believe. A different thing is what he believed. And still a third thing is what really happened.
We already said that De Vaca was playing the role of a Shaman.
He believed God helped him to surpass this dangerous test.
What happened? It is not the first time a catalepsy or a person considered dead have raised… It happens once in a while, and you know it. If so, De Vaca was simply lucky.

Cabeza de Vaca did not know Florida and the other lands he traveled, he was a foreigner. If I dropped you today in a large city with 10 million people, and you did not know its population before hand, how could you know that it had 3 million more people than your home city?

The answer is you absolutely could not.

Also, “I know my city fellow” is stupid, you do not know that your city has 7 million people in it based on direct observation. Is it your claim that you observe a certain number of people each day and you have thus concluded your city has 7 million people Of course not, you know your city has 7 million people in it because your government has made some reasonable effort at counting them and thus the population figure is a generally known fact by the public at large.

What I’m saying is your personal experience actually could never tell you that your city had 7 million people in it, unless you’re telling me you have some magical means of direct observation that causes you to intuitively “know” that you’re observing a city of 7 million. That just isn’t the case, you know it has 7 million because your government has counted them, and you might be capable of using that as a frame of reference when comparing it to other cities to generally guess as to whether they are larger or smaller.

Because I have many reasons to be suspicious of a man who, upon returning to Spain with a fabulous tale, writes a book that glorifies his name, his faith and God’s love for him. There are countless examples in which first hand accounts of travels of European explorers have many wild fabrications in them. I’m not saying de Vaca was a bad man or his tale isn’t trustworthy, I’m just saying you can’t trust it without reservation because there are obviously things in it that are pretty clearly the work of fantasy and not something that ever could have happened.