Indian population in the United States and Alaska. 1910 - RootsWeb

"the inquiry with, respect to occupations at the
Thirteenth Census called for a statement as to the
"trade or profession of, or particular kind of work
done" by each person engaged in gainful labor, and
also as to the "general nature of industry, business, or
establishment" in which the person worked. The
statistics of the occupations of Indians reported in
this volume are limited to gainful workers 10 years of
age and upward. The term "gainful workers," as
used in the printed instructions to enumerators and
in this report, includes all workers, except women
doing housework in their own homes, without salary
or wages, and having no other employment, and
children working at home, merely on general household
work, on chores, or at odd times on other work.
Sufficiency oj the occupation returns.—In general, the
occupations of the Indians were not so carefully retm-ned
by the enumerators as were the occupations
of the whites. No doubt this was due largely to the
greater difficulty of the task, but in some cases, pos-
sibly, it was due to the inefficiency or carelessness of
the enumerators. In Alaska the enumeration was in
the winter. In some of the outlying sparsely populated
districts it was necessary to use as enumerators
persons of very limited educational qualifications.
Moreover, the Indian population of Alaska is in large
part illiterate. Under these conditions enumeration
was at best difficult. But, because of the fact that the
Alaska Indians are mainly hunt'ers, trappers, fishermen,
and deer herders and keepers, there was little
danger of the enumerators confusing occupations.
However, some of these Indians may have been missed
entirely, and probably o-thers were returned as gainfully
occupied when they should not have been. In
editing the returns both for the United States proper
and for Alaska the most improbable cases of Indians
returned as gainfully occupied were rejected; but,
notwithstanding this, it is probable that too many of
the Indians are reported as gainful workers. This is
certainly true in the case of particular tribes, where
the proportion gainfully employed exceeds 60 per
cent.
Number and 'proportion occupied.—Table 101 shows,
for the United States and for Alaska, the number of
Indians engaged in gainful occupations in comparison
with the total Indian population and with the Indian
population 10 years of age and over, for both sexes
and for each sex separately, at the censuses of 1910
and 1900, respectively.
(250)
OCCUPATIONS.
Tab