austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

274 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
NOTES
INTRODUCfiON
1. Besides being incompletely documented, there are a number of procedural prob
lems with Mooney's (1928) estimates. For instance, many of Mooney's own base figures
were derived from other sources that had already subjectively discounted actual
sightings of Indians for no apparent reason, and Mooney arbitrarily reduced these figures
even further (Jennings, 1975). In addition, many of Mooney's estimates are based
on just multiplying four by the number of warriors claimed to have been seen after
extensive contact had been made with the white invaders (Denevan, 1976), whereas
observed warrior numbers should have been multiplied by a more normal 12: I military
mobilization ratio for Indians (Dobyns, 1983). Moreover, Mooney even ignored many
of the tribes encountered (Denevan, 1976), possibly in part because his work was not
completed at his death (Jennings, 1975). Finally, Mooney fa iled to make any allowance
for Indian warriors who were never directly counted (because they fled from the
deadly whites) or who were met (and killed) only before extensive military contact
was made (Thornton, 1987). The uncounted numbers might be especially large given
rumors that there was a widespread frontier practice of giving Indians gifts infected
with smallpox (Jennings, 1988), and given that the Indians quickly learned to avoid
the superior firepower of USA by engaging in guerrilla warfare that avoided massing
Wllrion for observation (and counting) by the deadly whites (Jennings, 1975). Despite
Mooney's methodological flaws, bias, and obvious underestimation of Indian popula­
tion in the USA, the USA government publication of Mooney's numbers gives them
III IUn of authenticity. Possibly as a result, many twentieth century researchers tend to
tqJort similar low numbers (Wax, 1971 ).
2. While Indians did have more vacant land to allow for more hunting, it is not clear
whether such practices resulted in more underutilization of land than the European
system of concentrating land holdings in the hands of the rich (Thomas, 1976).
3. Mexicans also stole a great deal ofland from Indians via fraud, but, unlike the USA,
Mexico generally allowed the Indians to continue to live on the land as serfs (Atkin,
1�). In addition, unlike the USA which did not provide Indians with citizenship
llllll
the twentieth century after they had been virtually exterminated (Churchill, 1994),
�ico automatically granted citizenship to all Indians immediately upon achieving
�from Spain in the 1820s (Jennings, 1993). Perhaps for these reasons,
ndilns wm: known to migrate from the USA to Mexico (Mallery, 1877), as well as to
Clnada. to escape the USA's attacks (Jennings, 1993).
4· This estimate of the USA's short-term kill rate may actually be far too low, as Wax