The 2010 census found 2,932,248 Americans who identified themselves as being Native American (or Alaskan Native), about 0.9% of the U.S. population.[1] No consensus exists on how many native people lived in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus, but extensive research has been, and continues to be conducted.[2][3] Estimates on the population of pre-Colombus North America range from a low of 2.1 million (Ubelaker 1976) to 7 million people (Russell Thornton) to 18 million (Dobyns 1983).[4]
As the direct result of infectious diseases, conflict with Europeans, wars between tribes, assimilation, migration to Canada and Mexico, declining birth rates, the numbers of Native Americans dropped to below half a million in the 19th century. Scholars believe that the overwhelming main causes were new infectious diseases carried by European explorers and traders. Native Americans had no acquired immunity to such diseases, which had been chronic in Eurasian populations for over five centuries.[5] For instance, some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–98% in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics.[6]
The United States Census Bureau (1894) provided their estimate of deaths due specifically to war during the 102 years between 1789 and 1891, including 8,500 Indians and 5,000 whites killed in “individual affairs”:
The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians. The actual number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much higher than the number given… Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate…[7]
In the same 1894 report, the Census Bureau dismissed assertions that millions of Native Americans once inhabited what is now the United States, insisting instead that North America in 1492 was an almost empty continent, and “guesstimating” that aboriginal populations “could not have exceeded much over 500,000
THE BRITISH WAS HELPING THE AMERICAN INDIANS TO KILL AMERICANS!!!
For the Americans the American Revolutionary War was essentially two parallel wars: while the war in the east was a struggle against British rule, the war in the west was an “Indian War”. The newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for control of the territory of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. Some Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, as they hoped to win the opportunity to reduce settlement and expansion onto their land. The Revolutionary War was “the most extensive and destructive” Indian war in United States history.[12]
Some native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. For the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York and Pennsylvania, the American Revolution resulted in civil war; the Six Nations split, with the Oneida and Tuscarora siding with the rebels, and Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga fighting with and for the British. While the Iroquois tried to avoid fighting directly against one another, the Revolution eventually forced intra-Iroquois combat. Both sides lost territory following the United States establishing its independence. The Crown aided the landless Iroquois by rewarding them with a reservation at Grand River in Ontario and some other lands. In the Southeast, the Cherokee split into a neutral (or pro-patriot) faction and a pro-British faction, whom the Americans referred to as the Chickamauga Cherokee; they were led by Dragging Canoe. Many other tribes were similarly divided.
Both immigrant and native noncombatants suffered greatly during the war, and villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during military expeditions. The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which razed more than 40 Iroquois villages.
When the British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), they ceded a vast amount of Native American territory (without the consent of the indigenous peoples) to the United States. The United States treated the Native Americans who had fought with the British as enemy allies, a conquered people who had lost their land. The federal government of the United States was eager to expand, and the national government did so by purchasing Native American land in treaties and through warfare.
alvindavis99 
