Estimates of the Native Californian population have varied substantially, both with respect to California's pre-contact count and for changes during subsequent periods. Pre-contact estimates range from 133,000 to 705,000 with some recent scholars concluding that these estimates are low. Following the European people's arrival into California, disease and other factors brought the population as low as 25,000. It is estimated that some 4,500 Indigenous Californians suffered violent deaths between 1849 and 1870. As of 2005, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 is the state with the largest self-identified Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 population according to the U.S. Census

United States Census

The United States Census is a decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. The population is enumerated every 10 years and the results are used to allocate Congressional seats , electoral votes, and government program funding. The United States Census Bureau The United States Census...

 at 696,600.

Pre-Contact estimates

Figures for the Native Californian population prior to European entry into the region have been based on a number of different sources, including:
mission records (births, baptisms, deaths, and total numbers of neophytes at particular periods);

• counts of villages that are known from historic, ethnographic, or archaeological records, multiplied by estimates of the average number of inhabitants per village;
• ecological estimates of the regional human carrying capacity
  Carrying capacity
  The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
  
  , given aboriginal technologies and economies;
• population density extrapolations from better-documented regions to less well known ones; and
• extrapolations back from historic censuses, using estimated rates of population decrease.

Few analysts would claim that these methods have yielded precise figures. Estimates by different analysts have commonly diverged by a factor of two or more.

Stephen Powers

Stephen Powers

*This article is about the 19th-century journalist and historian of California Indians.Stephen Powers was an American journalist, ethnographer, and historian of Native American tribes in California. He traveled extensively to study and learn about their cultures, and wrote notable accounts of them...

 (1872:307) initially proposed an estimate of 1,520,000 for the pre-contact population of the state. He subsequently reduced this figure to 705,000.

C. Hart Merriam

Clinton Hart Merriam

Clinton Hart Merriam was an American zoologist, ornithologist, entomologist and ethnographer.Known as "Hart" to his friends, Dr. Clinton Hart Merriam was born in New York City in 1855. His father, Clinton Levi Merriam, was a U.S. congressman. He studied biology and anatomy at Yale University and...

 (1905) offered the first detailed analysis, based on mission records and extrapolation to non-missionized areas. His estimate for the state as a whole was 260,000.

Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...

 (1925:880-891) made a detailed re-analysis, both for the state as a whole and for the individual ethnolinguistic groups within it. He reduced Merriam's figure by about half, to 133,000 Native Californians in 1770.

Martin A. Baumhoff (1963) used an ecological evaluation of carrying capacity to propose an aboriginal population of 350,000.

Sherburne F. Cook

Sherburne F. Cook

Sherburne Friend Cook was a physiologist by training, and served as professor and chairman of the department of physiology at the University of California, Berkeley...

 was the most persistent and painstaking student of the problem, examining in detail both pre-contact estimates and the history of demographic decline during mission and post-mission periods. Initially, in 1943, Cook (1976a:161-194) arrived at a figure only 7% higher than the one previously suggested by Kroeber: 133,550 (excluding the Modoc, Northern Paiute, Washoe, Owens Valley Paiute, and Colorado River Yumans). Subsequently, Cook (1976b, 1978) raised his estimate to 310,000.

Some scholars now believe that waves of epidemic

Epidemic

In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...

 diseases reached California well in advance of the arrival of the Franciscans in 1769 (Preston 1996, 2002). If correct, this may imply that population estimates using the beginning of the mission period as a baseline have substantially underestimated the state's pre-Columbian

Pre-Columbian

The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

 population.

Post-contact changes

The decline of Native Californian populations during the late 18th and 19th centuries was investigated in most detail by Cook. He assessed the relative importance of the various sources of the decline, including Old World epidemic diseases, violence, nutritional changes, and cultural shock. Declines tended to be steepest in the areas directly affected by the missions and the Gold Rush

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

. Other studies have addressed the changes that occurred within individual regions or ethnolinguistic groups.

The Native Californian population reached its nadir of around 25,000 at the end of the 19th century. Based on Kroeber's estimate of 133,000 people in 1770, this would represent a decrease of more than 80%. Using Cook's revised figure, it would constitute a decline of more than 90%. On this Cook rendered his harshest criticism:
The population subsequently rose substantially throughout the 20th century. This recovery may represent both true demographic growth and changing patterns in ethnic self-description. In the 21st century, after more than eight generations of close interaction between Native Californians and individuals of European, Asian, African, and other Native American descent, there can be little objective basis for quantifying the Native Californian component within the state's population. However, reservation rolls and census self-descriptions provide some information.

See also

• Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas
  • Colonization Impact on Native Populations
• Native American history of California
• Category: Native American tribes in California
  • Ishi
    Ishi
    Ishi was the last member of the Yahi, the last surviving group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Ishi is believed to have been the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American culture...
    
    
• Mission Indians
  Mission Indians
  Mission Indians is a term for many Native California tribes, primarily living in coastal plains, adjacent inland valleys and mountains, and on the Channel Islands in central and southern California, United States. The tribes had established comparatively peaceful cultures varying from 250 to 8,000...
  
  
  • California mission clash of cultures
    California mission clash of cultures
    The California mission clash of cultures occurred at the Spanish Missions in California during the Spanish Las Californias-New Spain and Mexican Alta California eras of control, with lasting consequences after American statehood...
    
    
  • Indian Reductions
    Indian Reductions
    Reductions were settlements founded by the Spanish colonizers of the New World with the purpose of assimilating indigenous populations into European culture and religion.Already since the beginning of the Spanish presence in the Americas, the Crown had been concerned...
    
    
• Indigenous peoples
  Indigenous peoples
  Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
  
  
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
  Indigenous peoples of the Americas
  The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
  
  
• Native Americans in the United States
  Native Americans in the United States
  Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...