Apologies in advance, this post kinda took on a life of it’s own.

So there are a few ways to answer this question, but I find a focus on numbers undermines a deeper understanding of Native American history. Let me explain…

We could limit a discussion of genocide to overt acts of violence and try to answer the question based on those intentionally killed by armed assault against defenseless civilians like the Sand Creek massacre or the massacre at Wounded Knee. Or, we could expand our scope just a little, and combine those killed by direct interpersonal violence with those who died on forced relocations like the Trail of Tears or the Diné 's Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. Or, we could expand even further to add those who died from intentional resource deprivation during the reservation period, or fell victim to famine when invading English, Spanish, or American armies burned growing crops and food stores, trusting that disease and depopulation would follow. Or we could expand even further and add best estimates for those from the Southeast and from New England who were taken captive and sold into slavery in the Caribbean. As we expand ever outward we increase in scope, yet lose the fine details and the very real human story unfolding behind each number.

I understand the appeal of numbers. Numbers take foggy narratives and make them somehow more concrete. They give the impression of bringing a hard science to bear on the nebulous nature of history. Nowhere is this obsession more obvious than attempting to quantify the scale of depopulation that occurred following contact. However, an obsession with numbers alone can never hope to enrich our understanding of Native American history. Moreover, a focus on decline biases our perspective towards a terminal narrative, reinforces the notion of European actors and Native American re-actors, and blinds us to the complex, evolving political landscape in North America after 1492.

The 100 million estimate you mentioned comes from a scholar named Henry Dobyns, a “high counter” who believed that while the Americas were richly inhabited to the tune of 112 million people at the time of contact, epidemic disease swept ahead of colonists, winnowing the population and leaving a fraction of the previous inhabitants. We now know the story is far more complex. The impact of disease varied greatly on time and place, as well as a host of other psychosocial factors that would not only decrease host defense (leading to increased disease mortality), but also prevent demographic recovery in the years that followed. Scholars are moving away from hemisphere-wide population estimates in favor of examination of smaller geographic areas, and jettisoning a previous obsession with quantifying decline.