numbers, and their modern followers show a tendency to fall into the
opposite fault, the truth being that any number of isolated observations
to support either position can be culled from the works of the
contemporary travellers and statisticians.[6] No two independent
observers give the same figures. One main reason for this is doubtless
the exceedingly loose way in which the word "tribe" was used. If a man
speaks of the Miamis and the Delawares, for instance, before we can
understand him we must know whether he includes therein the Weas and the
Munceys, for he may or may not. By quoting the numbers attributed by the
old writers to the various sub-tribes, and then comparing them with the
numbers given later on by writers using the same names, but speaking of
entire confederacies, it is easy to work out an apparent increase, while
a reversal of the process shows an appalling decrease. Moreover, as the
bands broke up, wandered apart, and then rejoined each other or not as
events fell out, two successive observers might make widely different
estimates. Many tribes that have disappeared were undoubtedly actually
destroyed; many more have simply changed their names or have been
absorbed by other tribes. Similarly, those that have apparently held
their own have done so at the expense of their neighbors. This was made
all the easier by the fact that the Algonquins were so closely related
in customs and language; indeed, there was constant intermarriage
between the different tribes. On the whole, however, there is no
question that, in striking contrast to the southern or Appalachian
Indians, these northwestern tribes have suffered a terrible diminution
in numbers.

With many of them we did not come into direct contact for long years
after our birth as a nation. Perhaps those tribes with all or part of
whose warriors we were brought into collision at some time during or
immediately succeeding the Revolutionary war may have amounted to thirty