Ethnicity & Immigration - Minorities: American Indians

The Cherokee Indians, with a population of just shy of 370,000 people, were the largest tribe in that part of the U.S. population designated as American Indians and Alaskan Natives. In 1990 this group was part of a total population of just over 1.93 million, the smallest racial group in the country if Hawaiian Natives and Other Pacific Islanders are grouped with Asians, as is the custom.

Data on such small populations are not usually available, in detail, until some years after each decennial census. Thus we show data for the years 1980 and 1990, which were first published in 1995, five years after the 1990 census. The graphic shows the top ten tribes within this racial category as a percent of the American Indian population. The last bar shows the change between the two census dates. Population data for 1990 are shown in the table on the next page, illustrating the fact that we are dealing with rather small groups. Only four tribes had populations greater than 100,000.

Considering that, in 1990, the Census Bureau identified some 379 tribes by name, it is easily seen that some of these are just a few families in extent.

The Indian population increased, 1980 to 1990, by 31% over all.

1990 Populations of 10 Leading Tribes

Tribe	1990 Population	% increase, 1998 to 1990
Cherokee	369,035	59.0
Navajo	225,298	42.0
Sioux	107,321	36.5
Chippewa	105,988	44.0
Choctaw	86,231	71.7
Pueblo	55,330	30.0
Apache	53,330	48.7
Iroquois	52,557	37.5
Lumbee	50,888	77.7
Creek	45,872	62.2

All of the tribes shown here had higher rates of increase, suggesting that the big get bigger, the small perhaps shrink. In the 1990 to 2000 period, the Indian population increased by 27.8%, growing at a lower rate in this last period, to 2.48 million. Details about tribal groups and their increases or declines are not yet available.

Census data on the Indian population before 1980 were summed under the category "Other Races." This makes it difficult to establish a trend in the population, but it is clearly up from 1930, when details were published by the Census Bureau and the total population reported, in that year, was 332,397.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1990 and 2000 Census of the Population, and "Top 25 American Indian Tribes for the United States, 1990 and 1980." Online. Available: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/indian.html. Data on 1930 population are from Dr. Leon E. Truesdell , The Indian Population of the United States and Alaska, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930. U.S. Bureau of the Census.