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Comment by esom | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't seem to take into account the non-European population^1...? I guess that's fine if you state it -- just people the census was counting (not even all white people in US territories all the time).

So this annoyingly helps sustain the myth that North America was an unpopulated forest until being 'settled' by 'settlers'.

1 (http://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/decennial_census...):

"Prior to 1900, few Indians are included in the decennial federal census. Indians are not identified in the 1790-1840 censuses. In 1860, Indians living in the general population are identified for the first time. Nearly all of the 1890 census schedules were destroyed as a result of the fire at the Department of Commerce in 1921.

Beginning with the 1900 census, Indians are enumerated on reservations as well as in the general population."

- http://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/decennial_census...

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Hm: is "non-European" the word you wanted?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm really not sure. Even quickly skimming http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/pdfs/cenpop2010/COP2010_..., it's not clear to me whether slaves were excluded from this tally.

You're right, wasn't thinking of Africans. But I think you knew what I meant.

Insofar as that myth exists, it's certainly unwise to sustain it. However, it's my impression that Native American populations in "settled" areas have always been a small fraction of European-descended population, at least since smallpox and other diseases swept across the continent (which happened before 1790). That is to say, including the native populations or not including them would have little effect on this particular population statistic. In confirmation of this, one finds no obvious discontinuity between 1840 and 1860 on this map.

According to this paper* there were estimates of ~600k remaining in 1800. 3.9million citizens in 1790 USA -> nontrivial number and effect on the mean centroid, especially considering they are not uniformly spread.

As for no discontinuity between 1840-1860, it does say 'living in the general population'. So maybe that excludes the remainder.

The 'settled' areas being only a small fraction native of course depends on the time you measure it relative to the disease onset... which often comes after the first settler. I think at first the ratio is the other way.

*: AMERICAN INDIAN MORTALITY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL ASSIMILATION POLICIES ON A VULNERABLE POPULATION. http://cid.bcrp.gob.pe/biblio/Papers/NBER/2006/Octubre/w1257...

So this annoyingly helps sustain the myth that North America was an unpopulated forest until being 'settled' by 'settlers'.

Who believes in this myth?

A staggering number of people, and a vast corpus of literature both modern and classic. Erasure is a fairly serious problem when discussing native populations.

There is a small map that shows the "approximate Area Enumerated" in each date. This doesn't undercount only Native Americans and they weren't numerous in that period. The west was sparsely populated by the standards of Europe and even the incorporated states where the many of the new immigrants came from.

The data and presentation taken literally are not misleading I suppose -- US population centroid.

It is a graph of manifest destiny, like another comment said - the spread of the US population and not talking about how it spread or what receded to make way.

You shouldn't tell yourself this stuff about there not being many other people there, and how even if you bothered to add them in it wouldn't change. It would - it would change quite a bit. This is not a median centroid.

I see the 'area enumerated' indicator. I see how it includes the west coast as of 1850.

We could go find some population estimates but there isn't good agreement before certain dates.

I'd like to see this kind of map, but with a more complete data set about people. This is just a political map and you could make it look a lot of ways with political choices...

Exactly. Apache was not always a web server.

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