American Indians with African Ancestry: Differential Fertility and the Complexities of Social Identity
Human Ecology
Volume 39, Number 6 (December 2011)
page 727-742
DOI: 10.1007/s10745-011-9439-2
Michael H. Logan, Professor of Anthropology
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Interethnic marriage represents a major trend in the demographic history of American Indians. While the majority of these unions involved Indian women and Caucasian men, a sizeable number occurred between Indians and African Americans. The children of these bicultural marriages were “mixed bloods” who in turn typically married non-Indians or other mixed bloods. Using data from the 1910 Census on American Indians in the United States and Alaska, this article explores why American Indians with African ancestry enjoyed high fertility. Differential rates of fertility among American Indians in the past were due to a number of underlying genetic, cultural, and environmental factors. By identifying these factors, the paradox of why Indian women with African heritage did so well in terms of fertility largely disappears. African admixture, however, greatly complicates Indian social identity.
Introduction
The demographic history of American Indians is characterized by a number of major trends, the most dramatic being the immense loss of life resulting from the introduction of several Old World diseases, including smallpox, measles, influenza, cholera, and malaria. While the exact size of indigenous populations in the Americas on the eve of European contact will never be known with certainty, scholars agree that up to 90% of the aboriginal population perished as a direct result of these introduced diseases (Thornton 1987, 1997; Ubelaker 1988; Ramenofsky 1987; Dobyns 1983). By 1900, the population of American Indians in the United States reached its nadir of 237,196 individuals (Thornton 1987:160). Although Ubelaker’s estimate (1988:291) for 1900 is more than twice as high (536,562). it does not alter the fact that millions of Indians died from these and other infectious disorders, as well as from other causes including famine, exposure, alcohol-related trauma, and armed combat with whites and other Indians (sec also Larsen and Milncr 1994; Bianchinc and Russo 1992).
Another highly significant demographic trend explored in this article is an increasing number of intercthnic marriages between American Indian women and non-Indian men. Although a limited number of white women married Indian men, this practice was certainly not common nor widely approved (Fllinghaus 2006; Jacobs 2002). The children of such marital unions were “mixed bloods,” who in turn typically married non-Indians or other mixed bloods (e.g.. Perdue 1998. 2003). Such “assortative” mating leads to an expansion of the gene pool, which, according to Quiggins (1990), may explain why highly admixed Cherokee are at lower risk of developing type-2 diabetes than full blood individuals. A similar finding has also been reported tor the Pima of Arizona (Williams et al. 2000). Using data from the 1980 U.S. census, Sanderur and McKinnell observe “intermarriage of Indians and whites is much more prevalent than that of blacks and whites, and … the extent of Indian white intermarriage has increased dramatically in recent decades” (1986:348). The scholarly literature on Indian-white marriages for the nineteenth and early twentieth century is quite extensive (Logan and Ousley 2001; Sturm 1998; Moore…
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