Update this timeline entry

The Chickesaw population was about 3000

Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121

Project ID

Chapter

Timeline title

Start date

End date

Filename received

Filename assigned

Content

The earlier figures for the Chickasaw are so discordant that not much satisfaction can be obtained from them. Particularly it is hard to reconcile them with the size of the later figures. Either we must suppose that the earlier figures are too low or that there was a considerable increase in population during the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth. For about 20 years after their removal west of the Mississippi the Chickasaw and Choctaw were much mingled together, and some addition to the population may have come from the latter tribe. The slaves were also reckoned in and later as freedmen account for much of the increase shown, but they do not account for all of it in the period under consideration.

Early in the 18th century we hear that the tribe had lost so heavily in its wars with the French and their Indian allies that it had become "reduced to 200-300 warriors," which would indicate a population of not much over 1,000 at the outside,1 yet Morse's Report shows what appears to have been an exact enumeration of 3,625 in 1821 ;2 and 15 years later the United States Indian Office estimates 5,400.3 For tho period from about 1800 to 1840 I think we must assume an actual increase, but it is probable that the earlier estimates of population were sometimes too low, and I venture to place the population in 1700 at from 3,000 to 3,500.
(Swanton)