Introduction
There were about five hundred different Indian nations in the now-United States when Europeans first landed in North America. This includes both what settlers called “Indians” (in the mainland United States) and Alaska natives. The category of Native Americans does not include those indigenous to Hawaii, Samoa, and the Mariana Islands. However, largely due to war and disease, the Native American population decreased to around 300,000 in 1900.
Early in United States history, the legal status of Native Americans as citizens was ubiquitous at best. However, in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, all Native Americans born in the United States who had not yet obtained citizenship were declared to be United States citizens. This allowed the Native American population to vote in state and federal elections and provided protections under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 2012, the Census Bureau estimated there to be about 5.2 million Native Americans in the United States, or 2% of the total population.
See for yourself how the Native American population has changed by examining the data in the charts.
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