Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 177, Yer-. Over the past few episodes,

we've been focused on the Westford migration, primarily from the perspective of the Euro-American

in absence of the United States. Two examples for the lives of Daniel Boone, as he pioneered

through Kentucky and Missouri, and William Cooper, who founded the lives of Daniel Boone as he pioneered through Kentucky and Missouri,

and William Cooper, who founded the settlement of Cooper's town in upstate New York.

The relationship the United States had with the Indian tribes was a recurring theme throughout both episodes,

but today we're going to bring Indian relations front and centre, ultimately get into the case of the zoo companies.

It's been a hundred episodes since our deep dive on the Native American tribes, and as you can imagine, a considerable amount has changed since then.

The biggest change was the population.

War was obviously a factor, but disease had a ruinous effect on the North American continent.

Estimates of population size are notoriously difficult,

but current theories are that by the year 1700, there

were 1.4 million Native Americans living in North America, and of those, around 350,000

were living in the area east of the Mississippi, which is, to all intents and purposes, the

America we've been dealing with

since the revolution. Using estimates, Secretary of War Henry Knox made to George Washington

in 1789, we can deduce that their numbers had dropped by nearly 80% over the course of the century.

Nottsk's figures are probably an underestimate. He calculated there were 5,000 warriors north

of the Ohio and 14,000 south of it, with three non-combatants for every warrior, giving a total

of 76,000. But regardless of the exact figure,

it's clear there had been a drastic reduction, particularly in the north. Most of the tribes

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