Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/223
Conditions of Health and Disease Among Indians. Reliable figures regarding births, deaths, and diseases are not available for Indians. For any well organized modern white community a detailed report on health would naturally begin with an analysis of the mortality and morbidity statistics. The Indian jurisdictions, however, have not yet reached the level of well organized white communities. A discussion of the existing vital statistics must therefore be concerned primarily with the limitations of the figures rather than with the facts regarding the health of the Indians. Nevertheless, it seems important to summarize the available statistics, since, though they must be regarded as essentially untrustworthy, they form the basis for any appraisal of health conditions or of a program for the future. These figures, it should be noted, do not include the data regarding the Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma.
Indian Office records show for the Indian population a high birth rate and a high death rate, with excessively high infant mortality and a large portion of deaths from tuberculosis,
Birth Rates. The Indian birth rate is apparently from one-fourth to one-half higher than the birth rate for the general population, according to such data as can be obtained. The rate is high, despite the fact that many Indian births are not reported. The situation is shown in Table 1, where figures are given for the estimated Indian population of eighteen states.
Various inaccuracies inhere in these statistics. The births reported are for a single year and the numbers of births occurring in all little groups of a few hundred or even a few thousand people vary considerably from one year to another. Thus the highest and the lowest rates in this table are from two of the smallest populations. The fact remains, however, that the rates for the Indians, taken state by state, run pretty consistently higher than the rates for the general populations, while the rate for the whole group of 180,000 Indians is almost 50 per cent higher than the rate for the general population of the United States birth registration area. This agrees with the general impression that Indian women, like the women of most primitive people, are the bearers of many children.
That the situation has not materially changed over a considerable recent period is indicated in Table 2, which compares Indian