Their numbers have steadily dwindled, owing to their incessant wars and to the dangerous nature of their long roamings.[5] It is impossible to make any but the roughest guess at the numbers of these northwestern Indians.

It seems probable that there were considerably over fifty thousand of them in all; but no definite assertion can be made even as to the different tribes.

As with the southern Indians, old-time writers certainly greatly exaggerated their numbers, and their modern followers show a tendency to fall into the opposite fault, the truth being that any number of isolated observations to support either position can be culled from the works of the contemporary travellers and statisticians.[6] No two independent observers give the same figures.

One main reason for this is doubtless the exceedingly loose way in which the word "tribe" was used.

If a man speaks of the Miamis and the Delawares, for instance, before we can understand him we must know whether he includes therein the Weas and the Munceys, for he may or may not.