American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492,
Russell Thornton. The Civilization of the American Indian Series. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1987. Paperback reprint in 1990.
Dedicated "For all those Indian lives unlived," this is demographic history at its readable and scholarly best. Thornton explains how previous popular and scholarly estimates of 1492 American Indian populations were arrived at, by whom, and why he agrees or disagrees. Numerous easy-to-read charts and tables, copiously referenced and indexed, this work will be the standard for some time to come, even though the author continuously reminds the reader of the essential lack of hard facts (no North American Indian actually went around counting), as well as the various controversies surrounding many of the estimates advanced over the past 100 years.
This work is primarily concerned about the numbers of people living north of the Rio Grande, and to the south of Alaska, Canada and Greenland, though these last three areas are briefly covered in the Appendix. For that area - now primarily the lower 48 of the United States, he goes into great detail, region by region, individual tribe by tribe, and nation by nation. For purposes of comparison, Thornton briefly discusses the devastating demographic decline of the Caribbean, Central and South American Indians after 1492.
Thornton estimates over 72 million for all of the Americas in 1492, 7+ million for north of the Rio Grande, and 5+ for the United States' lower 48. At about the same time, Europe's population, excluding the U.S.S.R.'s area (then about 10-17 million) was 60-70 million. France at 15 million was the most populous, followed by Italy at 10 million, then Spain's 6.5-10, and the British Isles' 5 million.
American Indian Holocaust and Survival is not only about numbers and how those numbers are reached, though that alone is worth the reading. It is also about those European introduced factors that precipitated the greatest and most rapid die-off in human history: Disease, enslavement, extermination, political and cultural subjugation.
For me, the most interesting aspect of this extremely detailed work is that in addition to discussing the demographics of the better known Native American groups, the author includes numerous other tribal and national groups that too many writers on Native American history ignore.