Population Trends Among Present-Day Omaha Indians

Abstract

Data collected in 1972 from three communities in Nebraska, through intensive interviewing of women of childbearing age, are summarized. Rural-urban contrasts in variables related to population growth indicate that Omaha women are having many wanted children (4.5 by age 34). City residents have (and want) families at least as large as those had (and wanted) by reservation residents. Large families are not explained by (a) religious factors; (b) greater desire for children of one sex, i.e. boys, (c) ignorance or disapproval of birth control or (d) rural residence. Explanation appears to lie partly in large-family values derived from an Omaha past laced with disastrous epidemics which struck six times in the 19th century, killing from 50 to 1500 persons or from 5% to 75% of the tribe.