Standing tall: Plains indians enjoyed height, health...( Franz Boas one of the founders of ...)

Franz Boas, one of the founders of American anthropology. Boas collected and analyzed data from several thousand Native Americans during the late 1800s as part of research he was doing for the Columbian Exposition, a fair held in Chicago from May to October 1893.

The researchers used data from 1,123 Indians from eight equestrian Plains tribes, including the Cheyenne, Sioux, Blackfeet and Comanche.

Steckel has conducted a variety of studies using stature as an alternative way of measuring the standard of living and overall health. Average height is a good way of measuring health in populations, he said, especially nutritional status, as determined by diet minus claims on the diet made by work and by disease. Genetic differences that are important in the heights of individuals approximately cancel in determining the average heights of entire populations.

This study shows that despite the many technological advantages that the European-American settlers had over the American Indians, the Plains tribes enjoyed better health, at least nutritionally.

"The modern perception that Native Americans were hapless and in poor health probably comes from the era at the turn of the century when Indians were put on reservations," Steckel said. "Native Americans often did suffer high rates of tuberculosis and other manifestations of poor health on the reservations, but they weren't always that way."

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Contact: Richard Steckel
Steckel.1@osu.edu
614-292-5008
Ohio State University
26-May-2001

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