The population figures for indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus have proven difficult to establish. Scholars rely on archaeological data and written records from settlers from Europe.
Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian population was as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.