Over time scholars have been debating the numbers of the pre-Columbian population in the Americas that closely connects to the question of America’s morality in celebrating the day of Columbus’s voyage every year. While painter and ethnographer George Catlin estimated in the 1830s from the oral history of tribes that there were 16 million Indians that existed in North America before the beginning of European exploration, many claimed his estimate as false because of the common belief that Indian civilization was “far too primitive” and therefore could not have been able to “sustain so large a population.” Despite Catlin’s estimate, in 1892 people continued to feel no guilt when they celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s journey that
