Historical estimates of the pre-Columbian 1492 population of what is now the United States vary dramatically, ranging from only 900,000 to upwards of 18 million, with the majority of estimates falling between 2 million and 5 million. However, it is universally agreed upon by historians that the
Indigenous population underwent a
large decline following European contact, primarily due to
Old World diseases to which natives
lacked immunity, as well as violent conflict and
genocide committed by European settlers. By 1800, the Native American population within the modern-day borders of the United States had declined to around 600,000, compared to a combined white and black population of over 5 million at the time. The Native American population continued to decline steadily over the course of the 19th century, reaching a low of around 250,000 between 1890 and 1900. The
transatlantic slave trade had its roots prior to the discovery of the Americas. By 1471, Portuguese navigators hoping to tap the fabled Saharan gold trade had reconnoitered the West African coast as far as the Niger Delta, and traded European commodities for local crafts as well as slaves, the latter which turned out to be highly lucrative. By 1490, more than 3,000 slaves a year were transported to Portugal and Spain from Africa. Following the Spanish
discovery of the New World in 1492, Spanish and Portuguese sailors began transporting enslaved Africans to their new colonies in the Caribbean, marking the start of the transatlantic slave trade. The first permanent British settlement in what would become the United States was established at
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The first African slaves were imported to the colony of Jamestown around the year 1620, marking the beginning of the slave trade in what would become the United States. In the period between 1620 and 1866, around 388,000 slaves in total were shipped to British colonies in Northern America.
African Americans (
Blacks) made up almost one-fifth of the United States population in 1790, but following the US
abolition of the slave trade in 1808, their percentage of the total U.S. population declined in almost every census until
1930, when they reached a low point of just under 10% of the population. From at least 1790 until the start of
World War I, the overwhelming majority (around ninety percent) of African Americans In addition, before 1865, the overwhelming majority of African Americans were
slaves. and a smaller amount of
segregation/
discrimination there. Due to the Great Migration, many large
cities outside of the former
Confederacy (such as
New York City,
Chicago,
Philadelphia,
Detroit, and
Cleveland) experienced huge increases in the African American percentage of their total population. The United States historically had few
Hispanics and
Asians, especially before the late 20th century. The Hispanic and Asian populations of the United States have rapidly increased in the late 20th and 21st centuries, following the passage of the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which repealed racially motivated national origin quotas that had severely limited immigration from countries outside of Northwestern Europe. The rise of Asian and Hispanic populations, and declining immigration from Europe in the late 20th century, has seen a commensurate decline in the share of non-Hispanic Whites in the country, from over 83% of the population in 1970 to around 58% in 2020. The Native American population has seen a significant rise since 1970, the first census year where respondents could self-identify their own race instead of having it assigned by an enumerator, as individuals of partial Native American descent who were previously classified by enumerators as white or black began to self-identify as Native American. The Native American population rose from around 600,000 in 1970, to over 3 million in 2020, further buoyed by immigration from
Indigenous Mexican and other
Indigenous Latin American communities, with around a third of the Native American population in 2020 identifying as Hispanic. The African American percentage of the U.S. population slowly increased between 1940 and 1990, after reaching a low point of less than 10% in 1930. However, since 1990, the share of African American population has held mostly steady at around 12% of the population, seeing a slight decline in the 2020 census. ==Historical data for all races and for Hispanic origin (1610–2020)==