Its objectively impossible to know that. First census was in 1921. There are like 100 different estimates of the population size by the late 19th century.
I do not think it is "objectively impossible" to know the population of a region half a century before its first recorded census, at least by the standard of what "known population" means to historians, which acknowledges a significant margin of error.
What, exactly, are the range of estimates you're talking about here? What do
you think the true answer "probably" was?
Well, no point in trying to convince you otherwise then.
So let me get this straight. Are you saying that you
do believe that history scholarship done in the 1970s and 1980s can or should override scholarship done since the year 2000, even if the newer scholarship has advantages like "supported by actual archaeological evidence rather than being pulled out of a hat" or "the historians actually bothered to learn the local languages and ask questions in them," which is often if not always the case?
I'm not saying that your favorite old man is
necessarily wrong without reviewing his arguments (which you have made no attempt to relay to me). What I'm saying is that it is very commonly the case that a seemingly "authoritative" treatment done by a scientist or historian who peaked half a century ago will turn out to be simply wrong in the light of information that was becoming available in their day, let alone information that has become available since then. It's happened a
lot.
There were just between 500 and 3000 Europeans and between some 3000 and 15 000 Colonial troops to rule/exploit/administer an area 3.5x the size of Texas. These were also spread unevenly with something like half of all these people in the Western 10% of the country leaving just the other half for the remaining 90%.
Currently Texas has 140 000 police officers, and despite them having cars and helicopters at their disposal, it is considered barely enough. Now imagine the officer count gets cut to 14 000. Now imagine these 14 000 police officers also having to cover not only Texas, but New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and half of California as well. On foot. It would be a physical impossiblitly.
The counterbalance is:
Now, imagine that the 14,000 police officers don't actually care about preventing, punishing, or even noticing any crimes except those committed against senior government officials, that they are legally entitled or even encouraged to kill people whenever they want, that they are free to take or destroy whatever property they wish, and that they own the vast majority of the firearms in the territory. Further imagine that much of the population is concentrated along river lines that the "police" command by having steam-powered gunboats while everyone else is using rafts and canoes.
Obviously, the 14,000 gunmen cannot maintain what we would think of as a full administrative state throughout the vast territory they "rule." What they CAN do is kick down the door of any single person or any single organized center of resistance to their rule and simply murder everyone involved. Their command of transportation allows them to split up into very small groups that can pillage population centers without consequence or just routinely travel through an area, encountering multiple villages a day and murdering people in each village as they go. Every day. For years. While there are places it would be unmanageably difficult for them to reach because of how remote they are, the places that are most heavily settled are nearly always going to be the ones that are easiest to reach- the ones along the rivers, as mentioned.
And
that is how an empire asserts colonial rule over a vast territory with a small number of colonial troops. Overwhelmingly greater firepower, nearly unlimited willingness to make bloody examples of people, and the total destruction of native institutions not controlled by the colonials.
