The proportion of native born, which suffered a sharp decline between 1850 and 1890, because of the influx of foreigners to the mines of California, Montana, and Nevada, and to the farm lands of Minnesota and the Dakotas, is again in the ascendant, the net gain for the decade just ended having been 2.7 per cent. The native population is largest in the group of southwestern states and territories, Arkansas leading with 98.9 per cent; Indian Territory, 98.8 per cent; Louisiana, 96.2 per cent; Oklahoma, 96.1 per cent. Along the Pacific coast it is highest in Oregon, with 84.1 per cent, and lowest in California, with 75.3 per cent, Washington coming in between with 78.5 per cent. North Dakota, with 64.6 per cent, makes the poorest showing. The proportion of natives in the West as a whole in 1900 was 1 per cent above the average for the Union, which was 86.3 per cent. The per cent of foreigners is highest in North Dakota, where it is 35.4, and lowest in Arkansas, where it is 1.1. Minnesota is the only State having to exceed 500,000 foreigners. California and Iowa have over 300,000 each. The population of the West in 1850 consisted of 1,500,000 farmers and traders in the Louisiana country, that is, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Minnesota; 200,000 odd who had swarmed into Texas after it had been wrested from Mexico, some 60,000 in New Mexico, a group of gold diggers in California, a few thousand Mormons in Utah, and a handful of hardy pioneers who had braved privations and hostile savages on the plains in following the footsteps of Lewis and Clark to the Oregon country. At that time there were not quite 2,000,000 people in all the boundless region west of the Mississippi River. The establishing of direct communication by the overland stage, followed by the building of the transcontinental railroad, stimulated growth, and by 1870 the West had attained considerable importance in population. In 1850 it reported 8.6 per cent of the total population of the Union; 26.6 per cent in 1890, and 27.5 per cent in 1900. In 1890 it had over four times the population of the new Republic in 1790 and not quite twice the population of the nation in 1820. In 1900 its population was somewhat under that of the whole country in 1850, the ratio being about 21 to 23. The appended table shows how the several states and territories of the West have progressed in the matter of population: