how functional or adaptive their choices they were.
The fact that all American Indians have been dramatically reduced in population and power in the last half-millennium indicates that at some level their adaptations were dysfunctional ones. However, before one can say absolutely that the Indians made unsuccessful choices one must carefully examine the concept of evolutionary success. Evolutionary success can in fact be measured in at least two different ways: One can look at how well an entire population fares or one can focus on an individual or pulling the focus in still tighter one can examine only a single trait.
Using this framework of analysis, it is clear that while American Indian populations and individuals have in many ways lost in terms of adaptive strategies, some of their individual genetic traits have succeed and survived. American Indian biological traits have survived through being mixed in with other racial populations while some of the cultural traits of the first peoples have survived through being borrowed and perpetuated by other groups. (And of course American Indians do still live in the New World as well.)
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