THE

YUKAGHIR TRIBE

SUBMITTED BY: PRABLEEN GUJRAL

FD V




















The ethnonym "Yukaghir" is a word of Tungus origin meaning "the people of the
ice."
It is the name that the Russians decided to use to refer to a group of tribes they
encountered in the course of the conquest of the north-east of Siberia in the 17th
century, in the regions of three large rivers of the North-East: the Yana, the
Indigirka, and the Kolyma. In the beginning, the Yukaghir called themselves
something else: "Odul" was the collective name for all the Yukaghir-speaking
communities, which were thought, from the start, by the Russians as a single
people, which many specialists now refute. According to them, in the past there
were about ten Yukaghir peoples (the Chuvan, the Khodynt, the Alais, the Omok,
etc.), but today only two remain: the Odul at Nelemnoe, and the Vadul at
Andryushkino.

History

The Yukaghirs are the oldest of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. This arctic
culture, based on wild reindeer hunting and fishing, dates according to
archaeologists to the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE.
In the 17th century, the
Yukaghir still occupied
vast territories in the
north-east of Siberia, from
the Lena River to the
Anadyr (from the west to
the east) and from the
arctic shore to the upper
reaches of the Yana,
Indigirka and Kolyma
rivers (from the north to
the south). Sakha legends
attest to the presence of
many Yukaghir in the past.
In the first part of the 17th
century, the Sakha,
followed closely by the
Russians, began to expand
in to Yukaghir territory.

This invasion brought
with it the extermination
of entire tribes and a
general retreat of the
A Yukaghirs home
survivors into less important areas: the upper reaches of the Omolon, Indigirka,
Alazeya and Kolyma rivers, and along the Anadyr and the Korkodon rivers.
Yukaghir legends and folklore tell of this simultaneous invasion of the Russians
and the Sakha, beginning an age of decline and ethnocide for the Yukaghir.

The Sakha Invasion
The expansion of the Sakha into peripheral regions was due, in large part,
to the punitive expeditions launched by the Cossaks against the Yakut
batallions at the end of the revolts. Reaching new territory, the Sakha
flung themselves against the inhabitants they found there and managed to
force them to retreat, a result of their better arms and greater numbers.
The Russians who followed them had only to absorb the territories
liberated from their first occupants.

The Russian Conquest
From 1638, the Cossacks begin the conquest of the north-west of Siberia.
Along the Yana the people (Tungus) were subjugated without much
difficulty. In revenge, on the Indigirka, the Russians threw themselves
against the hostility of the Yukaghir clans, who took flight, nevertheless,

frightened by the Russian artillery. Subjugated by force, the Yukaghirs

suffered heavy casualties. In 1643, the Cossak Semion Dheznev led his
first campaign against the Yukaghir of the Alazeya. He encountered a
heavy resistance to "yasakisation" [or tribute paying]. On the Kolyma, the
Yukaghir were beaten in the course of bloody combat. Because of their
extreme dispersal, the different Yukaghir clans were unable to offer
effective resistance to the Russians. They were subjugated one after the
other. In 1649, Dheznev arrived in the upper reaches of the Anadyr River.
He imposed the yasak on the local peoples, the Anaouls, Khodynts, and
Chuvan (Yukaghir tribes). In 1650, a new detachment, led by M.
Stadokhin, installed itself in the region and tried to extract the yasak a
second time from the indigenous inhabitants. Hideous battles took place
during the course of which whole tribes were massacred. The Anaouls
were exterminated.

Geographic Distribution

The 13 tribes that constituted the Yukaghir group are:
1. Vadul-Alais
2. Odul
3. Chuvan
4. Anaoul
5. Lavren
6. Olyuben
7. Omok
8. Penjin
9. Khodynts
10. Khoromoy
11. Shoromboy
12. Yandin
13. Yandyr
The surviving three tribes are
the Odul of Nelemnoe, the
Vadul of Andryushkino and the
Chuvan of the Anadyr river
area. Of the extinct groups, the
most important were the
Khodynts, the Anaoul (both of
the Anadyr River area), and the
Omok (North of the Chuvan).

The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic;
the Taiga Yukaghirs in the Upper Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic and in
Srednekansky District of Magadan Oblast. By the time of Russian colonization in
the 17th century, the Yukaghir tribal groups (Chuvans, Khodyns, Anaouls, etc.)
occupied territories from the Lena River to the mouth of the Anadyr River. The
number of the Yukaghirs decreased between the 17th and 19th centuries due to
epidemics, internecine wars and Tsarist colonial policy. Some of the Yukaghirs

have assimilated with the Yakuts, Evens, and Russians.

Currently, Yukaghirs live in the Sakha Republic and the Chukotka Autonomous
Okrug of the Russian Federation. According to the 2002 Census, their total
number was 1,509 people, up from 1,112 recorded in the 1989 Census.
According to the latest 2001 all Ukrainian census, 12 Yukaghirs are living in
Ukraine. Only two of them indicated Yukaghir as their native language. For the
remaining others it is Russian.

Clan System

The head of every clan was an elder or

Ligey Shomorokh. His was the final
word in all aspects of life. Hunting
leaders were Khangitche, and war
leaders were Tonbaia Shomorokh
(the mighty man). Women and
teenagers had equal voices with men.
The internal life of the community was
under the control of the older women.
Their decisions in those matters were
indisputable.
In the beginning of every summer all
clans gathered together for the
common celebration Sakhadzibe,
where mutual Yukagir questions were
discussed.
The Northern Yukaghir were
patrilocal (centred on the males
family) while the Southern Yukaghir
was matrilocal. Inheritance in both
groups was patrilineal. Small family
groups were generally organized into
clans.
A Shaman

An able adult male guided each clan in matters of food provision and clan
defense. Although the Yukaghir were Christianized in the 18th century, they
retained many traditional beliefs, including the practice of shamanism.
The dominant cults are ancestral spirits, the spirits of Fire, Sun, Hunting, Earth,
and Water. The spirits can act as protectors and as enemies of people. The
highest is the cult of Sun, the highest judge in all disputes. The spirits of the dead
go to Aibidzi where they are continually watching and helping. Every clan had a
shaman Alma. After death every shaman was treated as a deity. The body of the
dead shaman was dismembered and kept by the clan as relics.

Language

The genetically
isolated Yukaghir
language has been
regarded as one of the
Paleo-Asiatic
languages. It has been
hypothesized that the
Yukaghir language is
related to the Uralic
languages. However,
the grammatical
structure and the
vocabulary of the
Yukaghir language are
so different from the
modern Uralic
languages that it is
obvious that the
Yukaghir separated
from the common Uralic language earlier than the Samoyedic or the Finno-Ugric
peoples, that is, more than 8, 000 years ago. A sizeable part of the Yukaghir
vocabulary is of unknown origin. In the basic vocabulary of the two major
dialects spoken today there are such disparities that the only possible
explanation is the existence of a substratum or some other non-trivial dialectal
differentiation.
There were probably many Yukaghir languages and dialects but by the end of the
19th century, when the study of the Yukaghir languages was begun, only the two
dialects -- widely differing from each other -- had survived: the Forest or Kolyma
dialect and the Tundra or Alazeya dialect.
The two dialects are not mutually intelligible, and (until the late 20th century)
multilingualism in several combinations of Russian, Chukchi, Even, and Sakha
(Yakut) was common. Few of the younger Yukaghir speak their mother tongue,
and because of assimilation they are generally monolingual or bilingual in Sakha
or Russian.

Writing

A love letter in the Yukaghir script

The Forest Yukaghir employed a form of
picture writing (tos -- letters or shangar
shorile 'birchbark' letters). The hunters for
route maps used picture script. The Yakut
traders who looked for Yukaghir summer
camps to sell the tea, tobacco, etc read these.
A systematic study of the Yukaghir was
begun by Waldemar Jochelson who, after
being exiled to the Kolyma region,

participated in an 1894--1896 expedition and collected a wealth of ethnographic

and linguistic material about the Yukaghir -- who were supposed at that time to
already be extinct.
In 1930 a Yukaghir, named Nikolai Spiridonov, graduated from the University in
Leningrad. He wrote a couple of books on the life of the indigenous people of the
Kolyma region. Spiridonov fell victim to Stalinism. Other educated Yukaghir
people were the brothers Semyon, Gavril and Nikolai Kurilov. Gavril Kurilov
developed a writing system that is based on Russian and Yakut scripts. This
script has been used in local Yukaghir editions.

Clothing and Culture

The hides of the reindeer are a valuable resource for clothing materials.
Traditionally the winter clothing was made from reindeer skin, and the summer
clothes from tanned buckskin (known locally as Rovduga). Natural dyes were
derived from the bark of
Alder, and also from wood
ash to colour the hides.
Mens clothing differed
little from that of women.
The only difference being
in the type and quantity of
the decorative elements.
Mens clothing would be
more modestly decorated,
while women wore
fringing and fur tassels,
pendants of metal and
beadwork.
One of the primary methods used for adornment is intricate beadwork. There is
evidence of trades for small quantities of beads for whole reindeer in the times of
Pre revolutionary Russia.
The art of decorative bead working has been passed from generation to
generation. The designs and colours of the intricate designs created from seed
beads and worked onto cloth or leather denote social, gender and age
differences, and had ritual significance. The chequered black and white designs
represent the trails of the deer, and
patterns known as the sheep horn or
the dear horn are very popular.The
ringing of small metal pendants was
believed to drive away bad spirits and
protect the wearer.
Women prize bright and colourful
Russian floral fringed shawls, which
are Soviet textiles which have been
traded and become as heirlooms
along with the bead work.

For women in particular, the change of clothing reflected the Soviet effort to
modernise them. Traditional Yukaghir clothing served a key spiritual purpose: it
had to be carefully and beautifully made to please the
spirits of prey. However, for the Soviet authorities,
skin clothing was a malodorous symbol of the peoples
primitive past, and all symbols of the past were
opposed to modernization and had to be destroyed.
The result of this effort was that by the 1940s it was
increasingly rare to see a Yukaghir woman in
Nelemnoye wearing traditional clothing. The men kept
dressing in fur while out hunting, but the women took
on Russian manufactured clothing, woolen coats and
felt boots, even when working in the forest.
Yukaghir kitchen consists mostly of meat; then wild
onions and mushrooms. To conserve food, Yukaghirs
either smoked or dried it; in summer, fish meat was
thrown into a pit with leaves, where it fermented.
Their specialties are Kulibaha and Anil kerile (meals of
fish berries and fat/venison blood.

A People on the Edge of Extinction

The Yukaghir today are among the most minor people in Russia. Very dispersed,
it is only in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) that there remains a few knots of
relatively compact settlement. The two last principal groups of Yukaghir are
centred in the Kolyma region, in the north-east of Yakutia: in the Upper Kolyma,
the descendendents of different clans of the taiga, hunters and fishers are
clustered in the village of Nelemnoe, situated on the Yasachnaya River and at
Zyryanka. In the Lower Kolyma, the descendents of the tundra, specialized in
reindeer breeding, live at Andryushkino and at Kolymskoye. At Nelemnoe, as at
Andryushkino, the Yukaghir live alongside Even, Russians and Sakha.

References:

http://asia.rbth.com/society/2014/01/17/the_yukaghirs_a_nomadic_sib
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http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/yukaghirs.shtml

http://www.britannica.com/topic/Yukaghir

https://acloththeworld.wordpress.com/tag/yukaghir/

http://courses.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham/nost202/yukagir_trans.ht
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http://www.academia.edu/1985368/Urbanities_without_city_three_gene
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