From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

Fig. 61.—Huts and Winter Costume of the Christian Ostiaks.

It is difficult to speak of a common type among the Ostiaks, and still more difficult to describe it. I have repeatedly attempted to do this, but have always been forced to recognize the impossibility of adequately describing a face in words, or of satisfactorily delineating with the pen those tribal peculiarities which are evident enough to the eye. In shape of face, colour of skin, hair, and eyes, they vary greatly; their racial affinity, that is, their Mongol origin, is by no means always very apparent, in fact, it is often difficult to detect, and when at last one imagines one has formulated certain definite average characteristics, one learns from other members of the same stock that their applicability is only relative and by no means unconditional. In what follows I shall attempt to give a comprehensive idea of what I saw among the Ostiaks whom we observed.

The Ostiaks are of middle height, somewhat slender in general build, their hands, feet, and limbs generally well-proportioned, the hands perhaps rather large, the calves of the legs almost always thin; their features seem intermediate between those of the other Mongols and those of the North American Indians: for their brown eyes are small and always set obliquely, though by no means very strikingly so; the cheek-bones are not very prominent, but the lower portion of the face is so compressed towards the narrow pointed chin that the whole has an angular appearance, indeed, as the lips are also sharply cut, it is often really cat-like, especially among women and children, though the nose is, on the whole, slightly, and in many cases not at all flattened. The rich, smooth, but not stiff, hair is usually dark brown or black, rarely light brown, and still more rarely blonde; the beard is scanty, but this is chiefly in consequence of the habit young dandies have of pulling out the hairs; the eyebrows are thick, often bushy. The colour of the skin is not much less white than that of a European who is much in the open air and exposed to wind and weather, and the yellowish look which it usually has is sometimes entirely awanting.

Though the above holds good of most Ostiaks, I do not mean to imply that one can have any doubt about their racial affinities if one examines them closely. In a few individuals the Mongolian traits are apparent on the most cursory glance; these types are small in stature, the lively brown eyes are elongated and obliquely set, the cheek-bones are very prominent, the stiff hair is deep black, and all the exposed parts of the body have a decided copper-red or leather-brown colour.

I can offer no opinion as to the language of the Ostiaks; I can only say that it embraces two dialects which can be readily distinguished even by strangers. That in use on the middle Obi is euphonious, if somewhat drawling and sing-song, while that prevailing on the lower Obi, probably because of the general habit of preferring the softer Samoyede tongue, is much more rapid and flowing, though there is still distinct enunciation of the syllables.

The Christian Ostiaks, as has already been mentioned, imitate the dress of the Russians, and the clothing of their women only differs from that of the Russian fisher-women in being decorated in many places with glass beads, and in the addition of special sash-like ribbons, like the stole of a Catholic priest, embroidered all over with such beads. The heathen Ostiaks, on the other hand, use nothing but the skin of the reindeer for clothing, and only employ the furs of other animals for the occasional decoration of the reindeer, or, as the Russians call them, stag skins. Their dress consists of a close-fitting skin coat reaching to the knee; in the men it is slit down the breast, in the women it is open down the whole front, but held together with leather thongs; a hood of the same material is usually attached to or forms part of the dress; mittens also are sewn on; leather breeches reach below the knee; and leather stockings, which fasten over the knee, complete the attire. The fur garment worn by the women is edged down the sides of the opening with a carefully pieced border of variously-coloured little squares of short-haired fur, and has always a broad band of dog-skin round the foot; that worn by the men has at most a border of dog-skin, and has always a hood; the leather stockings, if they are decorated at all, are composed of many prettily-combined, diversely-coloured stripes of skin from the leg of a reindeer, with a stout shoe partly sewn on, partly laced over the foot. A broad leather belt, usually studded with metal buttons, confines the man’s garment at the waist and holds his knife; a gaily-coloured head-wrap, with long fringes, which replaces the hood in summer, falls down over the woman’s dress. Shirts are unknown; but, on the other hand, the woman wears a girdle, of a kind unknown among us. By way of ornament, the woman puts on her fingers as many brass, or, where circumstances permit, silver rings as the lower joint will wear, so that that portion of the hand is literally mailed; a more or less handsome string of glass beads is hung round the neck, and very heavy tassel-like ear-rings of glass beads, twisted wire, and metal buttons, are hung rather over than in the ear; finally, the hair is plaited into two rope-like braids reaching to the middle of the calf, and interwoven with woollen threads. The Ostiak dandy dresses his hair in the same way—a proof that fools are alike all the world over—while the ordinary man usually wears his hair long, but loose.

Fig. 62.—“Heathen” Ostiaks, Reindeer, and Tshums.

Still simpler than the dress, but equally well adapted to its purpose,—for their costume, though not beautiful, is suited alike for summer and winter use,—is the dwelling of the Ostiak, a cone-shaped, movable hut covered with birch-bark, the tshum of the fisher-folk and wandering herdsmen. The framework is formed of twenty or thirty thin, smooth poles, from four to six yards in length, and pointed at both ends. These are fixed in a circle, which is very exact though measured only by the eye, two of them bent towards each other are fastened near their tops with a short cord, and serve as a support for all the rest. The outer covering consists of from five to eight sheets cut to the convex curve of the cone, and composed of little pieces of birch-bark previously boiled and thus rendered pliant. On the least exposed side is an opening which serves as a door, and which can be closed at will with another sheet of bark; the pointed top of the tent is always left uncovered to admit of the free passage of smoke. From the door straight to the opposite side of the hut runs a passage, in the middle of which the fire is built; over this two horizontal poles, fastened to the supports of the hut, serve as a drying-stand, from which also the cooking-kettle hangs. To right and left of the passage, boards, or at least mats, are laid down, and serve as flooring and also to mark off the sleeping places, whose head-end is towards the wall. Mats, made of bundles of sedge, long-haired, soft reindeer skins, and cushions stuffed with reindeer hair or dried moss, form the bed, and its coverings are of fur. A mosquito tent, under which the whole family creeps in summer, protects the sleepers more effectually against the winged tormentors than the smoky fire of rotten willow wood which is kept constantly burning in the entrance of the tshum. Cooking vessels, tea and drinking kettles, bowls, leather bags for holding flour and hard-baked bread, little chests with locks for holding the most valuable possessions, especially the tea-set, an axe, a gimlet, leather scrapers, a bowl-like work-box, a bow, crossbow or gun, snow-shoes, and various implements of the chase, make up the domestic plenishings. A household god replaces the crucifix, which is rarely absent from the huts of the Christian Ostiaks.