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

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

The tshum is protected against the cold and storms of winter by a leather covering of worn-out skins sewn together, or, more effectually, by spreading a second layer of sheets of birch-bark over the first.

If the owner of the tshum be a fisherman, one may see in front of his dwelling drying-stands for hanging up the nets, and others for drying fish, all very carefully made; also exceedingly light, daintily-wrought fishing-baskets, several excellent little boats, and other fishing apparatus; if he be also a huntsman there are in addition all kinds of implements of the chase, such as bows and spring-crossbows; if he be a reindeer-herdsman there are several well-made sledges with their appropriate harness, and the boat which is also indispensable.

Every Ostiak is experienced in fishing, almost all hunt or set snares, but not all are herdsmen. To possess reindeer means, among them, to be well-to-do, to possess many is to be rich; to live by fishing alone is poverty. Horses and cows are to be seen in some of their settlements, though in very small numbers, and only in the district about the middle of the river-basin; sheep, and sometimes even a cat may be kept; but the real domestic animals are the reindeer and dog. Without these, especially without the reindeer, a well-to-do man would scarcely think life possible, and it is indeed to them he owes all that makes up what he looks on as the joy of existence. As the Bedouin, the wandering herdsman of Central Africa, deems himself superior to those of his race who till the fields; as the Kirghiz looks down almost contemptuously on those who strive to wrest subsistence from the soil, so the possessor, or even the herdsman of reindeer, only uses net and hook to supply his own necessities, while the fisherman casts his nets and sets his baskets not for himself alone, but in the service of others. The wealth of a man is calculated by the number of his reindeer; with them his prosperity and his happiness are alike bound up. And when the deadly murrain annihilates his herds, he loses not wealth and happiness alone, but much more: esteem and rank, self-respect and confidence, even, it may be, his religion, manners, and morals, in short—himself. “As long as the plague did not ravage our herds,” said the district governor, Mamru, the most intelligent Ostiak whom we met, “we lived joyously and were rich, but since we have begun to lose them, we are gradually becoming poor fishermen; without the reindeer we cannot hold out, we cannot live.” Poor Ostiaks! in these words your doom is pronounced. Even now the reindeer, which once were counted by hundreds of thousands, have dwindled to a total of fifty thousand, and still the Destroying Angel passes almost yearly through the antlered herds. What will be the end? The Russian priests will gain more and more Christians, the Russian fishermen more and more hirelings, but the Ostiaks will be Ostiaks only in name, and that at no far distant time.[82]

Fig. 63.—Ostiaks with Reindeer and Sledge.

The reindeer of Northern Asia is an essentially different creature from that of Lapland, for it is not only larger and more stately, but it is a domestic animal in the best sense of that term. We all imagined we knew the reindeer; for in Lapland we had examined it precisely and carefully with the eye of the naturalist; but in Siberia we were obliged to admit that till then we had gained a very imperfect idea of this most remarkable of domestic animals. In Lapland we had known the deer ceaselessly resisting, submitting with visible reluctance to the yoke of the little men, and always apparently bent on regaining its freedom; here in Siberia we found a docile, willing animal, attached to man, and trusting in him. Certainly the Ostiak knows well how to deal with it. Though he does not treat it with the tenderness he bestows on his dog, he is, on the whole, not unkind to it, and he is very rarely rough or brutal. Unlike the Laplander, he refrains from milking it, but he harnesses it more frequently; for, winter and summer, it must draw him and his family, the tshum with its appurtenances, and all the other requisites for the continual migrations. The Lapp, on the other hand, only harnesses the reindeer to his sledge in winter. Like the Lapp, the Ostiak makes use of every portion of the carcase of a slaughtered animal, with the sole exception of the stomach and intestines. The flesh serves him as food, the bones and horns make all sorts of implements, the tendons supply twine for sewing his clothing, that, and whatever else he requires in the way of leather, is furnished by the skin; even the hoofs are utilized. On a light sledge, drawn by the reindeer, the Ostiak travels, in summer and in winter, from place to place—to weddings, to festivals, to the chase, and to the burial of his friends; with it he draws his dead to their last resting-place; he slaughters the reindeer and eats it with his guests, or in honour of his dead, whom he wraps up in its skin, as he does himself. Truly, without the reindeer he cannot endure, cannot live.

Of scarcely less importance than his horned herds is the Ostiak’s second domestic animal, the dog. It is possessed and cared for not only by the wandering herdsman, but by every Ostiak—fisher as well as huntsman, settler as well as nomad. The Ostiak dog is represented by two different breeds, whose chief difference, however, is only in size. Whether our dog-fanciers would find it beautiful I cannot say. For my part, I must pronounce it beautiful, because, with the sole exception of the colour, it possesses all the characteristics of a wild dog. It most resembles the Pomeranian dog, but is usually larger; indeed, it is often so large as to approach the wolf in size; and its slender build also distinguishes it from the Pomeranian. The head is elongated, the muzzle moderately long, the neck short, the body long, the limbs slender, the tail moderately long, the brassy eyes obliquely set, the short pointed ears held erect, the hair extraordinarily long and thick, consisting of a mixture of decidedly woolly and bristly hairs. The colour varies, but is predominantly pure white, or white with deep black, usually regular markings on both sides of the head, including the ears, on the back and on the sides of the body; or it may be wolf or mouse gray, or dun-coloured, watered and waved, but never striped. The slightly bushy tail is always carried hanging, or extended, but never curled, and the resemblance to a wild dog is thereby greatly increased.

Constant and intimate association with man has transformed the Ostiak dog into an exceedingly good-natured animal. He is watchful but not given to biting, brave but not pugnacious, faithful and eager but not hostile to strangers nor violent. Though he hastens suspiciously, if not exactly with unfriendliness, towards a stranger, he becomes confiding as soon as he hears him speak with his master, or sees him step into the tshum. He is in no way pampered, for though he loves to share the dwelling of his master or mistress, he exposes himself without apparent discomfort to wind and weather, throws himself unhesitatingly into the cold water of the river and swims straight across a broad arm, or, when on a journey, trots on uncomplainingly under the sledge to which he is chained, whether the way lead over bog or morass, among dwarf-birch bushes or through water. Intelligent and cunning, ingenious and inventive, clever and active, he knows how to make his life comfortable, and to adapt himself to all situations. In the tshum he lies self-denyingly beside much-desired foods; outside of his master’s hut he is a bold and greedy thief; among the dwarf-birches of the tundra he trots indifferently under the sledge, but over smooth or other easy ground he places himself with all four legs together on the runners of the sledge and lets himself be carried. While hunting he is a faithful and useful assistant to his master, but he snaps away the game which he has scented and a stranger shot, and devours it with such an air of inoffensive enjoyment that one cannot be angry with him. In tending the herds he shows himself acquainted with all the peculiarities and tricks of the reindeer, and he is docile enough; but he is never quite so trustworthy as our sheep-dog, for he allows himself an opinion of his own, and only yields his services without resisting when it appears to him absolutely necessary.

The Ostiak dog is at once playmate, sentinel of the tshum, guardian of the herds, and draught animal, and he is made use of even after death. He is only harnessed to the sledge in winter, but the harness is so awkward that if he has to exert himself much he becomes in a few years weak in the loins or hip-shot. After death his splendid coat is much prized; indeed, many of the Ostiaks evidently keep a disproportionately large number of dogs solely to have skins at their disposal every winter.

It is probably for the same or some similar reason that the various mammals and birds, such as foxes, bears, owls, crows, cranes, swans, &c., which one sees chained in or before the tent of the fisherman or the herdsman, are taken from the nest and reared. As long as they are young they are tended carefully and kindly; whenever they are full-grown and in good fur or feather they are killed, the edible parts are eaten, and the skin or feathers made use of or sold, the former especially often fetching an astonishingly high price.