I. NORTHERN ASIA, consisting almost exclusively of Siberia, a cold country covered with dense virgin forests (taïga) or marshy, frozen plains (tundra), harbours, in addition to Russian or Chinese colonists, only a few somewhat wretched tribes, mainly hunters, but depending partly on fishing and hoe-culture.
We may group them thus:—(1) tribes of Western Siberia, having some affinities with the Samoyeds and the eastern Finns, which I shall call Yeniseians or Tubas; (2) peoples of the extreme north-east of the Asiatic continent, whom Schrenck[401] describes as Palæasiatics; (3) the Tunguses of Eastern Siberia and Manchuria.
1. Yeniseians or Tubas.—Besides the Samoyeds of Asia, who differ from their kinsfolk in Europe only by their more Mongoloid features, the Yeniseians comprise two distinct groups of populations. In the first place the so-called Ostiaks of the Yenisei, on the right bank of this river (between Yeniseisk and Touroukhansk), probable descendants of the Kien-Kouen and the Ting-ling of the Chinese annals. It is a tribe in process of extinction, whose language differs from the Samoyed tongue and the Finnish dialects properly so called (Castren). Then come the tribes who formerly formed the Tuba nation, mentioned until the seventh century A.D. by the name of Tupo by the Chinese annalists; they inhabited the basin of the upper Yenisei, the Altai region, and north-western Mongolia, and bore the local names of Matores, Arines, Kottes, Assan, Tuba, etc.
These peoples have disappeared as linguistic units,[402] but their physical type, some of their characteristic manners, as well as a few words of their language, are preserved among certain populations speaking a Turkish dialect. The Russians call these populations “Tatars”; they might more suitably be called by the name of Altaians. This ethnic group, whose physical type has been altered by intermixtures with peoples of Turkish or Mongolian race, comprises the “Tatars” of Abakan, that is to say, Katchines, Koibals (eight hundred individuals), Sagai, and Kizils; the “Tatars” of Altai and those of Chulim, among whom must be noted the “Tatars of the black forests” (Chernievyié Tatary in Russian), called “Tubas” by their neighbours. The latter are mesocephalic, of medium height; they have abandoned little by little the hunting state, and become primitive cultivators of the soil; they break up the ground with the hoe, which was used by them until not very long ago to dig up edible roots, and they cut their corn with hunting-knives.[403] The Soiots or Soyons of North-western Mongolia, who call themselves Tubas, are probably the descendants of the ancient Uigurs (Turkish nation) commingled with aboriginal Yeniseians of this country and partly Mongolised about the seventeenth century.
FIG. 115.—Tunguse hunter (Siberia) with ski and staff.
(Phot. Shimkiévich.)
2. The Palæasiatic group should comprise, according to Schrenck, all the ancient peoples of Asia driven back at the present day towards the north-eastern extremity of the Continent. The more important of these peoples are the following:—The Chuchi (or Chukchi), numbering about 8000, are the most typical representatives of the group; they inhabit the north-east of Siberia, and the occupation of some is the breeding of reindeer, and fishing of others; however, the distinction between the nomadic and fishing Chukchi is both of an economic and ethnic order.[404] The Koriaks dwell to the south of the Chukchi, as far as Kamtchatka; they bear a close resemblance to them and speak the same language. The Eskimo of Asia, Namuollo, or Yu-Ite formerly occupied the coast of the Chukchi country, as shown by their ancient habitations excavated by Wrangel and Nordenskiold. At the present day they are not found except in isolated camps on the coast and in the islands of the Behring Sea. They differ but very little from the Eskimo of Alaska; their ornaments, however, recall rather those of the Aleuts. The Kamtchadals of the centre and west of Kamtchatka differ from the peoples just mentioned. They number 4,250 at the present day, and are becoming Russianised very rapidly. They have completely given up their language, which has no relation to any linguistic family now known, and they speak a very corrupt form of Russian. Nominally orthodox Christians, they are at bottom animists, and the anthropomorphic element, often under obscene forms, occupies a large place in their myths and legends. They are fishers and hunters.
