The Ethnology of Europe

by R. G. Latham

The Ugrians are the oldest occupants of the government of Kasan, the Turks the most numerous.

Of the same date with those of the Crimea, they represent the Mongol conquerors of the thirteenth century. Mixed in blood, Mahometan in creed, the Tartars of Kasan are “of middle stature and muscular, but not fat. Their heads are of an oval shape; their countenances of fresh complexion, and fine regular features; their eyes, mostly black, are small and lively; their noses arched and thin as well as their lips. Their hair is generally dark, and their teeth strong; their gesture full of dignity and grace. The same remarks apply to the females, but the expression of their countenances is lost through their manner of life, and the natural attractiveness of their persons is lessened by ornament and paint.”[16]

Their civilization is on a level with that of the Osmanli.

The Turk area extends eastwards, the Ugrian is continued north and north-west. The Udmart, or Udy of the river Viatka, are the Votiaks of the Russians and the Ari of the Turks, imperfect Christians, agriculturalists rather than nomades, and with more red-haired individuals amongst them than any other population. Eminently unmixed, they live not only in separate houses but in separate villages.

The Uralian range itself is the occupancy of the Vogul, and here the type changes. The flatness of feature increases; the stature diminishes; the habits are ruder. Hunting is the chief means of subsistence. Both in this respect and in language, the affinities of the Voguls are, with the Asiatic rather than the European Ugrians—the Ostiaks rather than the Permians.

The Votiaks, on the other hand, lead through the Permians and Siranians to the Finlanders. The former of these give their name to the government of Perm, the Biarmaland of the old Norse Sagas. They are now nearly Russianized; but tumuli, Arabic coins, an ancient alphabet, and an early Christianity, attest their capacity for civilization. The Siranians of the government of Vologda are closely allied to the Permians, and not very far removed from the Kwains.

Two other populations require notice. The Bashkirs of Orenburg deeply indent the southern part of Perm. Imperfect Mahometans, they speak Turkish, but depart widely in their physiognomy from the Turks of Kasan; so much so that Klaproth and others consider them to be Ugrians who have changed their language. They are, more probably, Ugrian on the mother’s side only, the Turks having intruded. During summer they wander either to hunt or to tend their herds and flocks; in winter they unwillingly fix themselves to some locality under the covert of a forest, and reside in houses. The Metsheriak, the Teptiar, and some other tribes, are Turks belonging to the same group. They belong, however, to Orenburg and Siberia rather than to European Russia.

The Ostiaks occupy part of the government of Perm, the part that lies beyond the Uralian range, and which is, consequently, Asiatic. They are hunters and fishers, less in size and more imperfectly Christianized than the Voguls. I believe them to have been the gold-keeping griffins (Gryphes) of Herodotus; though, to do this, the story of their relations to the Arimaspi must be supposed to have arisen in Armenia—no unlikely quarter, considering the probable line of the gold trade. A curious passage in Moses of Chorene tells us that the root Astyag, in the Old Armenian, signifies a dragon: and that Astyages, the Mede, was, in the eyes of an Armenian, Astyages Draco. Now, the locality of the Ostiaks is nearly that of the Uralian gold-mines, while just below them were the Tsheremiss, whose name in the mouths, first of a Skolotian and then of a Greek, might easily become Arimasp. The Greek could not pronounce the tsh; and as numerous Turkish words end in -asp, the -p might have been added on the principle which in English converts asparagus into sparrowgrass.

We have thus been brought round to the Finlanders of Finland.

With the reasons already given for considering the Russian in general to be a population of comparatively recent introduction, with the evidence in favour of the Skoloti having been intrusive Turks; and with the necessity of bringing the Lithuanians as far south as the Asiatic frontier, it is, surely, not too much to assert the doctrine that the original Russia was divided between two populations—one akin to the Permian, one to the Lithuanian. The line which divided them is, perhaps, an insoluble problem. Pskov and Smolensko, at least, may be given to the latter; Vladimir, Kostroma, Yaroslav, Moskow, and Tambov, to the former—Tula, Orlov, Koursk, Riazan, Tshernigov, Kharkhov, and Poltava, being left undistributed.