reached the first goal, the Bodarata. There we had the inestimable good
fortune to find more tshums and reindeer. Thus aided we made for the
sea, but we were forced to turn without setting foot on the shore. For
before us lay not only a pathless morass, but again a countless heap of
reindeer carcasses; we were once more on the path by which Schungei had
fled homewards, and our new acquaintance, the herdsman Zanda, would not
dare to cross it.
For in his herd also death had been busy with his scythe; the
destroyer had visited his house, and yet more disastrously those of
his neighbours. The man who had been his companion on his wanderings
had eaten of an infected fat reindeer which he had hastily killed, and
he had paid for his rashness with his own life and that of his family.
Thrice had the herd Zanda shifted his tshum, and thrice he had dug
a grave among the corpses of the reindeer. First, two children fell
victims to the dread disease, then the thoughtless man’s servant, on
the third day the man himself. Another child was still ill, groaning in
its agony, when we set out on our journey to the sea; its cries were
silenced when we returned to the tshum, for the grave had received a
fifth victim. And this was not to be the last.
One of our men, the Ostiak Hadt, a willing, cheerful fellow, who had
endeared himself to us, had been complaining since the day before of
torturing pains which became ever more severe. He complained especially
of an increasing sensation of cold. We had placed him on one of the
sledges when we reached the herdsman’s tshum, and thus we bore him when
the tshum was shifted for the fifth time. He lay at the fire moaning
and whining in our midst. From time to time he raised himself and bared
his body to the warmth of the fire. Similarly he pushed his numb feet
against the flames, and seemed to care not that they singed. At length
we fell asleep, perhaps he did also, but when we awoke next morning his
bed was empty. Outside, in front of the tshum, he sat quietly leaning
on a sledge, with his face to the sun, whose warmth he sought. Hadt was
dead.
Some hours later we buried him according to the customs of his people.
He was a true “heathen”, and in heathenish fashion he should be buried.
Our “orthodox” companions hesitated to do this; our “heathen” followers
helped us in the ceremony, which, though not Christian, was at any rate
dignified and human. The grave received its sixth victim.
Should this be the last? Involuntarily this question arose; it
was gruesome for us all to have death as a travelling companion.
Fortunately for us, Hadt’s grave was the last on this journey.
Seriously, very seriously, still oppressed by increasing dearth of
provisions, we turned again towards the Shtchutshya. Zanda provided
a scant diet for our followers, while we relied on what we could
shoot, and were pinched enough. But one forenoon we captured a family
of geese, and shot several willow grouse, snipe, and plovers, and
celebrated a feast, for it was pleasant to be able to eat without
counting the mouthfuls. But without the help of our host it would
hardly have been possible for us to have survived.
We reached the river, and, almost at the end of our stores, we regained
our boat. Here we feasted on fare which was poor enough, though, after
a fortnight’s privation, it seemed most sumptuous. We said farewell for
ever to the tundra.
A Shaman, whom we had found busy fishing further up the Obi, and had
asked to give us a sample of his art and wisdom, had duly beaten his
dull-sounding drum to summon Yamaul, the messenger of the gods, who
befriended him, and had told us that we should next year revisit the
inhospitable country which we had just left, but that we should then
go to the region where the Shtchutshya, Bodarata, and Ussa have their
source. For two emperors would reward us, and the elders of our people
would be satisfied with our report, and send us forth again. Moreover,
on our journey no further misfortune would befall us. So the messenger
of the gods, perceived by him alone, had said.
The last part of his prophecy was true enough. Slowly but without
mishap or accident we journeyed for twenty-three days up the Obi,
and after long delay we fortunately reached a steamboat, on which
we ascended the Irtish for three days. Without misfortune, though
not without hindrance, we crossed the Ural, in a comfortable steamer
we glided swiftly down the Kama, more slowly we ascended the Volga.
In Nijni-Novgorod, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, we were hospitably
received, as before, and were joyously welcomed at home. Our “elders”
seem to have been well pleased with our report, but to the tundra I at
least shall never return.
THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS.
The struggle for existence which man has to maintain in Siberia is
easy and toilless now, and will probably remain so for centuries to
come--easy and toilless especially among the lavishly endowed lands
in the south of the country, and not too hard or laborious even
in those regions which we are wont to picture as an icy waste, an
inhospitable desert, which we still regard in this light if we only
travel hastily and unwillingly through them. In the far north of West
Siberia the climate is harsh and severe; the earth which, a little
below the surface, is frozen and stiffened for ever, refuses to bring
forth fruit; the sun will not ripen the bread-yielding grain; but even
here Nature has bountifully shaken her horn of plenty, for what the
land denies, is yielded by the water. The people who have dwelt for
centuries in these latitudes, which we so carefully avoid, may appear
poor and miserable in our eyes; in reality they are neither. They are
able to procure all they need; they can even secure many luxuries,
for their country yields them much more than is enough merely to
sustain life. They do of course struggle, more or less consciously,
for “an existence worthy of man”, but not with any grudge, outspoken
or suppressed, against those whose lot is happier. Indeed they are
happier than we think, for they are more modest, more easily satisfied
than we are; they are utterly ignorant of what we call passion in the
stricter sense; they accept the pleasures within their reach with a
childlike joy, and the sorrows which visit them, with that deeply felt
but quickly forgotten grief which is characteristic of childhood.
Black care may stand beside their bed; but they banish it whenever
they perceive a ray of joy, and they forget affliction whenever the
sun of good fortune once more shines upon them. They rejoice in wealth
and complain of poverty, but they see their riches disappear without
giving way to despair, and their poverty turn to wealth without losing
their equanimity. Even in mature age they remain children in thought,
feeling, and behaviour; they are happier than we.
The Ostiaks with whom we came most frequently in contact on the lower
Obi, whose society we preferred, and whom we learned to know best,
belong to the Finnish family, and profess the same religion as another
branch of the same family, the Samoyedes, while their manners, customs,
and way of life generally, are approximately the same as those of all
the Finns in a restricted sense, and therefore also of the Lapps. They
are wandering herdsmen and fisher-folk, huntsmen and fowlers, like the
Samoyedes and like the Lapps. Apart from their religion, and perhaps
also their language, they resemble the Lapps more than the Samoyedes,
for there are among them dwellers in fixed homes as well as nomadic
herdsmen, while the Samoyedes, even when engaged in fishing, very
rarely exchange their movable hut for a fixed log-house, at least in
the parts of Siberia through which we travelled.
It may be that the Ostiak tribe was more numerous at one time than it
is now, but it was probably never a people in our sense of the word. In
some parts of the territory inhabited, or at least traversed by them,
the population is said to be continually decreasing, while in others
it is slightly on the increase; but the extent of increase or decrease
seems inconsiderable. To reckon the whole number of these people at
fifty thousand individuals is probably a high estimate. In the whole of
the great district of Obdorsk, which extends from 65 degrees northern
latitude to the northern end of the Samoyede peninsula, and from the
Ural to the upper Chass river, there live at present, according to
official statistics, not more than five thousand three hundred and
eighty-two male Ostiaks, of whom not more than one thousand three
hundred and seventy-six are able-bodied or assessable men. If we take
for granted that there are as many women and girls, the whole number
does not reach eleven thousand; and the above estimate is rather too
high than too low, even though the tract inhabited by our people
extends up the Obi to the district of Surgut, and up the Irtish to the
neighbourhood of Tobolsk.
All the Ostiaks on the upper Irtish and middle Obi live in fixed
log-houses, very simple, but resembling those of the Russians, and only
here and there among these permanent dwellings, which indicate a higher
degree of civilization, do we come upon a birch-bark tent or tshum. On
the other hand, on the lower Obi, and especially between Obdorsk and
the mouth of the stream, only birch-tents are to be seen, and they are,
naturally, the only homes of the nomadic reindeer herdsman. Almost,
if not exactly in agreement with this difference in dwelling, is the
difference in religion, for the Ostiaks inhabiting settled villages
belong to the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and are reckoned among
its members, as they have been baptized, while those dwelling in the
tshum are still true to their ancient faith, which, although regarded
by the Russian priests and their followers as blind heathenism, is by
no means devoid of poetic grandeur, still less of moral worth. The
tent-dwellers certainly practise their religion with more ardour and
conviction than the settled villagers do their so-called Christianity,
which, as far as can be observed, seems to an unbiassed onlooker rather
a superstitious idolatry than a nobler substitute for the religion
which grew out of a childlike mood, and finds expression in childlike
ways. With the adoption of log-houses and of Christianity, the Ostiaks
of the central Obi and lower Irtish regions have, to a certain extent,
given up their own dress in favour of that of the neighbouring Russian
fisher-folk, and in their intercourse with these, have adopted many of
their manners and customs. In part, too, they have lost their purity
of race, and have retained only the inalienable characteristics, the
language and all peculiarities preserved by it, perhaps also the
skill, dexterity, and harmless good-nature common to all the Ostiaks.
But one cannot venture to assert that their morals have improved
with their civilization, or that their purity of life has increased
with Christianity; and in any case it is more satisfactory to get
to know the heathen Ostiaks, and to come into close contact with a
still primitive people, than to concern ourselves with that portion
of the tribe which gives us but a dim picture of what they once
were, or others still are. I shall, therefore, limit my remarks to a
consideration of those Ostiaks who worship the divinity Ohrt, who live
in polygamy when their means permit, who bury their dead exactly as
their fathers did. My sketch will lose nothing, and will gain in unity,
if it takes account of these alone, and leaves the others out.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
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]
[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Ostiaks with Reindeer and Sledge.]