CLASSIFICATION OF NATIVES--INDIAN TYPE, MONGOLIAN TYPE, AND TURKISH
TYPE--EASTERN VIEW OF WESTERN ARTS AND FASHIONS--AN AMERICAN SAINT
All the inhabitants of the settlement were in the streets to meet us
when we returned; but we were disappointed not to see among them the
faces of Macrae and Arnold. Many bands of Chukchis from the lower
Anadyr had arrived at the village, but nothing had been heard of the
missing men. Forty-five days had now elapsed since they left their
camp on the river, and, unless they had died or been murdered, they
ought long since to have arrived. I should have sent a party in search
of them, but I had not the slightest clue to the direction in which
they had gone, or the intentions of the party that had carried them
away; and to look for a band of Wandering Chukchis on those great
steppes was as hopeless as to look for a missing vessel in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean, and far more dangerous. We could only wait,
therefore, and hope for the best. We spent the first week after our
return in resting, writing up our journals, and preparing a report of
our explorations, to be forwarded by special courier to the Major.
During this time great numbers of wild, wandering natives--Chukchis,
Lamutkis (la-moot'-kees) and a few Koraks--came into the settlement
to exchange their furs and walrus teeth for tobacco, and gave us an
excellent opportunity of studying their various characteristics and
modes of life. The Wandering Chukchis, who visited us in the greatest
numbers, were evidently the most powerful tribe in north-eastern
Siberia, and impressed us very favourably with their general
appearance and behaviour. Except for their dress, they could hardly
have been distinguished from North American Indians--many of them
being as tall, athletic, and vigorous specimens of savage manhood as
I had ever seen. They did not differ in any essential particular from
the Wandering Koraks, whose customs, religion, and mode of life I have
already described.
[Illustration: A MAN OF THE WANDERING CHUKCHIS]
The Lamutkis, however, were an entirely different race, and resembled
the Chukchis only in their nomadic habits. All the natives in
north-eastern Siberia, except the Kamchadals, Chuances, and Yukagirs,
who are partially Russianised, may be referred to one or another of
three great classes. The first of these, which may be called the North
American Indian class, comprises the wandering and settled Chukchis
and Koraks, and covers that part of Siberia lying between the 160th
meridian of east longitude and Bering Strait. It is the only class
which has ever made a successful stand against Russian invasion, and
embraces without doubt the bravest, most independent savages in all
Siberia. I do not think that this class numbers all together more than
six or eight thousand souls, although the estimates of the Russians
are much larger.
The second class comprises all the natives in eastern Siberia who
are evidently and unmistakably of Mongolian origin, including the
Tunguses, the Lamutkis, the Manchus, and the Gilyaks of the Amur
River. It covers a greater extent of ground probably than both of the
other classes together, its representatives being found as far west as
the Yenesei, and as far east as Anadyrsk, in 169° E. long. The only
branches of this class that I have ever seen are the Lamutkis and the
Tunguses. They are almost exactly alike, both being very slenderly
built men, with straight black hair, dark olive complexions, no
beards, and more or less oblique eyes. They do not resemble a Chukchi
or a Korak any more than a Chinaman resembles a Comanche or a Sioux.
Their dress is very peculiar. It consists of a fur hood, tight fur
trousers, short deerskin boots, a Masonic apron, made of soft flexible
buckskin and elaborately ornamented with beads and pieces of metal,
and a singular-looking frock-coat cut in very civilised style out of
deerskin, and ornamented with long strings of coloured reindeer
hair made into chenille. You can never see one without having the
impression that he is dressed in some kind of a regalia or uniform.
The men and women resemble each other very much in dress and
appearance, and by a stranger cannot be distinguished apart. Like the
Chukchis and Koraks, they are reindeer nomads, but differ somewhat
from the former in their mode of life. Their tents are smaller and
differently constructed and instead of dragging their tent-poles from
place to place as the Chukchis do, they leave them standing; when they
break camp, and either cut new ones or avail themselves of frames left
standing by other bands. Tent-poles in this way serve as landmarks,
and a day's, journey is from one collection of frames to another. Few
of the Tunguses or Lamutkis own many deer. Two or three hundred are
considered to be a large herd, and a man who owns more than that is
regarded as a sort of millionaire. Such herds as are found among the
Koraks in northern Kamchatka, numbering from five to ten thousand, are
never to be seen west of Gizhiga. The Tunguses, however, use their few
deer to better advantage and in a greater variety of ways than do
the Koraks. The latter seldom ride their deer or train them to carry
packs, while the Tunguses do both. The Tunguses are of a mild, amiable
disposition, easily governed and easily influenced, and seem to have
made their way over so large an extent of country more through the
sufferance of other tribes than through any aggressive power or
disposition of their own. Their original religion was Shamanism,
but they now profess almost universally the Greco-Russian faith and
receive Christian names. They acknowledge also their subjection to
the authority of the Tsar, and pay a regular annual tribute in furs.
Nearly all the Siberian squirrelskins which reach the European market
are bought by Russian traders from Wandering Tunguses around the
Okhotsk Sea. When I left the settlement of Okhotsk, in the fall of
1867, there were more than seventy thousand squirrelskins there in the
hands of one Russian merchant, and this was only a small part of the
whole number caught by the Tunguses during that summer. The Lamutkis,
who are first cousins to the Tunguses, are fewer in number, but live
in precisely the same way. I never met more than three or four
bands during two years of almost constant travel in all parts of
north-eastern Siberia.
The third great class of natives is the Turkish. It comprises only the
Yakuts (yah-koots') who are settled chiefly along the Lena River from
its head-waters to the Arctic Ocean. Their origin is unknown, but
their language is said to resemble the Turkish or modern Osmanli so
closely that a Constantinopolitan of the lower class could converse
fairly well with a Yakut from the Lena. I regret that I was not enough
interested in comparative philology while in Siberia to compile
a vocabulary and grammar of the Yakut language. I had excellent
opportunities for doing so, but was not aware at that time of its
close resemblance to the Turkish, and looked upon it only as
an unintelligible jargon which proved nothing but the active
participation of the Yakuts in the construction of the Tower of Babel.
The bulk of this tribe is settled immediately around the Asiatic pole
of cold, and they can unquestionably endure a lower temperature with
less suffering than any other natives in Siberia. They are called by
the Russian explorer Wrangell, "iron men," and well do they deserve
the appellation. The thermometer at Yakutsk, where several thousands
of them are settled, _averages_ during the three winter months
thirty-seven degrees below zero; but this intense cold does not seem
to occasion them the slightest inconvenience. I have seen them in a
temperature of -40°, clad only in a shirt and one sheepskin coat,
standing quietly in the street, talking and laughing as if it were a
pleasant summer's day and they were enjoying the balmy air! They are
the most thrifty, industrious natives in all northern Asia. It is a
proverbial saying in Siberia, that if you take a Yakut, strip him
naked, and set him down in the middle of a great desolate steppe, and
then return to that spot at the expiration of a year, you will find
him living in a large, comfortable house, surrounded by barns and
haystacks, owning herds of horses and cattle, and enjoying himself
like a patriarch. They have all been more or less civilised by Russian
intercourse, and have adopted Russian manners and the religion of the
Greek Church. Those settled along the Lena cultivate rye and hay, keep
herds of Siberian horses and cattle, and live principally upon coarse
black-bread, milk, butter, and horse-flesh. They are notorious
gluttons. All are very skilful in the use of the "topor" or short
Russian axe, and with that instrument alone will go into a primeval
forest, cut down trees, hew out timber and planks, and put up a
comfortable house, complete even to panelled doors and window-sashes.
They are the only natives in all north-eastern Siberia who can do and
are willing to do hard continuous work.
[Illustration: TUNGUSE MAN AND WOMAN IN BEST SUMMER DRESS]
These three great classes, viz., American Indian natives, Mongolian
natives, and Turko-Yakut natives, comprise all the aboriginal
inhabitants of north-eastern Siberia except the Kamchadals, the
Chuances, and the Yukagirs. [Footnote: There are a few Eskimo-like
natives living in permanent habitations near Bering Strait, but we did
not see them.] These last have been so modified by Russian influence,
that it is hard to tell to which class they are most nearly allied,
and the ethnologist will shortly be relieved from all further
consideration of the problem by their inevitable extinction. The
Chuances and Yukagirs have already become mere fragments of tribes,
and their languages will perish with the present generation.
The natives of whom we saw most at Anadyrsk were, as I have already
said, the Chukchis. They frequently called upon us in large parties,
and afforded us a great deal of amusement by their naïve and childlike
comments upon Americans, American instruments, and the curious
American things generally which we produced for their inspection. I
shall never forget the utter astonishment with which a band of them
once looked through my field-glass. I had been trying it one clear
cold day out-of-doors, and quite a crowd of Chukchis and Yukagirs had
gathered around me to see what I was doing. Observing their curiosity,
I gave the glass to one of them and told him to look through it at
another native who happened to be standing out on the plain, at
a distance of perhaps a hundred yards. The expression of blank,
half-incredulous surprise which gradually came over his features as
he saw that native brought up, apparently within a few feet, was
irresistibly comical. He did not dream for a moment that it was a
mere optical illusion; he supposed that the wonderful instrument had
actually transported the man physically from a distance of a hundred
yards up to the place where he stood, and as he held the glass to his
eyes with one hand, he stretched out the other to try to catch hold of
him. Finding to his great astonishment that he could not, he removed
the glass, and saw the man standing quietly as before, a hundred yards
away. The idea then seemed to occur to him that if he could only
get this mysterious instrument to his eyes quickly enough, he would
surprise the man in the very act of coming up--catch him perhaps about
half-way--and find out how it was done. He accordingly raised the
glass toward his face very slowly (watching the man meanwhile
intently, to see that he took no unfair advantage and did not start
too soon) until it was within an inch of his eyes, and then looked
through it suddenly. But it was of no use. The man was right beside
him again, but how he came there he didn't know. Perhaps he could
catch him if he made a sudden dash, and he tried it. This, however,
was no more successful than his previous experiments, and the other
natives looked at him in perfect amazement, wondering what he was
trying to do with all these singular motions. He endeavoured to
explain to them in great excitement that the man had been brought up
apparently within arm's length, and yet he could not touch him. His
comrades of course denied indignantly that the man had moved at all,
and they engaged in a furious dispute as to whether this innocent and
unconscious man had been anywhere near them or not. The native who
maintained the affirmative appealed to me; but, convulsed with
laughter, I could make no reply, and he started off at a run, to see
the man and find out whether he had been brought up or not, and how it
felt to be transported over a hundred yards of space in an instant of
time! We who are familiar with these discoveries of science can hardly
realise how they appear to a wholly uneducated savage; but if a
superior race of beings should come from the planet Mars and show us
a mysterious instrument which enabled a man to be in two different
places at the same time, we should understand the sensations of a
Chukchi in looking through a field-glass.
Soon after this I happened to be encamped one night on a great plain
near Anadyrsk, with a party of these same natives; and having received
a note from Dodd by a special messenger, I was engaged in reading it
by the camp-fire. At several humorous passages I burst into a loud
laugh; whereupon the natives nudged one another with their elbows and
pointed significantly at me, as much as to say, "Just look at the
crazy American! What's the matter with him now?" Finally one of them,
an old grey-haired man, asked me what I was laughing at. "Why," said
I, "I am laughing at this," and pointed to the piece of paper. The old
man thought about it for a moment, compared notes with the others, and
they all thought about it; but no one seemed to succeed in getting
any light as to the cause of my incomprehensible laughter. In a few
moments the old man picked up a half-burned stick which was lying by
the fire and said: "Now suppose I should look at this stick for a
minute and then laugh; what would you think?" "Why," said I candidly,
"I should think you were a fool." "Well," he rejoined with grave
satisfaction, "that's just exactly what I think of you!" He seemed to
be very much pleased to find that our several opinions of such insane
conduct so exactly coincided. Looking at a stick and laughing, and
looking at a piece of paper and laughing, seemed to him equally
absurd. The languages of the Chukchis and Koraks have never-been
reduced to writing; nor, so far as I know, do either of those tribes
ever attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures. Written thought is
to many of them an impossible conception. It can be imagined, perhaps,
with what wonder and baffled curiosity they pore over the illustrated
newspapers which are occasionally given to them by the sailors of
whaling vessels which visit the coast. Some of the pictures they
recognise as representations of things with which they are acquainted;
but by far the greater number are as incomprehensible as the
hieroglyphics of the Aztecs. I remember that a Korak once brought to
me an old tattered fashion-plate from _Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper_ containing three or four full-length figures of imaginary
ladies, in the widest expansion of crinoline which fashion at that
time prescribed. The poor Korak said he had often wondered what those
curious objects could be; and now, as I was an American, perhaps I
could tell him. He evidently had not the most remote suspicion that
they were intended to represent human beings. I told him that those
curious objects, as he called them, were American women. He burst out
into a "tyée-e-e-e!" of amazement, and asked with a wondering look,
"Are _all_ the women in your country as big as that at the bottom?" It
was a severe reflection upon our ladies' dress, and I did not venture
to tell him that the bigness was artificial, but merely replied sadly
that they were. He looked curiously down at my feet and then at the
picture, and then again at my feet, as if he were trying to trace some
resemblance between the American man and the American woman; but he
failed to do it, and wisely concluded that they must be of widely
different species.
[Illustration: A TUNGUSE SUMMER TENT]
The pictures from these papers are sometimes put to curious uses. In
the hut of a Christianised but ignorant native near Anadyrsk, I once
saw an engraved portrait, cut from _Harper's Weekly_, of Major General
Dix, framed, hung up in a corner of the room and worshipped as a
Russian saint! A gilded candle was burning before his smoky features,
and every night and morning a dozen natives crossed themselves and
said their prayers to a major-general in the United States Army! It
is the only instance, I believe, on record, where a major-general has
been raised to the dignity of a saint without even being dead.
St. George of England, we are told, was originally a corrupt army
contractor of Cappadocia, but he was not canonised until long
after his death, when the memory of his contracts was no more. For
Major-General Dix was reserved the peculiar privilege of being at the
same time United States Minister in Paris and a saint in Siberia!
[Illustration: Woman's fur lined Hood]