Small Peoples of the North – Koryak, Chukchi

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Below is some basic information about the Small Peoples of the North.  The Engage Russia team will be visiting the Koryak and Chukchi people over the next few weeks and months and will be posting videos, photos, and print materials from those trips as soon as they become available.  If you are interested in getting more information about Koryak and Chukchi People, or creating a partnership in that area, send an email to TellMeMore@EngageRussia.org.

Chukchi Peninsula and Sea

Koryak
Koryaks are an indigenous people of Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East, who inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the southernmost limit of their range being Tigilsk. They are akin to the Chukchis, whom they closely resemble in physique and manner of life. Also, they are distantly related to the Kamchadal (Itelmens) on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Koryaks live in the northeast of Siberia, in the northern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula and on the adjoining mainland from the Taigonos Peninsula to the Bering Sea. The traditional roaming area of the nomadic Koryaks has been west of the Kamchatka Central Range, up to the Itelmen settlements.

History
The koryak are typically split into two groups. The coastal people Nemelan meaning ‘village dwellers’ due to their sedentary fishing habits and the inland Koryaks, reindeer herders called Chauchen meaning ‘rich in reindeer’ who are more nomadic.

Warfare with Russian Cossacks and asmallpox epidemic in 1769-1770 reduced the Koryak population from 10-11,000 in 1700 to 4,800 in 1800.

Education
For everyday purposes the illiterate Koryaks used pictographs. From 1913 Koryak children attended Russian church and mission schools but their own script, like those of other northern peoples, was only created in the 1930s. The All-Union New Script Board approved the model alphabet of 28 letters compiled in 1930, which is the basis of the Koryak writing in Chavchyvan dialect. The first primer, Jissa kalekal (The Red Book) was published in 1932 and in 1934 a reader and various other textbooks were printed.  

Religion
Koryaks practice a form of animist belief system especially via shamanism. Koryak mythology centers around the supernatural shaman Quikil (Big-Raven) who was the first man and protector of the Koryak.

Chukchi
From the earliest times, the Chukchi were nomads and hunters of wild reindeer, whereas domesticated reindeer were used as a means of transportation through the tundra. These animals formed an indispensable part of their lives. They gave people food, warmth, and light. From reindeer hide they made clothes and footwear and covered their dwellings. Reindeer fat was used in lamps. In the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries the Chukchi gradually began to penetrate the coastal territories inhabited by the Eskimos. They changed to a sedentary way of life and began to engage in sea-animal trade and to assimilate some of the Eskimos. During this time, elements of Eskimo culture actively enriched Chuckchi culture.

Religion
In Chukchi religion, every object, whether animate or inanimate, is assigned a spirit. This spirit can be either harmful or beneficial. Some of Chukchi myths reveal a dualistic cosmology. Chukchi religious practices were prohibited by the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

History
Russians first encountered the Chukchis on the Kolyma River in 1644. The Chukchis were generally ignored for the next fifty years. The first attempt to conquer them was made in 1701. Other expeditions were sent out in 1708, 1709 and 1711 with a fair amount of bloodshed but not much success. War was renewed in 1729 when an expedition from Okhotsk was defeated by the Chukchis and its commander killed. Command passed to Major Pavlyutsky who adopted very destructive tactics, burning, killing, driving off reindeer and capturing women and children. In 1742 Saint Petersburg ordered another war in which the Chukchis and Koryaks were to be ‘totally extirpated.’ The war (1744-7) was conducted with similar brutality and came to an end when Pavlyutsky was killed. It is said that the Chukchis kept his head as a trophy for a number of years.

In 1762 Saint Petersburg adopted a different policy. The Chukchis, no longer provoked, entered into peaceful trade with the Russians. From 1788 there was an annual trade fair on the lower Kolyma. Another was established on the Angarka, a tributary of the Great Anyui in 1775. This trade declined in the late nineteenth century when American whalers and others began landing goods on the coast. The first Orthodox missionaries entered Chukchi territory some time after 1815.

Education
Apart from four Orthodox schools, there were no schools in the Chukchi land until the late 1920s. In 1926 there were 72 literate Chukchis. A Latin alphabet was introduced in 1932 and replaced with Cyrillic in 1937. In 1934 71% of the Chukchis were still nomadic. By 1939, 95% of the coastal Chukchis were collectivized, but only 11% of the reindeer nomads. In the late 1930s several ‘reindeer kings’ had very large herds and employed hired labor. In 1941 90% of the reindeer were still privately owned. So-called kulaks still roamed with their private herds up into the 1950s. After 1990 there was a major exodus of Russians.

Text source: Wikipedia – 2009, everyculture.com, russia.rin.ru