The Last of the Siberians

Since arriving in Novosibirsk, I've been interested in trying to learn a bit about the native inhabitants of this place. After all, Novosibirsk is just over one hundred years old, and it wasn't much earlier than that the Russians began moving to the area in large numbers. Who lived here before and where did they go?

I still have much to learn in this area, but I thought that I'd share with you what I found out so far. One of the surprising things I've found out is that there is little evidence that west-central part of Siberia was ever densely inhabited. In fact, when it was inhabited at all, it appears that no one group dominated for long. It is very hard, then, to determine who the “native peoples” are. As the historian Vladimir Usupov put it, “the majority of the peoples of Siberia are just as much new-comers [to the area] as Russians are.” “Now that there are fewer and fewer [Slavs] here, it is possible that new peoples will come in their place,” continues Usupov.

While the histories of the peoples of neighboring Altay and Krasnoyarsky Krai are relatively well known and point to well-developed civilizations with a degree of continuity and stability, the Novosibirsk area was, apparently, less attractive for long-term settlement.

 

There are still arguments about who first settled the territory of the Novosibirsk oblast (state). It is known that the mysterious Pumpokol people lived here at one time, but that they assimilated into other groups by the 18th century. Three groups are currently considered native peoples in the area - teleuts (known by early Russian settlers as the “white kalmykians,” they were the upper crust of society and shared many customs similar to Europeans), and two tatar groups - Orskiy Chaty и Baraba tatars.

In the last census (2010) 14 people in the Novosibirsk oblast identified themselves as teleuts; linguists say that there are about 8000 baraba tatars and 100 orskiy chaty in the region, though no one identified themselves that way in the last census. Some members of these groups were able to maintain their traditional ways of life (gathering and fishing), but most are apparently merging with a larger ethnic group, their relatives, the Kazan Tatars.

The importance of these peoples is felt in everyday life here through geographic names, e.g., the river “Inya,” which means “mother;" the river Chik - “edge; Yurt-Akbalyk - “house of the white fish.” The origin of the name of Novosibirsk's main river, the Ob, is still a mystery – it means either “snow drift” in Samoyedic (a language from the Urals) or “water” in Farsi (Iran's language).

This last example shows the large degree of moment among people in Siberia throughout the centuries...and this makes a lot of sense, given the fact that western Siberia was right along the path of the Mongols as they swept through northern Asia and into eastern Europe.  

(material in part from the Novosibirsk news site ngs.ru. “The Last Siberians”)