The brutal traditions of the Chukchi: why they kill frail old people and exchange spouses

These people live in conditions completely different from ours. It would seem, well, Chukchi and Chukchi, what’s interesting? But no, you didn’t guess! They are a very curious and original people. So who are the Chukchi and why are they called that way?

They live mainly in the vast expanses of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, a small part - in Yakutia and the Koryak Autonomous Okrug. Initially, there was a certain division depending on the habitat - there are tundra Chukchi and coastal ones. They even have individual names! The first called themselves " chauchu”, which translated means “owning deer”, and the latter - “ ramaglyt", or "coast dwellers".

But they differ from each other not only in name. Territorial features directly influenced the way of life. The tundra Chukchi roamed from place to place and hunted wild deer. However, progress did not stand still, and over time they began to master reindeer husbandry. Subsequently, it became the basis of the economy northern inhabitants. Although they did not give up hunting. When the deer ate all the available food, they moved to a new place. And this is understandable, there are a lot of animals, we need to feed them something.

Those who lived by the sea had no choice but to earn a living by sea hunting. In winter and spring, the Chukchi hunted seals, because It is at this time that females come out onto the ice with their cubs. Well, summer and autumn were coming to hunt whales and walruses. And at the same time fishing was not particularly developed, although it did occur.

They did not have houses in the form to which we are accustomed. And even now not much has changed. Of course, those who live in villages have water and electricity. But in the tundra everything remained the same as it was many years ago. Traditional home- yaranga. It is something like a cone or a tent of irregular polygonal shape. The frame was usually made of wood, but the coastal Chukchi also used whale bones for this purpose. The top of this structure was covered with walrus or deer skins.

When someone enters the yaranga, the owner or mistress says “Yetyk.” This can be perceived as our “hello”, but it translates as “you have come.” To which the person who enters usually responds “Ii”, which means agreement. Today's reindeer herders, as a rule, put up ordinary gable tents made of tarpaulin. Now they have all-terrain vehicles, but in those days they had to transport all their belongings on themselves.

The Chukchi are much more wise people than is commonly thought. They know how to navigate in absolutely harsh conditions, when there is only snow and ice around. To do this, they just need to make a hole in the river, determine the direction of the flow - and the path is found! In addition, they speak excellent Russian. Among other things, handicrafts are common among them. Bead embroidery, fur dressing, artistic processing of fangs and bones. And the Chukchi dance, despite all the hardships of life.

So anecdotes are anecdotes, but you shouldn’t judge anyone by them. A lot more could be written about the family life of this people, about their religion and way of life. However, the point is that the usual perception of many things in our lives, if you look at it, is deceptive.

Nowadays it is very difficult to find real Chukchi who live the same way as their ancestors, which is why we next invite you to take a look at the life of modern Chukchi. The couple we will meet later still lives far from civilization, but actively uses its benefits in order to somehow make their life easier.

I remember in Pevek I tried to find real Chukchi. It turned out challenging task, since almost only Russians live there. But in Anadyr there are many Chukchi, but they are all “urban”: reindeer herding and hunting have long been replaced by regular work, and yarangas - for apartments with heating. They say that finding the most authentic Chukchi is extremely problematic. Soviet reforms in Chukotka greatly influenced the culture of the people. Small schools in villages were closed and boarding schools were built in regional centers, separating children from national traditions and language.

However, during our expedition cruise we landed near the island of Yttygran, where we met a real Chukchi Vladimir and his wife Faina. They live alone, at a decent distance from outside world. Of course, civilization has affected their way of life, but of all the Chukchi I have seen before, these are the most authentic.

The house of a Chukotka family stands on the shore of a bay protected from waves:

Faina was very happy about the guests. She said that they had not seen people except each other for a couple of months, and were very happy to communicate. In general, it’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like to live alone for months:

While we were inside, Vladimir looked outside, made sure his wife was busy with tourists, and pulled out a magazine from under the mattress. He showed me the cover with the words: “Look, what a beautiful Chukchi girl”:

Their kitchen is outside under a canopy. In winter, they cover the passage with a blanket and the heat inside becomes warm from the stove:

Vladimir is very proud of his smokehouse, which he built himself:

Smoked fish hanging in the barn:

Sometimes fishermen come to them and exchange deer meat for whale meat:

Vladimir has a tourist house. In the summer, foreigners rent it and live here for a couple of weeks. Enjoy the silence and watch the animals:

Everything inside is now littered with rubbish:

Some kind of ritual stick to protect the home from evil spirits, but Vladimir uses it mainly to scratch his back:

Another building. His relatives live here, but now they have left for a neighboring village, several tens of kilometers away, since their child went to school there:

Faina talked about the tree they planted next to their house. They surrounded it with a rope fence and made a sign: “Specially protected area.” Take a closer look at the photo. The Eurasian Eurasian lives next to this tree and often stands next to a sign, like a sentry:

Protects the tree from crows:

A couple of kilometers from the home of Vladimir and Faina, a hot spring gushes out of the ground.

A couple of years ago they built themselves a font here:

After the font, everyone goes down into the river, like after a bath:

There were few animals, so I switched to flora:

Ubiquitous mushrooms:

The entire tundra is strewn with berries:

This plant is called cotton grass vaginalis. I'm afraid to imagine why this name arose:

In general, as we see, globalization reaches even such remote corners of our planet. However, there may be no point in resisting these processes - during the existence of mankind, a huge number of cultures have arisen and disappeared into oblivion...

Chukchi, Chukots or Luoravetlans. A small indigenous people of the extreme northeast of Asia, scattered over a vast territory from the Bering Sea to the Indigirka River and from the Arctic Ocean to the Anadyr and Anyui rivers. The number according to the All-Russian Population Census of 2002 is 15,767 people, according to the All-Russian Population Census of 2010 - 15,908 people.

Origin

Their name, which the Russians, Yakuts and Evens call them, was adapted in the 17th century. Russian explorers used the Chukchi word chauchu [ʧawʧəw] (rich in deer), by which name the Chukchi reindeer herders call themselves in contrast to the coastal Chukchi dog breeders - ankalyn (seaside, Pomors - from anki (sea)). Self-name - oravet'et (people, in singular oravet'en) or ԓыгъоravеt'ет [ɬəɣʔoráwətɬʔǝt] (real people, in the singular ԓыгъоravет'е'е'н [ɬəɣʔoráwətɬʔǝn] - in the Russian translation luoravetlan). The neighbors of the Chukchi are the Yukaghirs, Evens, Yakuts and Eskimos (on the shores of the Bering Strait).

The mixed type (Asian-American) is confirmed by some legends, myths and differences in the peculiarities of life of the reindeer and coastal Chukchi: the latter, for example, have an American-style dog harness. The final solution to the question of ethnographic origin depends on a comparative study of the Chukchi language and the languages ​​of nearby American peoples. One of the language experts, V. Bogoraz, found it closely related not only to the language of the Koryaks and Itelmens, but also to the language of the Eskimos. Until very recently, based on their language, the Chukchi were classified as Paleo-Asians, that is, a group of marginal peoples of Asia, whose languages ​​stand completely apart from all other linguistic groups of the Asian continent, pushed out in very distant times from the middle of the continent to the northeastern outskirts.

Anthropology

The Chukchi type is mixed, generally Mongoloid, but with some differences. Racial type The Chukchi, according to Bogoraz, are characterized by some differences. Eyes with an oblique cut are less common than eyes with a horizontal cut; there are individuals with thick facial hair and wavy, almost curly hair on their heads; face with a bronze tint; body color is devoid of a yellowish tint; large, regular facial features, high and straight forehead; the nose is large, straight, sharply defined; the eyes are large and widely spaced. Some researchers noted the height, strength and broad shoulders of the Chukchi. Genetically, the Chukchi reveal their relationship with the Yakuts and Nenets: Haplogroup N (Y-DNA)1c1 is found in 50% of the population, and Haplogroup C (Y-DNA) (close to the Ainu and Itelmen) is also widespread.

Story

The modern ethnogenetic scheme allows us to evaluate the Chukchi as the aborigines of continental Chukotka. Their ancestors formed here at the turn of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. The basis of the culture of this population was hunting for wild deer, which existed here in fairly stable natural and climatic conditions until late XVII - early XVIII centuries. The Chukchi encountered Russians for the first time back in XVII century on the Alazeya River. In 1644, the Cossack Mikhail Stadukhin, who was the first to bring news of them to Yakutsk, founded the Nizhnekolymsk fort. The Chukchi, who at that time were wandering both east and west of the Kolyma, after a bloody struggle finally left the left bank of the Kolyma, pushing back the Eskimo tribe of the Mamalls from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Bering Sea during their retreat. Since then, for more than a hundred years, bloody clashes between Russians and Chukchi have not stopped, whose territory bordered on Russia along the Kolyma River in the west and Anadyr in the south, from the Amur region (for more details, see Annexation of Chukotka to Russia).

In 1770, after a series of military campaigns, including the unsuccessful campaign of Shestakov (1730), the Anadyr fort, which served as the center of the Russian struggle against the Chukchi, was destroyed and its team was transferred to Nizhnekolymsk, after which the Chukchi became less hostile to the Russians and gradually began to join into trade relations with them. In 1775, on the Angarka River, a tributary of the Bolshoi Anyui, the Angarsk fortress was built, where, under the protection of the Cossacks, an annual fair for barter trade with the Chukchi took place.

Since 1848, the fair was moved to the Anyui fortress (about 250 km from Nizhnekolymsk, on the banks of the Maly Anyui). Until the first half of the 19th century century, when European goods were delivered to the territory of the Chukchi by the only land route through Yakutsk, the Anyui Fair had a turnover of hundreds of thousands of rubles. The Chukchi brought for sale not only ordinary products of their own production (clothing made from reindeer fur, reindeer skins, live deer, seal skins, whalebone, polar bear skins), but also the most expensive furs - sea otters, martens, black foxes, blue foxes, which the so-called nose Chukchi exchanged for tobacco with the inhabitants of the shores of the Bering Sea and the northwestern coast of America.

With the advent of American whalers in the waters of the Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean, as well as with the delivery of goods to Gizhiga by ships of the voluntary fleet (in the 1880s), the largest turnover of the Anyui Fair ceased, and to end of the 19th century century, it began to serve only the needs of the local Kolyma trade, with a turnover of no more than 25 thousand rubles.

Farm

Initially, the Chukchi were simply reindeer hunters, but over time (shortly before the arrival of the Russians) they mastered reindeer husbandry, which became the basis of their economy.

The main occupation of the coastal Chukchi is hunting sea animals: in winter and spring - seals and seals, in summer and autumn - walruses and whales. They hunted seals alone, crawling up to them, camouflaging themselves and imitating the movements of the animal. The walrus was hunted in groups of several canoes. Traditional hunting weapons are a harpoon with a float, a spear, a belt net; since the second half of the 19th century, firearms have spread, and hunting methods have become simpler.

Life of the Chukchi

In the 19th century, Chukchi reindeer herders lived in camps of 2-3 houses. Migrations were carried out as the reindeer food became depleted. In the summer, some go down to the sea. The Chukchi clan is agnatic, united by the commonality of fire, consanguinity in the male line, a common totem sign, family revenge and religious rites. Marriage is predominantly endogamous, individual, often polygamous (2-3 wives); among a certain circle of relatives and brothers-in-arms, mutual use of wives is allowed, by agreement; levirate is also common. Kalym does not exist. Chastity does not matter for a girl.

The dwelling - yaranga - is a large tent of irregular polygonal shape, covered with panels of reindeer skins, with the fur facing out. Resistance against wind pressure is provided by stones tied to the pillars and cover of the hut. The fireplace is in the middle of the hut and surrounded by sleighs with household supplies. The actual living space, where the Chukchi eat, drink and sleep, consists of a small rectangular fur tent-canopy, fixed at the back wall of the tent and sealed tightly from the floor. The temperature in this cramped room, heated by the animal warmth of its inhabitants and partly by a fat lamp, is so high that the Chukchi strip naked in it.

Until the end of the 20th century, the Chukchi distinguished between heterosexual men, heterosexual men who wore women's clothing, homosexual men who wore women's clothing, heterosexual women and women who wore men's clothing. At the same time, wearing clothes could also mean performing corresponding social functions.

Chukchi clothing is of the usual polar type. It is sewn from the fur of fawns (grown up autumn calf) and for men consists of a double fur shirt (the lower one with the fur towards the body and the upper one with the fur outward), the same double pants, short fur stockings with the same boots and a hat in the form of a woman's bonnet. Women's clothing is completely unique, also double, consisting of seamlessly sewn trousers together with a low-cut bodice, cinched at the waist, with a slit on the chest and extremely wide sleeves, thanks to which Chukchi women can easily free their hands while working. Summer outerwear includes robes made of reindeer suede or colorful purchased fabrics, as well as kamleikas made of fine-haired deer skin with various ritual stripes. Costume infant consists of a reindeer bag with blind branches for arms and legs. Instead of diapers, a layer of moss with reindeer hair is placed, which absorbs feces, which are removed daily through a special valve attached to the opening of the bag.

Women's hairstyles consist of braids braided on both sides of the head, decorated with beads and buttons. Men cut their hair very smoothly, leaving a wide fringe in front and two tufts of hair in the form of animal ears on the crown.

Wooden, stone and iron tools

In the 18th century stone axes, spear and arrow tips, bone knives were almost completely replaced with metal ones. Utensils, tools and weapons are currently used mainly European (metal cauldrons, teapots, iron knives, guns, etc.), but even today in the life of the Chukchi there are many remnants of recent primitive culture: bone shovels, hoes, drills, bone and stone arrows, spearheads, etc., a compound bow of the American type, slings made of knuckles, armor made of leather and iron plates, stone hammers, scrapers, knives, a primitive projectile for making fire by means of friction, primitive lamps in the form of a round flat vessel made of soft stone, filled with seal fat, etc. Their light sleds, with arched supports instead of spears, adapted only for sitting astride them, have been preserved primitive. The sled is harnessed either to a pair of reindeer (among the reindeer Chukchi), or to dogs, according to the American model (among the coastal Chukchi).

With the advent of Soviet power, populated areas schools, hospitals, and cultural institutions appeared. A written language was created. The Chukchi literacy level (ability to write and read) does not differ from the national average.

Chukotka cuisine

The basis of the Chukchi diet was boiled meat (reindeer, seal, whale); they also ate leaves and bark of the polar willow (emrat), seaweed, sorrel, shellfish and berries. In addition to traditional meat, the blood and entrails of animals were also used as food. Raw-frozen meat was widespread. Unlike the Tungus and Yukagirs, the Chukchi practically did not eat fish. Among the drinks, the Chukchi preferred herbal decoctions such as tea.

A unique dish is the so-called monyalo - half-digested moss extracted from a large deer stomach; Various canned food and fresh dishes are made from monyal. Semi-liquid stew made from monyal, blood, fat and finely chopped meat until very recently was the most common type of hot food.

Holidays

The reindeer Chukchi held several holidays: the slaughter of young reindeer in August, the installation of a winter home (feeding the constellation Pegyttin - the star Altair and Zore from the constellation Eagle), the division of herds in the spring (separation of the female deer from the young bulls), the festival of horns (Kilvey) in the spring after the calving of the female reindeer, sacrifices to fire, etc. Once or twice a year, each family celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday.

Chukchi religion

The religious beliefs of the Chukchi are expressed in amulets (pendants, headbands, necklaces in the form of straps with beads). Painting the face with the blood of the murdered victim, with the image of a hereditary-tribal sign - a totem, also has ritual significance. The original pattern on the quivers and clothes of the coastal Chukchi is of Eskimo origin; from the Chukchi it passed to many polar peoples of Asia.

According to their beliefs, the Chukchi are animists; they personify and idolize certain areas and natural phenomena (masters of the forest, water, fire, sun, deer, etc.), many animals (bear, crow), stars, sun and moon, believe in hosts of evil spirits that cause all earthly disasters, including illness and death, have a number of regular holidays ( autumn holiday slaughter of deer, spring - horns, winter sacrifice to the star Altair, the ancestor of the Chukchi, etc.) and many irregular ones (feeding the fire, sacrifices after each hunt, funeral services for the dead, votive services, etc.). Each family, in addition, has its own family shrines: hereditary shells for obtaining sacred fire through friction for certain festivals, one for each family member (the lower plank of the projectile represents a figure with the head of the owner of fire), then bundles of wooden knots “removing misfortunes”, wooden images of ancestors and, finally, a family tambourine, since ritual with a tambourine is The Chukchi are not the property of shaman specialists alone. The latter, having sensed their calling, experience a preliminary period of a kind of involuntary temptation, fall into deep thought, wander without food or sleep for whole days until they receive real inspiration. Some die from this crisis; some receive a suggestion to change their gender, that is, a man should turn into a woman, and vice versa. Those transformed take on the clothing and lifestyle of their new gender, even marrying, getting married, etc.

The dead are either burned or wrapped in layers of raw deer meat and left in the field, after first cutting into the throat and chest of the deceased and pulling out part of the heart and liver. First, the deceased is dressed, fed and told fortunes, forcing him to answer questions. Old people often kill themselves in advance or, at their request, are killed by close relatives.

A baydara is a boat built without a single nail, effective for hunting sea animals.
Most Chukchi by the beginning of the 20th century were baptized in Russian Orthodox Church However, among the nomadic people there are remnants of traditional beliefs (shamanism).

Voluntary death

Difficult living conditions and malnutrition led to such a phenomenon as voluntary death.

Anticipating many speculations, the ethnographer writes:

The reason for the voluntary death of old people is not a lack of good attitude to them from relatives, but rather the difficult conditions of their life. These conditions make life completely unbearable for anyone who is unable to take care of themselves. Not only the elderly resort to voluntary death, but also those suffering from some incurable disease. The number of such patients dying a voluntary death is no less than the number of old people.

Folklore

The Chukchi have a rich oral folk art, which is also expressed in the art of stone bone. The main genres of folklore: myths, fairy tales, historical legends, legends and everyday stories. One of the main characters was the raven - Kurkyl, a cultural hero. Many legends and fairy tales have been preserved, such as “Keeper of the Fire”, “Love”, “When do the whales leave?”, “God and the Boy”. Let's give an example of the latter:

One family lived in the tundra: a father, a mother, and two children, a boy and a girl. The boy herded the reindeer, and the girl helped her mother with housework. One morning, the father woke up his daughter and ordered her to light a fire and make tea.

The girl came out of the canopy, and God caught her and ate her, and then ate her father and mother. The boy returned from the herd. Before entering the yaranga, I looked through the hole to see what was going on there. And he sees God sitting on an extinguished fireplace and playing in the ashes. The boy shouted to him: “Hey, what are you doing?” - Nothing, come here. A boy entered the yaranga and they began to play. The boy plays, and he looks around, looking for his relatives. He understood everything and said to God: “Play alone, I’ll go to the wind!” He ran out of the yaranga. Untied the two most angry dogs and ran with them into the forest. He climbed a tree and tied the dogs under the tree. God played and played, he wanted to eat and went to look for the boy. He goes and sniffs the trail. I reached the tree. He wanted to climb a tree, but the dogs caught him, tore him into pieces and ate him.

And the boy came home with his herd and became the owner.

Historical legends have preserved stories about wars with neighboring Eskimo tribes.

Folk dances

Despite the difficult living conditions, the people found time for holidays, where the tambourine was not only ritual, but also simply musical instrument, the tunes of which were passed on from generation to generation. Archaeological evidence suggests that dances existed among the ancestors of the Chukchi back in the 1st millennium BC. This is evidenced by petroglyphs discovered beyond the Arctic Circle in Chukotka and studied by archaeologist N. N. Dikov.

All dances can be divided into ritual-ritual, imitative-imitative dances, staged dances (pantomimes), playful and improvisational (individual), as well as dances of the reindeer and coastal Chukchi.

A striking example of ritual dances was the celebration of the “First Slaughter of the Deer”:

After the meal, all the tambourines belonging to the family, hanging on the poles of the threshold behind a curtain of raw skins, are removed, and the ritual begins. The tambourines are played by all family members in turn for the rest of the day. When all the adults finish, children take their place and, in turn, continue to beat the tambourines. While playing tambourines, many adults call upon “spirits” and try to induce them to enter their body….

Imitative dances were also common, reflecting the habits of animals and birds: “Crane”, “Crane looks for food”, “Crane Flight”, “Crane looks around”, “Swan”, “Seagull Dance”, “Raven”, “Bull (deer) fight )", "Dance of the Ducks", "Bullfight during the Rut", "Looking Out", "Running of the Deer".

Trade dances played a special role as a type of group marriage, as V. G. Bogoraz writes, they served on the one hand as a new connection between families, on the other hand, old family ties were strengthened.

Language, writing and literature

Main article: Chukchi writing
By origin, the Chukchi language belongs to the Chukchi-Kamchatka group of Paleo-Asian languages. Closest relatives: Koryak, Kerek (disappeared at the end of the 20th century), Alyutor, Itelmen, etc. Typologically, it belongs to the incorporating languages ​​(a word-morpheme acquires a specific meaning only depending on its place in the sentence, and can be significantly deformed depending on the conjugation with other members of the sentence).

In the 1930s. The Chukchi shepherd Teneville created an original ideographic writing (samples are kept in the Kunstkamera - Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences), which, however, never came into widespread use. Since the 1930s The Chukchi use an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet with the addition of a few letters. Chukotka literature is created mainly in Russian (Yu. S. Rytkheu and others).

Every nation living far from civilization has traditions and customs that seem at least strange to the uninitiated. Now, in the era of globalization, the originality of small nations is rapidly eroding, but some centuries-old foundations are still preserved. For example, the Chukchi have a very extravagant system of marriage and family relations.

The Chukchi - the indigenous people of the Far North - live according to the laws of the levirate. This is a marriage custom that does not allow families that have lost their breadwinner to be left without support and livelihood. To a brother or someone else close relative the deceased man is given the responsibility to marry the widow and adopt her children.


Obviously, the effect of levirate explains the popularity of the tradition of group marriage. Married men agree to unite families in order to provide each other with labor and material support. Of course, the poor Chukchi strive to enter into such an alliance with rich friends and neighbors.


Ethnographer Vladimir Bogoraz wrote: “When entering into a group marriage, men sleep without asking, interspersed with other people’s wives. The Chukchi wife exchange is usually limited to only one or two friends; however, examples are not uncommon when such close relationships are maintained with many.”


Children born into families in group marriage relationships are considered siblings. And all members of the extended family take care of them. So group marriage is a real salvation for childless couples: a friend will always help an infertile man to have children. And the birth of a baby for the Chukchi is always a very joyful event, regardless of who his biological father is.

The Chukchi, Luoravetlans, or Chukots, are an indigenous people of the extreme northeast of Asia. The Chukchi genus belongs to the agnate, which is united by the commonality of fire, the common sign of the totem, consanguinity in the male line, religious rites and family revenge. The Chukchi are divided into reindeer (chauchu) - tundra nomadic reindeer herders and coastal, coastal (ankalyn) - sedentary hunters of sea animals, who often live together with the Eskimos. There are also Chukchi dog breeders who bred dogs.

Name

Yakuts, Evens and Russians from the 17th century began to call Chukchi with the Chukchi word chauchu, or I'm drinking, which translated means “rich in deer.”

Where live

The Chukchi people occupy a vast territory from the Arctic Ocean to the Anyui and Anadyr Rivers and from the Bering Sea to the Indigirka River. The bulk of the population lives in Chukotka and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.

Language

The Chukchi language, by its origin, belongs to the Chukchi-Kamchatka language family and is part of the Paleo-Asian languages. Close relatives of the Chukchi language are Koryak, Kerek, which disappeared by the end of the 20th century, and Alyutor. Typologically, Chukchi belongs to the incorporating languages.

A Chukchi shepherd named Tenevil created an original ideographic writing in the 1930s (although to date it has not been precisely proven whether the writing was ideographic or verbal-syllabic. This writing, unfortunately, has not been widely used. Chukchi since the 1930s they use an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet with a few letters added in. Chukchi literature is mainly created in Russian.

Names

Previously, the Chukchi name consisted of a nickname that was given to the child on the 5th day of life. The name was given to the child by the mother, who could pass on this right to a person respected by all. It was common to carry out fortune telling on a hanging object, with the help of which the name for the newborn was determined. They took some object from the mother and called names one by one. If the object moves when the name is pronounced, the child was named it.

Chukchi names are divided into female and male, sometimes differing in endings. For example, the female name Tyne-nny and the male name Tyne-nkei. Sometimes the Chukchi, in order to mislead evil spirits, called male name a girl and a boy female name. Sometimes, for the same purpose, the child was given several names.

The names mean the beast, the time of year or day in which the child was born, the place where he was born. Names associated with household items or wishes for a child are common. For example, the name Gitinnevyt is translated as “beauty.”

Number

In 2002, the next All-Russian population census was carried out, according to the results of which the number of Chukchi was 15,767 people. After the All-Russian Population Census in 2010, the number was 15,908 people.

Lifespan

The average life expectancy of the Chukchi is short. Those who live in natural conditions live up to 42-45 years. The main causes of high mortality are alcohol abuse, smoking and poor nutrition. Today, drugs have joined these problems. There are very few centenarians in Chukotka, about 200 people aged 75 years. The birth rate is falling, and all this together, unfortunately, can lead to the extinction of the Chukchi people.

Appearance

Chukchi belong to mixed type, which is generally Mongoloid, but with differences. The eye shape is often horizontal rather than oblique, the face is bronze in color, and the cheekbones are not very wide. Among the Chukchi there are men with thick facial hair and almost curly hair. Among women, the Mongolian type of appearance is more common, with a wide nose and cheekbones.

Women wear their hair in two braids on either side of their heads and decorate them with buttons or beads. Married women sometimes let their front strands of hair fall onto their foreheads. Men often cut their hair very smoothly, leaving a wide fringe at the front, and two tufts of hair in the shape of animal ears on the crown of the head.

Chukchi clothing is made from the fur of a grown autumn calf (baby deer). IN Everyday life The clothing of an adult Chukchi consists of the following elements:

1. double fur shirt
2. double fur pants
3. short fur stockings
4. fur low boots
5. double hat in the form of a women's bonnet

The winter clothing of a Chukotka man consists of a caftan, which is very practical. A fur shirt is also called iryn, or cuckoo. It is very wide, with spacious sleeves at the shoulder area, tapering at the wrist area. This cut allows the Chukchee to pull their arms out of their sleeves and fold them over their chest, taking a comfortable body position. Shepherds sleeping near the herd in winter hide their heads in a shirt and cover the opening of the collar with a hat. But such a shirt is not long, but reaches to the knees. Only old people wear longer cuckoos. The collar of the shirt is cut low and trimmed with leather, with a cord placed inside. The bottom of the cuckoo is covered with a thin line of dog fur, which young Chukchi replace with wolverine or otter fur. As decorations, penakalgyns are sewn onto the back and sleeves of the shirt - long tassels, painted crimson, made from pieces of young seal skins. This decoration is more typical for women's shirts.

Women's clothing is also distinctive, but is irrational and consists of one-piece sewn double trousers with a low-cut bodice that is cinched at the waist. The bodice has a slit in the chest area, and the sleeves are very wide. While working, women free their hands from their bodice and work in the cold with bare arms or shoulders. Old women wear a shawl or a strip of deerskin around their necks.

In summer as outerwear women wear robes made from deer suede or purchased fabrics of variegated colors, and a kamleika of deer wool with thin fur, embroidered with various ritual stripes.

The Chukchi hat is made from fawn and calf fur, wolverine, dog and otter paws. In winter, if you have to go on the road, a very large hood, sewn mainly from wolf fur, is put on top of the hat. Moreover, the skin for him is taken together with the head and protruding ears, which are decorated with red ribbons. Such hoods are worn mainly by women and old people. Young shepherds even wear a headdress instead of a regular hat, covering only the forehead and ears. Men and women wear mittens made from kamus.

All inner clothing put on the body with the fur inward, outerwear - with the fur outward. In this way, both types of clothing fit tightly to each other and form an impenetrable protection against frost. Clothes made from deer skin are soft and do not cause much discomfort; you can wear them without underwear. Elegant clothes of the reindeer Chukchi white, among the Primorye Chukchi it is dark brown with sparse white spots. Traditionally, clothing is decorated with stripes. The original patterns on Chukchi clothing are of Eskimo origin.

As jewelry, the Chukchi wear garters, necklaces in the form of straps with beads, and headbands. Most of them have religious significance. There are also real metal jewelry, various earrings and bracelets.

Infants were dressed in bags made of deerskin, with blind branches for legs and arms. Instead of diapers, they used to use moss with reindeer hair, which served as a diaper. A valve was attached to the opening of the bag, from which such a diaper was taken out every day and replaced with a clean one.

Character

The Chukchi are emotional and psychologically very excitable people, which often leads to frenzy, suicidal tendencies and murders, even at the slightest provocation. These people love independence very much and are persistent in the struggle. But at the same time, the Chukchi are very hospitable and good-natured, always ready to help their neighbors. During times of hunger strike, they even helped the Russians and brought them food.

Religion

The Chukchi are animists in their beliefs. They deify and personify natural phenomena and its regions, water, fire, forest, animals: deer, bear and crow, celestial bodies: moon, sun and stars. The Chukchi also believe in evil spirits; they believe that they send disasters, death and disease to the Earth. The Chukchi wear amulets and believe in their power. They considered the creator of the world to be a Raven named Kurkyl, who created everything on Earth and taught people everything. Everything that exists in space was created by northern animals.

Each family has its own family shrines:

• a hereditary projectile for producing sacred fire by friction and used on holidays. Each member of the family had his own projectile, and on the bottom tablet of each was carved a figure with the head of the owner of fire;
• family tambourine;
• bundles of wooden knots “removing misfortunes”;
• pieces of wood with images of ancestors.

By the beginning of the 20th century, many Chukchi were baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church, but among the nomads there are still people with traditional beliefs.

Traditions

The Chukchi have regular holidays, which are held depending on the time of year:

• in the fall - the day of deer slaughter;
• in spring - the day of horns;
• in winter - a sacrifice to the star Altair.

There are also many irregular holidays, for example, feeding the fire, commemorating the dead, votive services and sacrifices after the hunt, the whale festival, and the kayak festival.

The Chukchi believed that they had 5 lives and were not afraid of death. After death, many wanted to go to the World of their ancestors. To do this, one had to die in battle at the hand of an enemy or at the hand of a friend. Therefore, when one Chukchi asked another to kill him, he immediately agreed. After all, it was a kind of help.

The dead were dressed, fed and told fortunes, forcing them to answer questions. Then they burned it or carried it to the field, cut the throat and chest, pulled out part of the liver and heart, wrapped the body in thin layers of deer meat and left it. Old people often killed themselves in advance or asked close relatives to do so. The Chukchi came to voluntary death not only because of old age. Often the cause was difficult living conditions, lack of food and severe incurable disease.

As for marriage, it is predominantly endogamous; a man could have 2 or 3 wives in a family. In a certain circle of brothers-in-arms and relatives, mutual use of wives is allowed by agreement. It is customary among the Chukchi to observe levirate - a marriage custom according to which the wife, after the death of her husband, had the right or was obliged to marry one of his close relatives. They did this because it was very difficult for a woman without a husband, especially if she had children. A man who married a widow was obliged to adopt all her children.

Often the Chukchi stole a wife for their son from another family. The relatives of this girl could demand that the woman be given to them in return, and not in order to marry her off, but because labor was always needed in everyday life.

Almost all families in Chukotka have many children. Pregnant women were not allowed to rest. Along with others, they worked and took care of everyday life, harvesting moss. This raw material is very necessary during childbirth; it was laid in the yaranga, in the place where the woman was preparing to give birth. Chukotka women could not be helped during childbirth. The Chukchi believed that everything was decided by a deity who knew the souls of the living and the dead and decided which one to send to the woman in labor.

A woman should not scream during childbirth so as not to attract evil spirits. When the child was born, the mother herself tied the umbilical cord with a thread woven from her hair and animal tendon and cut it. If a woman could not give birth for a long time, she could be given help, since it was obvious that she could not cope on her own. This was entrusted to one of the relatives, but after that everyone treated the woman in labor and her husband with contempt.

After the birth of the child, they wiped it with a piece of skin that was soaked in the mother’s urine. On left hand and amulets bracelets were put on the baby’s leg. The baby was dressed up in a fur jumpsuit.

After giving birth, a woman was not allowed to eat fish or meat, only meat broth. Previously, Chukchi women breastfed their children until they were 4 years old. If the mother did not have milk, the child was given seal fat. The baby's pacifier was made from a piece of sea hare intestine. It was stuffed with finely chopped meat. In some villages, babies were fed their milk by dogs.

When the boy turned 6 years old, men began to raise him as a warrior. The child was accustomed to harsh conditions, taught to shoot a bow, run fast, wake up quickly and react to extraneous sounds, and trained visual acuity. Modern Chukchi children love to play football. The ball is made from deer hair. Extreme wrestling on ice or slippery walrus skin is popular among them.

Chukchi men are excellent warriors. For each success in battle, they applied a mark-tattoo on the back side right palm. The more marks there were, the more experienced the warrior was considered. Women always had bladed weapons with them in case enemies attacked.

Culture

The mythology and folklore of the Chukchi are very diverse; they have much in common with the folklore and mythology of the Paleo-Asians and American peoples. The Chukchi have long been famous for their carved and sculptural images made on mammoth bones, which amaze with their beauty and clarity of application. The traditional musical instruments of the people are the tambourine (yarar) and the harp (khomus).

Folk oral creativity The Chukchi are rich. The main genres of folklore are fairy tales, myths, legends, historical legends and everyday stories. One of the main characters is the raven Kurkyl; there are legends about wars with neighboring Eskimo tribes.

Although the living conditions of the Chukchi were very difficult, they also found time for holidays in which the tambourine was a musical instrument. The tunes were passed down from generation to generation.

Chukchi dances are divided into several varieties:

• imitative
• gaming
• improvised
• ritual-ritual
• re-enactment dances or pantomimes
• dances of the reindeer and coastal Chukchi

Imitative dances that reflect the behavior of birds and animals were very common:

• crane
• crane flight
• running deer
• crow
• seagull dance
• swan
• duck dance
• bullfight during the rut
• looking out

A special place was occupied by trade dances, which were a type of group marriage. They were an indicator of the strengthening of previous family ties or were held as a sign of a new connection between families.

Food

Traditional dishes Chukchi are prepared from deer meat and fish. The basis of the diet of this people is boiled meat of whale, seal or deer. The meat is also eaten raw and frozen; the Chukchi eat animal entrails and blood.

The Chukchi eat shellfish and plant foods:

• willow bark and leaves
• sorrel
• seaweed
• berries

Among drinks, representatives of the people prefer alcohol and herbal decoctions similar to tea. The Chukchi are partial to tobacco.

In the traditional cuisine of the people there is a peculiar dish called monyalo. This is semi-digested moss that is removed from the stomach of a deer after killing the animal. Monyalo is used in the preparation of fresh dishes and canned food. The most common hot dish among the Chukchi until the 20th century was a liquid monyal soup with blood, fat and chopped meat.

Life

The Chukchi initially hunted reindeer, but gradually they domesticated these animals and began to engage in reindeer husbandry. Reindeer provide the Chukchi with meat for food, skin for housing and clothing, and serve as transport for them. The Chukchi, who live along the banks of rivers and seas, hunt sea ​​creatures. In spring and winter they catch seals and seals, in autumn and summer - whales and walruses. Previously, the Chukchi used harpoons with a float, belt nets and a spear for hunting, but already in the 20th century they learned to use firearms. Today, only bird hunting with the help of a “bol” has been preserved. Not all Chukchi have developed fishing. Women and children collect edible plants, moss and berries.

The Chukchi in the 19th century lived in camps, which included 2 or 3 houses. When the food for the deer ran out, they migrated to another place. IN summer period some lived closer to the sea.

Tools were made of wood and stone, which were gradually replaced by iron. Axes, spears, and knives are widely used in everyday life of the Chukchi. Utensils, metal cauldrons and teapots, weapons used today are mainly European. But to this day, in the life of this people there are many elements of primitive culture: these are bone shovels, drills, hoes, stone and bone arrows, spear tips, armor made of iron plates and leather, a complex bow, slings made from knuckles, stone hammers, skins, stems, shells for making fire by friction, lamps in the form of a flat round vessel made of soft stone, which were filled with seal fat.

Light sleighs of the Chukchi were also preserved in in its original form, they are equipped with arched supports. They harness deer or dogs. The Chukchi, who lived by the sea, have long used kayaks for hunting and moving on water.

The arrival of Soviet power also affected the life of the settlements. Over time, schools, cultural institutions and hospitals appeared in them. Today, the literacy level of the Chukchi in the country is at an average level.

Housing

The Chukchi live in dwellings called yarangas. This is a tent large sizes, irregular polygonal shape. The yaranga is covered with panels of deer skins so that the fur is on the outside. The vault of the dwelling rests on 3 poles, which are located in the center. Stones are tied to the cover and pillars of the hut, which ensures resistance to the wind pressure. The yaranga is sealed tightly from the floor. Inside the hut in the middle there is a fireplace, which is surrounded by sleighs loaded with various household supplies. In the yaranga the Chukchi live, eat, drink, and sleep. Such a dwelling is well heated, so the inhabitants walk in it undressed. The Chukchi heat their homes with a fat lamp made of clay, wood or stone, where they cook food. Among the coastal Chukchi, the yaranga differs from the housing of reindeer herders in that it does not have a smoke hole.

Famous people

Despite the fact that the Chukchi are a people far from civilization, among them there are those who have become known throughout the world thanks to their achievements and talents. The first Chukchi researcher Nikolai Daurkin is a Chukchi. He received his name at baptism. Daurkin was one of the first Russian subjects who landed in Alaska, did several important geographical discoveries 18th century, he was the first to draw up a detailed map of Chukotka and received noble title for his contribution to science. In the name of this outstanding person The peninsula in Chukotka was named.

Candidate philological sciences Peter Inenlikey was also born in Chukotka. He studied the peoples of the north and their culture, and is the author of books on research in the field of linguistics. northern peoples Russia, Alaska and Canada.