The Chukchi Bible Read online

  Mekym went up onto the Crag and from that height followed the departing ships for a long while. Truly the earth was boundless, and perhaps it was beyond man’s power to walk it all. Although he still could not see why the hairmouths had come to Uelen in the first place, it was obvious that Uelen had not been their final destination. Where would the ships go now? Onward to the east, to the other side of Irvytgyr? Or would they follow the coastline inhabited by Luoravetlan?

  The ships finally disappeared beyond the promontory, and turning around, Mekym found himself meeting Kalyanto’s equally pensive eye.

  The Wars Against the Tangitans

  For a long time the strangers did not return to Uelen. The visit of the explorer Cossacks, whom the Russians would later christen the Pathfinders, melted into the realm of past history, of memory, acquiring ever more fanciful details.

  Although from time to time the people of Uelen managed to trade for metal goods through American Eskimos, or their own Yakut neighbors who lived a nomadic life along the deep rivers of the west, or through Yukagirs, Koryaks, and Kaaramkyn, it was their first, now timeworn knives, axes, needles, cauldrons, and the remains of the multicolored droplets that kept the unexpected, magical first contact with the hairmouths alive in their memory.

  And there was one more reminder of the visitors: the appearance of unusual-looking children, light-haired, light-skinned, with sky blue eyes. The young mothers of such children became highly sought-after brides in Uelen.

  More and more often Uelen had news of bloody conflict between the Luoravetlan and the Tangitans, the Russian Cossacks. The Yakuts, Koryaks, and Yukagirs, who had once coexisted peacefully with the Luoravetlan, now made alliances with the new conquerors and taught them the best routes for invading the Luoravetlan’s ancient ground.

  This is when the first naming of our nation is recorded – in the dispatches of the Russian Cossacks. “Chukchi” . . . Doubtless the name stems from the word that nomadic, deer-herding Luoravetlan used to distinguish themselves from their shore-dwelling, sea-hunting tribesmen: chauchu.

  Here one must note that these historical accounts first appeared in the years of Soviet rule. The attempts to conquer the northeast landmass and the Chukotka Peninsula, to subjugate the peoples of the Chukotka, were described as the progressive actions of pioneer Cossacks; their attempts to forcibly baptize were interpreted as the desire to enlighten untutored, barbaric savages. But in reality the skirmishes between the Russian Cossacks, who carried firearms, and the Luoravetlan, who were armed with bows and spears, always devolved into a massacre of comparatively defenseless people. Only boundless bravery and selflessness, the determination to protect and defend their land, their wives, and their elders at any price, allowed the Chukchi to claim victories and prevent the Russians from cleaving deep into the Chukotka Peninsula.

  The struggle was complicated by the treachery of their neighbors, the Koryaks and Yakuts, who had accepted Russian sovereignty and the Russian Orthodox faith. The Cossacks were also able to recruit allies from among the Russified Yukagirs who had settled around the Siberian stronghold at Anadyr.

  The Chukchi fighters came from all around, not just from the settlements that were being invaded. Even far-off Uelen sent volunteers, who brought along some Eskimo warriors, their only allies in the far Northeast.

  The Chukchi warrior’s kit consisted of a set of bows with quivers full of feathered arrows, a long spear, and protective armor sewn from thick walrus skin to protect his chest, the lower part of his torso, and his legs. Some also affixed thin plates of walrus tusk to their armor. The head was protected by a visor and neck greaves of the same material.

  According to the tales, almost every family from Uelen sent someone to the bloody battles with the Russians. Many did not return, but were captured and tortured to death.

  The Chukchi cycle has retained a small number of legends, effectively embryonic heroic epic literature. As in any heroic tale, the events were invariably described so as to give the Luoravetlan victory; the defenders always triumphed over the Tangitans.

  Unfortunately, precisely for this reason almost all of Chukchi heroic folklore went unheeded by historians. It was not written down. Any negative talk about the Russians was considered politically harmful; even with extensive revision, it was dangerous to transmit these tales orally, for fear of getting the listeners in trouble, not to mention the storyteller himself.

  In truth, the Cossack cohorts were not so bothered about geographic discoveries as Russian historians would claim. They were equally unconcerned about introducing savage tribes to civilization, or bringing them culture and knowledge. They were mainly after tusk and fur. Scouring the beaches and pastures of Chukotka, the Russian tsar’s emissaries demanded a tribute of sable. The natives’ avowals that there was no sable on the unforested side of the Chukotka Peninsula resulted in the capture of villagers, the torturing of the elderly, the rape of the women and girls.

  And yet the Chukchi continued their desperate defense of their land from the invading foreigners, who demanded ever more furs and tusk in the name of Tirkerym – the Sun Sovereign, their mysterious, greedy, insatiable tsar.

  During the second half of the seventeenth century, around 1690, the Cossack ataman Vassily Kuznetsov crossed the land of the Koryaks and penetrated deep into Chukchi country. He was ambushed and destroyed together with his cohort.

  In 1709 a Cossack soldier named Ivan Lokosov led a raid on the Chukchi. He captured one man, extracting a promise of tribute, and also freed the Cossack boy Ivan Ankudinov after twelve years of captivity.

  Among the many “true tales” – the Luoravetlan term for historic tales – the most numerous are those concerning Pavlutsky.

  Russian historians insist that the main impulse behind these punitive expeditions was the ceaseless complaints of raiding from the Chukchi’s neighbors. Yet more often than not, armed incursions against the Chukchi ended in defeat; in 1730, Shestakov’s squadron was annihilated, and the man himself captured and executed.

  Pavlutsky had more success. His first punitive incursion left Anadyr in 1731. There were 215 Cossacks and about 200 Koryaks and Yukagirs under his command. The journey to the sea itself took two weeks. This time Pavlutsky was victorious over the Chukchi armed parties, capturing large deer herds and several hundred Chukchi, though this last figure is highly doubtful. On the other hand, even if the number is inflated, it provides indirect evidence that before armed conflict with the Cossacks, the Chukchi were much more numerous, and the main reason for the population’s decline was not epidemic diseases, as Russian historians claim, but the bloody butchery of the Cossacks.

  Seventeen thirty-eight saw two thousand Chukchi, bent on vengeance and armed with bows and spears, attack the Koryaks in the Anadyr administrative district, kill many people and plunder the deer herds. The tsar’s representatives fortified the Anadyr garrison, but the Chukchi continued to raid the Koryaks, punishing them for their alliance with the Russians.

  In 1744, Pavlutsky and a hundred Cossacks executed a rather daring raid along the coastline, razing the camps of coastal and deer-herding Chukchi as he marched, sparing neither women nor children nor the old. Pavlutsky’s raids continued until he was captured and executed by the Chukchi.

  The most famous man of our line was Kunleliu, One Whisker. According to legend, Kunleliu wore only one whisker on his face, so as not to be taken for a hairmouth. Legend has him as the engineer of victory over Pavlutsky, whom the Chukchi called Yakunin.

  Kunleliu’s strategy was extremely simple. He had noticed that the terrifying, fire-breathing sticks of the Tangitans were slow to regain their strength after each eruption. The main thing was to avoid that first volley . . . Notching another arrow took far less time than reloading the Tangitans’ fiery weapon. Kunleliu took one victory after another, until he finally met Yakunin face-to-face. Some versions of the legend have Kunleliu defeating the mighty Russian Cossack in hand-to-hand combat; others say that the warriors fought first and only th
en the leaders. Yakunin was captured and tortured to death in retribution for the slaughtered and tortured Chukchi warriors.

  Once it grew convinced that attempts to conquer the Chukchi by force and force them to swear fealty to the Sun Sovereign – the Tsar of all the Russias – were fruitless and, moreover, that the Chukchi would not let them through the Bering Strait and to America, the tsar’s government radically changed its tactics. The numbers of armed garrisons on Chukotka were reduced, and many fortresses decommissioned.

  Now was the time of more peaceful relations with the Chukchi, a time of trade and unsuccessful attempts to convert the Chukchi to Christianity.

  This song of Kunleliu, One Whisker, has been passed down through my family:And so our Kunleliu made ready for battle

  To drive the hairmouths from our land

  Like hungry wolves they came

  From their strange, warm country

  Kunleliu took up his spear, and honed it

  Fletched his arrows with raven feathers

  And filled his quiver, and dressed himself

  In walrus-tusk plate armor.

  And in that long battle

  He triumphed over Yakunin-the-Russian

  And captured him, and stopped his mouth

  With deerhide and with his nose and ears.

  Tied his white lolo9 in a knot,

  Plugged his ass with a wooden cork.

  And so he died in agony, the enemy-Tangitan,

  Choking on his own evil.

  Thus did Kunleliu avenge his tribe,

  His Luoravetlan brothers!

  The Great Market Fair

  The sun was not yet high above the horizon and frost nipped at any body part exposed to the elements, especially the hands, as they threaded the bone buttons of the dogs’ harness and pulled tight the straps that bound the laden sleds. The travelers would journey from Uelen to the far-off lands of the Kolyma, where the yearly market fair took place on the shore of the Anui River. They packed up their trade goods of walrus tusk, lakhtak straps, and fur-lined clothes, handling the fox, sable, ermine, wolverine furs, and fawn skins carefully. Besides the necessities of knives, axes, saws, cauldrons, tobacco, and tea, they hoped to trade for sugar – sweet lumps that melted like snow in hot water – fabric for men’s and women’s kamleikas – cloth overalls worn over warm, fur-lined clothing – and, if at all possible, the magical brew that made whoever sampled it not only so strong in body but so courageous in spirit that he could fight any man.

  Young Tynemlen, the son of Uelen’s chief shaman Mlerintyn, lent a keen ear to the grown-up conversation. The anticipation of adventure to come, encounters with the people of other tribes and with the Tangitans who possessed wondrous riches and astounding things – like the white sheets that resembled bleached nerpa skin, threaded together in stacks and used to record human speech – filled him with curiosity and excitement. They said that a Tangitan shaman need only bring his face close to one of these sheets in order to remember the words and speak the spell.

  The Tangitans came from warm lands. Their great chief, whom the Luoravetlan called Tirkerym Sun Sovereign, was especially sensitive to cold and required a vast amount of soft warm fur. All the tribes neighboring the Luoravetlan had to give Tirkerym’s messengers a yearly tribute of fur, but Tynemlen’s tribesmen were allowed to make a voluntary gift to this tsar who seemed unable ever to get warm. They usually volunteered second-rate pelts, saving the best for trade.

  Tynemlen checked the dogs’ leather booties once again; while the snow would be melting a bit now, by the time they made their way back, the morning’s crystalline ground cover would be sharp enough to cut the dogs’ paws.

  Mlerintyn’s dogs were acknowledged to be the best in Uelen. Tall, fluffy, with clear blue eyes, they even looked different from the other teams. The lead sled, which once belonged to his father, had twelve dogs in harness, while Tynemlen rode a lighter sled with only six dogs.

  There are strict rules to running dogsleds, whose observance does much to ease the journey, especially one of such distance and duration. The most important thing is to give the team enough kopal’khen to eat, that all-purpose nutritional product which is equally good for dogs and for people. After a morning meal of kopal’khen a man can spend the entire day out of doors without feeling hunger or cold – that is, of course, if he is clothed appropriately for the season.

  For this journey Tynemlen had chosen to wear his fawn-skin shirt. The shirt’s skin-side layer of soft hairs would prevent excessive sweating, and it was easy to clean: all you needed to do was turn it inside out and leave it out in the cold. His under-trousers were similarly made from fawn skin and hugged his limbs like leggings. The outer kukhlianka was a roomy, knee-length overshirt, made from the hide of a nebliui, a deer killed in the autumn culling. The outer trousers were usually sewn from kamuss. For wet weather, Tynemlen also had a pair of trousers made from a spring nerpa’s hide. Footwear was exceedingly important. First, a pair of stockings: the thick, densely bristled deer hide was excellent at absorbing sweat and keeping the feet dry. Torbasses made of choice kamuss went over the stockings, and the space between the stockings and the soles of the torbasses was packed with special tundra grass. Kamuss mittens, hair side out, kept your hands nice and warm, though you sometimes had to take off the mittens in order to tie something or dust icy snow from the dogs’ paws, even in the worst of the cold. A warm malakhai for your head, usually of fawn skin. The hem of the kukhlianka was commonly trimmed in wolverine fur, and so was the malakhai headgear, and the topmost kamleika – which protected the fur clothing from snow and damp and was made from thin suede deer hide or, in later years, from cloth.

  There was another item necessary for a journey: a piece of bearskin containing a vessel of waterproof hide, later replaced by a glass bottle. This went inside the waistband, pressed up against your bare belly, so that there was always a supply of melted water to spray on the sled’s runners. The thin layer of ice that resulted from this spraying helped the sled slide over the frost-dried snow.

  Now all the preparations for departure were completed. Those who had come to see the travelers off stood to the side in a silent small crowd. As was the custom, there would be no final words of advice. All had already been prepared by Tynemlen’s father, Mlerintyn, at dawn. He had sacrificed to the gods and had spoken the Incantations, addressing the aspects of the earth – West, North, East, and South – as well as the chief winds and the Outer Forces who guided and protected travelers.

  And so, in early March 1780, the party set off. Their path lay along the first range of ice hummocks along Uelen’s beach, where there was always a strip of even ice, covered over with well-tamped snow. This was the road to Inchoun, the village of their kin and neighbors, and the snow bore traces of earlier journeys by sled.

  The travelers stopped to rest in the camps of the nomad deer herders, which were strewn across the Arctic shore on shingled spits and high promontories. The landscape they passed through practically never changed, yet it differed from Uelen in some ineffable way.

  The guests were met with a warm welcome and given the best beds, while their dogs were fed from the hosts’ own stores. The women beat the guests’ clothes free of snow and mended them; they would replace the grass insoles with fresh new ones.

  Some of the frozen water that had penetrated deep into the continent had to be crossed on bare ice, and they clambered over ice hummocks, threading their way through agglomerations of broken ice. From time to time they stopped to hunt and every so often managed to harpoon a nerpa. Once Mlerintyn even speared a polar bear.

  The dogs had scented the animal from afar. Mlerintyn unstrapped four of his dogs from their harness and they immediately bolted for the crags along the shore, through the rearing ice hummocks. This was the time of year when pregnant she-bears were getting ready to give birth in their snow-cave lairs. But here was an old male, whose yellowing fur was starkly visible against the pristine snow. The dogs harried the animal as it attem
pted to flee, tearing at it each time it tried to break through their circle and run for its life. Calmly, unhurriedly, Mlerintyn took out his spear, checked the edge against his thumb, and, instructing his son to hold the reins tight, approached the bear. Two of Mlerintyn’s companions stood ready, in case the hunter should need help. Seeing the approaching human, the bear made a last effort to get away, but two of the dogs literally hung from its rear, refusing to unlock their jaws. Mlerintyn came closer and threw his spear, which found its target expertly. With a roar, the bear collapsed onto his front paws, then fell sideways, on top of the spear that protruded from underneath his left front paw. Only now did the dogs let go. Waggling their fluffy tails, they ran back to their master and nuzzled him.

  The men hurried to butcher the bear, knowing that in this cold the carcass would freeze quickly and then no blade would be able to hack through the stone-hard flesh.

  They stopped for the night at the nearest camp – only five yarangas strong – and held a feast not just for humans but for dogs too.

  The tiny settlement had been set up on a shingled beach, which had virtually disappeared beneath a thick cover of snow. The people in the small yarangas lived poorly and seemed not to have eaten their fill in a long while. They were ecstatic at the prospect of fresh bear meat.

  Mlerintyn and his son were lodged in the last yaranga in the row, which was slightly larger than the others. It housed a family of three: a husband and wife plus an adolescent daughter, who shyly cast curious, sympathetic glances Tynemlen’s way.

  “We’ve weathered a hard winter,” their host confided at the end of the late, copious meal. “First, the red disease10 came to visit us. Half the village died straightaway. Right after that, more trouble: chest coughs. Our shaman was one of the first to die, so we were left without any help. You could only rely on yourself. But the men were weak from sickness and couldn’t go far out to sea . . . We have no old people or children left. I lost my parents, and so has my wife. Our two younger sons also left for the clouds . . .”