Part 31

The tshums were shifted to an adjacent hill. The unfortunate herd, which had started from the Ural two thousand strong, and had now dwindled to a couple of hundred, whose path was marked by a line of carcasses, was collected afresh around the tshum; but next morning there were again forty corpses around the resting-place.

We knew the danger of infection from animals with splenic fever or anthrax, but we had not adequately appreciated its extent. Thus we bought some fresh, apparently quite healthy reindeer, harnessed them to three sledges, loaded these with our baggage, and striding beside them went on our way lightened. The plague forbade us from getting reindeer flesh to eat, as we had hoped, and we began to look around more carefully and anxiously for some small game, a willow grouse, a great snipe, a golden plover, or a duck. Sparing our slender supplies to the utmost, we crouched around the miserable fire, whenever the least of Diana’s nymphs had been propitious, and collectively roasted our paltry spoil as best we might. Of satisfying our hunger there was no longer any possibility.

After we had crossed the way of death which Schungei had followed, we reached the first goal, the Bodarata. There we had the inestimable good fortune to find more tshums and reindeer. Thus aided we made for the sea, but we were forced to turn without setting foot on the shore. For before us lay not only a pathless morass, but again a countless heap of reindeer carcasses; we were once more on the path by which Schungei had fled homewards, and our new acquaintance, the herdsman Zanda, would not dare to cross it.

For in his herd also death had been busy with his scythe; the destroyer had visited his house, and yet more disastrously those of his neighbours. The man who had been his companion on his wanderings had eaten of an infected fat reindeer which he had hastily killed, and he had paid for his rashness with his own life and that of his family. Thrice had the herd Zanda shifted his tshum, and thrice he had dug a grave among the corpses of the reindeer. First, two children fell victims to the dread disease, then the thoughtless man’s servant, on the third day the man himself. Another child was still ill, groaning in its agony, when we set out on our journey to the sea; its cries were silenced when we returned to the tshum, for the grave had received a fifth victim. And this was not to be the last.

One of our men, the Ostiak Hadt, a willing, cheerful fellow, who had endeared himself to us, had been complaining since the day before of torturing pains which became ever more severe. He complained especially of an increasing sensation of cold. We had placed him on one of the sledges when we reached the herdsman’s tshum, and thus we bore him when the tshum was shifted for the fifth time. He lay at the fire moaning and whining in our midst. From time to time he raised himself and bared his body to the warmth of the fire. Similarly he pushed his numb feet against the flames, and seemed to care not that they singed. At length we fell asleep, perhaps he did also, but when we awoke next morning his bed was empty. Outside, in front of the tshum, he sat quietly leaning on a sledge, with his face to the sun, whose warmth he sought. Hadt was dead.

Some hours later we buried him according to the customs of his people. He was a true “heathen”, and in heathenish fashion he should be buried. Our “orthodox” companions hesitated to do this; our “heathen” followers helped us in the ceremony, which, though not Christian, was at any rate dignified and human. The grave received its sixth victim.

Should this be the last? Involuntarily this question arose; it was gruesome for us all to have death as a travelling companion. Fortunately for us, Hadt’s grave was the last on this journey.

Seriously, very seriously, still oppressed by increasing dearth of provisions, we turned again towards the Shtchutshya. Zanda provided a scant diet for our followers, while we relied on what we could shoot, and were pinched enough. But one forenoon we captured a family of geese, and shot several willow grouse, snipe, and plovers, and celebrated a feast, for it was pleasant to be able to eat without counting the mouthfuls. But without the help of our host it would hardly have been possible for us to have survived.

We reached the river, and, almost at the end of our stores, we regained our boat. Here we feasted on fare which was poor enough, though, after a fortnight’s privation, it seemed most sumptuous. We said farewell for ever to the tundra.

A Shaman, whom we had found busy fishing further up the Obi, and had asked to give us a sample of his art and wisdom, had duly beaten his dull-sounding drum to summon Yamaul, the messenger of the gods, who befriended him, and had told us that we should next year revisit the inhospitable country which we had just left, but that we should then go to the region where the Shtchutshya, Bodarata, and Ussa have their source. For two emperors would reward us, and the elders of our people would be satisfied with our report, and send us forth again. Moreover, on our journey no further misfortune would befall us. So the messenger of the gods, perceived by him alone, had said.

The last part of his prophecy was true enough. Slowly but without mishap or accident we journeyed for twenty-three days up the Obi, and after long delay we fortunately reached a steamboat, on which we ascended the Irtish for three days. Without misfortune, though not without hindrance, we crossed the Ural, in a comfortable steamer we glided swiftly down the Kama, more slowly we ascended the Volga. In Nijni-Novgorod, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, we were hospitably received, as before, and were joyously welcomed at home. Our “elders” seem to have been well pleased with our report, but to the tundra I at least shall never return.

THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS.

The struggle for existence which man has to maintain in Siberia is easy and toilless now, and will probably remain so for centuries to come--easy and toilless especially among the lavishly endowed lands in the south of the country, and not too hard or laborious even in those regions which we are wont to picture as an icy waste, an inhospitable desert, which we still regard in this light if we only travel hastily and unwillingly through them. In the far north of West Siberia the climate is harsh and severe; the earth which, a little below the surface, is frozen and stiffened for ever, refuses to bring forth fruit; the sun will not ripen the bread-yielding grain; but even here Nature has bountifully shaken her horn of plenty, for what the land denies, is yielded by the water. The people who have dwelt for centuries in these latitudes, which we so carefully avoid, may appear poor and miserable in our eyes; in reality they are neither. They are able to procure all they need; they can even secure many luxuries, for their country yields them much more than is enough merely to sustain life. They do of course struggle, more or less consciously, for “an existence worthy of man”, but not with any grudge, outspoken or suppressed, against those whose lot is happier. Indeed they are happier than we think, for they are more modest, more easily satisfied than we are; they are utterly ignorant of what we call passion in the stricter sense; they accept the pleasures within their reach with a childlike joy, and the sorrows which visit them, with that deeply felt but quickly forgotten grief which is characteristic of childhood. Black care may stand beside their bed; but they banish it whenever they perceive a ray of joy, and they forget affliction whenever the sun of good fortune once more shines upon them. They rejoice in wealth and complain of poverty, but they see their riches disappear without giving way to despair, and their poverty turn to wealth without losing their equanimity. Even in mature age they remain children in thought, feeling, and behaviour; they are happier than we.

The Ostiaks with whom we came most frequently in contact on the lower Obi, whose society we preferred, and whom we learned to know best, belong to the Finnish family, and profess the same religion as another branch of the same family, the Samoyedes, while their manners, customs, and way of life generally, are approximately the same as those of all the Finns in a restricted sense, and therefore also of the Lapps. They are wandering herdsmen and fisher-folk, huntsmen and fowlers, like the Samoyedes and like the Lapps. Apart from their religion, and perhaps also their language, they resemble the Lapps more than the Samoyedes, for there are among them dwellers in fixed homes as well as nomadic herdsmen, while the Samoyedes, even when engaged in fishing, very rarely exchange their movable hut for a fixed log-house, at least in the parts of Siberia through which we travelled.

It may be that the Ostiak tribe was more numerous at one time than it is now, but it was probably never a people in our sense of the word. In some parts of the territory inhabited, or at least traversed by them, the population is said to be continually decreasing, while in others it is slightly on the increase; but the extent of increase or decrease seems inconsiderable. To reckon the whole number of these people at fifty thousand individuals is probably a high estimate. In the whole of the great district of Obdorsk, which extends from 65 degrees northern latitude to the northern end of the Samoyede peninsula, and from the Ural to the upper Chass river, there live at present, according to official statistics, not more than five thousand three hundred and eighty-two male Ostiaks, of whom not more than one thousand three hundred and seventy-six are able-bodied or assessable men. If we take for granted that there are as many women and girls, the whole number does not reach eleven thousand; and the above estimate is rather too high than too low, even though the tract inhabited by our people extends up the Obi to the district of Surgut, and up the Irtish to the neighbourhood of Tobolsk.

All the Ostiaks on the upper Irtish and middle Obi live in fixed log-houses, very simple, but resembling those of the Russians, and only here and there among these permanent dwellings, which indicate a higher degree of civilization, do we come upon a birch-bark tent or tshum. On the other hand, on the lower Obi, and especially between Obdorsk and the mouth of the stream, only birch-tents are to be seen, and they are, naturally, the only homes of the nomadic reindeer herdsman. Almost, if not exactly in agreement with this difference in dwelling, is the difference in religion, for the Ostiaks inhabiting settled villages belong to the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and are reckoned among its members, as they have been baptized, while those dwelling in the tshum are still true to their ancient faith, which, although regarded by the Russian priests and their followers as blind heathenism, is by no means devoid of poetic grandeur, still less of moral worth. The tent-dwellers certainly practise their religion with more ardour and conviction than the settled villagers do their so-called Christianity, which, as far as can be observed, seems to an unbiassed onlooker rather a superstitious idolatry than a nobler substitute for the religion which grew out of a childlike mood, and finds expression in childlike ways. With the adoption of log-houses and of Christianity, the Ostiaks of the central Obi and lower Irtish regions have, to a certain extent, given up their own dress in favour of that of the neighbouring Russian fisher-folk, and in their intercourse with these, have adopted many of their manners and customs. In part, too, they have lost their purity of race, and have retained only the inalienable characteristics, the language and all peculiarities preserved by it, perhaps also the skill, dexterity, and harmless good-nature common to all the Ostiaks. But one cannot venture to assert that their morals have improved with their civilization, or that their purity of life has increased with Christianity; and in any case it is more satisfactory to get to know the heathen Ostiaks, and to come into close contact with a still primitive people, than to concern ourselves with that portion of the tribe which gives us but a dim picture of what they once were, or others still are. I shall, therefore, limit my remarks to a consideration of those Ostiaks who worship the divinity Ohrt, who live in polygamy when their means permit, who bury their dead exactly as their fathers did. My sketch will lose nothing, and will gain in unity, if it takes account of these alone, and leaves the others out.

It is difficult to speak of a common type among the Ostiaks, and still more difficult to describe it. I have repeatedly attempted to do this, but have always been forced to recognize the impossibility of adequately describing a face in words, or of satisfactorily delineating with the pen those tribal peculiarities which are evident enough to the eye. In shape of face, colour of skin, hair, and eyes, they vary greatly; their racial affinity, that is, their Mongol origin, is by no means always very apparent, in fact, it is often difficult to detect, and when at last one imagines one has formulated certain definite average characteristics, one learns from other members of the same stock that their applicability is only relative and by no means unconditional. In what follows I shall attempt to give a comprehensive idea of what I saw among the Ostiaks whom we observed.

The Ostiaks are of middle height, somewhat slender in general build, their hands, feet, and limbs generally well-proportioned, the hands perhaps rather large, the calves of the legs almost always thin; their features seem intermediate between those of the other Mongols and those of the North American Indians: for their brown eyes are small and always set obliquely, though by no means very strikingly so; the cheek-bones are not very prominent, but the lower portion of the face is so compressed towards the narrow pointed chin that the whole has an angular appearance, indeed, as the lips are also sharply cut, it is often really cat-like, especially among women and children, though the nose is, on the whole, slightly, and in many cases not at all flattened. The rich, smooth, but not stiff, hair is usually dark brown or black, rarely light brown, and still more rarely blonde; the beard is scanty, but this is chiefly in consequence of the habit young dandies have of pulling out the hairs; the eyebrows are thick, often bushy. The colour of the skin is not much less white than that of a European who is much in the open air and exposed to wind and weather, and the yellowish look which it usually has is sometimes entirely awanting.

Though the above holds good of most Ostiaks, I do not mean to imply that one can have any doubt about their racial affinities if one examines them closely. In a few individuals the Mongolian traits are apparent on the most cursory glance; these types are small in stature, the lively brown eyes are elongated and obliquely set, the cheek-bones are very prominent, the stiff hair is deep black, and all the exposed parts of the body have a decided copper-red or leather-brown colour.

I can offer no opinion as to the language of the Ostiaks; I can only say that it embraces two dialects which can be readily distinguished even by strangers. That in use on the middle Obi is euphonious, if somewhat drawling and sing-song, while that prevailing on the lower Obi, probably because of the general habit of preferring the softer Samoyede tongue, is much more rapid and flowing, though there is still distinct enunciation of the syllables.

The Christian Ostiaks, as has already been mentioned, imitate the dress of the Russians, and the clothing of their women only differs from that of the Russian fisher-women in being decorated in many places with glass beads, and in the addition of special sash-like ribbons, like the stole of a Catholic priest, embroidered all over with such beads. The heathen Ostiaks, on the other hand, use nothing but the skin of the reindeer for clothing, and only employ the furs of other animals for the occasional decoration of the reindeer, or, as the Russians call them, stag skins. Their dress consists of a close-fitting skin coat reaching to the knee; in the men it is slit down the breast, in the women it is open down the whole front, but held together with leather thongs; a hood of the same material is usually attached to or forms part of the dress; mittens also are sewn on; leather breeches reach below the knee; and leather stockings, which fasten over the knee, complete the attire. The fur garment worn by the women is edged down the sides of the opening with a carefully pieced border of variously-coloured little squares of short-haired fur, and has always a broad band of dog-skin round the foot; that worn by the men has at most a border of dog-skin, and has always a hood; the leather stockings, if they are decorated at all, are composed of many prettily-combined, diversely-coloured stripes of skin from the leg of a reindeer, with a stout shoe partly sewn on, partly laced over the foot. A broad leather belt, usually studded with metal buttons, confines the man’s garment at the waist and holds his knife; a gaily-coloured head-wrap, with long fringes, which replaces the hood in summer, falls down over the woman’s dress. Shirts are unknown; but, on the other hand, the woman wears a girdle, of a kind unknown among us. By way of ornament, the woman puts on her fingers as many brass, or, where circumstances permit, silver rings as the lower joint will wear, so that that portion of the hand is literally mailed; a more or less handsome string of glass beads is hung round the neck, and very heavy tassel-like ear-rings of glass beads, twisted wire, and metal buttons, are hung rather over than in the ear; finally, the hair is plaited into two rope-like braids reaching to the middle of the calf, and interwoven with woollen threads. The Ostiak dandy dresses his hair in the same way--a proof that fools are alike all the world over--while the ordinary man usually wears his hair long, but loose.

Still simpler than the dress, but equally well adapted to its purpose,--for their costume, though not beautiful, is suited alike for summer and winter use,--is the dwelling of the Ostiak, a cone-shaped, movable hut covered with birch-bark, the tshum of the fisher-folk and wandering herdsmen. The framework is formed of twenty or thirty thin, smooth poles, from four to six yards in length, and pointed at both ends. These are fixed in a circle, which is very exact though measured only by the eye, two of them bent towards each other are fastened near their tops with a short cord, and serve as a support for all the rest. The outer covering consists of from five to eight sheets cut to the convex curve of the cone, and composed of little pieces of birch-bark previously boiled and thus rendered pliant. On the least exposed side is an opening which serves as a door, and which can be closed at will with another sheet of bark; the pointed top of the tent is always left uncovered to admit of the free passage of smoke. From the door straight to the opposite side of the hut runs a passage, in the middle of which the fire is built; over this two horizontal poles, fastened to the supports of the hut, serve as a drying-stand, from which also the cooking-kettle hangs. To right and left of the passage, boards, or at least mats, are laid down, and serve as flooring and also to mark off the sleeping places, whose head-end is towards the wall. Mats, made of bundles of sedge, long-haired, soft reindeer skins, and cushions stuffed with reindeer hair or dried moss, form the bed, and its coverings are of fur. A mosquito tent, under which the whole family creeps in summer, protects the sleepers more effectually against the winged tormentors than the smoky fire of rotten willow wood which is kept constantly burning in the entrance of the tshum. Cooking vessels, tea and drinking kettles, bowls, leather bags for holding flour and hard-baked bread, little chests with locks for holding the most valuable possessions, especially the tea-set, an axe, a gimlet, leather scrapers, a bowl-like work-box, a bow, crossbow or gun, snow-shoes, and various implements of the chase, make up the domestic plenishings. A household god replaces the crucifix, which is rarely absent from the huts of the Christian Ostiaks.

The tshum is protected against the cold and storms of winter by a leather covering of worn-out skins sewn together, or, more effectually, by spreading a second layer of sheets of birch-bark over the first.

If the owner of the tshum be a fisherman, one may see in front of his dwelling drying-stands for hanging up the nets, and others for drying fish, all very carefully made; also exceedingly light, daintily-wrought fishing-baskets, several excellent little boats, and other fishing apparatus; if he be also a huntsman there are in addition all kinds of implements of the chase, such as bows and spring-crossbows; if he be a reindeer-herdsman there are several well-made sledges with their appropriate harness, and the boat which is also indispensable.

Every Ostiak is experienced in fishing, almost all hunt or set snares, but not all are herdsmen. To possess reindeer means, among them, to be well-to-do, to possess many is to be rich; to live by fishing alone is poverty. Horses and cows are to be seen in some of their settlements, though in very small numbers, and only in the district about the middle of the river-basin; sheep, and sometimes even a cat may be kept; but the real domestic animals are the reindeer and dog. Without these, especially without the reindeer, a well-to-do man would scarcely think life possible, and it is indeed to them he owes all that makes up what he looks on as the joy of existence. As the Bedouin, the wandering herdsman of Central Africa, deems himself superior to those of his race who till the fields; as the Kirghiz looks down almost contemptuously on those who strive to wrest subsistence from the soil, so the possessor, or even the herdsman of reindeer, only uses net and hook to supply his own necessities, while the fisherman casts his nets and sets his baskets not for himself alone, but in the service of others. The wealth of a man is calculated by the number of his reindeer; with them his prosperity and his happiness are alike bound up. And when the deadly murrain annihilates his herds, he loses not wealth and happiness alone, but much more: esteem and rank, self-respect and confidence, even, it may be, his religion, manners, and morals, in short--himself. “As long as the plague did not ravage our herds,” said the district governor, Mamru, the most intelligent Ostiak whom we met, “we lived joyously and were rich, but since we have begun to lose them, we are gradually becoming poor fishermen; without the reindeer we cannot hold out, we cannot live.” Poor Ostiaks! in these words your doom is pronounced. Even now the reindeer, which once were counted by hundreds of thousands, have dwindled to a total of fifty thousand, and still the Destroying Angel passes almost yearly through the antlered herds. What will be the end? The Russian priests will gain more and more Christians, the Russian fishermen more and more hirelings, but the Ostiaks will be Ostiaks only in name, and that at no far distant time.

The reindeer of Northern Asia is an essentially different creature from that of Lapland, for it is not only larger and more stately, but it is a domestic animal in the best sense of that term. We all imagined we knew the reindeer; for in Lapland we had examined it precisely and carefully with the eye of the naturalist; but in Siberia we were obliged to admit that till then we had gained a very imperfect idea of this most remarkable of domestic animals. In Lapland we had known the deer ceaselessly resisting, submitting with visible reluctance to the yoke of the little men, and always apparently bent on regaining its freedom; here in Siberia we found a docile, willing animal, attached to man, and trusting in him. Certainly the Ostiak knows well how to deal with it. Though he does not treat it with the tenderness he bestows on his dog, he is, on the whole, not unkind to it, and he is very rarely rough or brutal. Unlike the Laplander, he refrains from milking it, but he harnesses it more frequently; for, winter and summer, it must draw him and his family, the tshum with its appurtenances, and all the other requisites for the continual migrations. The Lapp, on the other hand, only harnesses the reindeer to his sledge in winter. Like the Lapp, the Ostiak makes use of every portion of the carcase of a slaughtered animal, with the sole exception of the stomach and intestines. The flesh serves him as food, the bones and horns make all sorts of implements, the tendons supply twine for sewing his clothing, that, and whatever else he requires in the way of leather, is furnished by the skin; even the hoofs are utilized. On a light sledge, drawn by the reindeer, the Ostiak travels, in summer and in winter, from place to place--to weddings, to festivals, to the chase, and to the burial of his friends; with it he draws his dead to their last resting-place; he slaughters the reindeer and eats it with his guests, or in honour of his dead, whom he wraps up in its skin, as he does himself. Truly, without the reindeer he cannot endure, cannot live.

Of scarcely less importance than his horned herds is the Ostiak’s second domestic animal, the dog. It is possessed and cared for not only by the wandering herdsman, but by every Ostiak--fisher as well as huntsman, settler as well as nomad. The Ostiak dog is represented by two different breeds, whose chief difference, however, is only in size. Whether our dog-fanciers would find it beautiful I cannot say. For my part, I must pronounce it beautiful, because, with the sole exception of the colour, it possesses all the characteristics of a wild dog. It most resembles the Pomeranian dog, but is usually larger; indeed, it is often so large as to approach the wolf in size; and its slender build also distinguishes it from the Pomeranian. The head is elongated, the muzzle moderately long, the neck short, the body long, the limbs slender, the tail moderately long, the brassy eyes obliquely set, the short pointed ears held erect, the hair extraordinarily long and thick, consisting of a mixture of decidedly woolly and bristly hairs. The colour varies, but is predominantly pure white, or white with deep black, usually regular markings on both sides of the head, including the ears, on the back and on the sides of the body; or it may be wolf or mouse gray, or dun-coloured, watered and waved, but never striped. The slightly bushy tail is always carried hanging, or extended, but never curled, and the resemblance to a wild dog is thereby greatly increased.

Constant and intimate association with man has transformed the Ostiak dog into an exceedingly good-natured animal. He is watchful but not given to biting, brave but not pugnacious, faithful and eager but not hostile to strangers nor violent. Though he hastens suspiciously, if not exactly with unfriendliness, towards a stranger, he becomes confiding as soon as he hears him speak with his master, or sees him step into the tshum. He is in no way pampered, for though he loves to share the dwelling of his master or mistress, he exposes himself without apparent discomfort to wind and weather, throws himself unhesitatingly into the cold water of the river and swims straight across a broad arm, or, when on a journey, trots on uncomplainingly under the sledge to which he is chained, whether the way lead over bog or morass, among dwarf-birch bushes or through water. Intelligent and cunning, ingenious and inventive, clever and active, he knows how to make his life comfortable, and to adapt himself to all situations. In the tshum he lies self-denyingly beside much-desired foods; outside of his master’s hut he is a bold and greedy thief; among the dwarf-birches of the tundra he trots indifferently under the sledge, but over smooth or other easy ground he places himself with all four legs together on the runners of the sledge and lets himself be carried. While hunting he is a faithful and useful assistant to his master, but he snaps away the game which he has scented and a stranger shot, and devours it with such an air of inoffensive enjoyment that one cannot be angry with him. In tending the herds he shows himself acquainted with all the peculiarities and tricks of the reindeer, and he is docile enough; but he is never quite so trustworthy as our sheep-dog, for he allows himself an opinion of his own, and only yields his services without resisting when it appears to him absolutely necessary.