Tribal complement of Tungus of Urul’ga steppe duma

The article is devoted to the interpretation of some issues. It’s well-known that to the census of 1926 almost all Tungus population of the Nerchinsk Uezd suddenly “disappeared”. The history of the Urul’ga Steppe Duma as an administrative board is not properly described in Russian and foreign science. It turned out to investigate this disappeared population through the interpretation and description of these archival documents of State Archive of Transbaikal Krai. Scientific introduction of the archival documents revealed fully unexplored for science the following questions. Firstly, to determine the preliminary ethnic and linguistic origin of the Nerchinsk Tungus in past. Secondly, to describe the facts on the history of Urul’ga Steppe Duma as the board of administration by the Tungus population of the Nerchinsk Uezd. Thirdly, to determine the tribal complement of Tungus of Urul’ga Steppe Duma. The article is written on the basis of the analysis of the essence of 15 archival documents of the State Archive of Transbaikal Krai, funds № 1о, 29, 31, 55, 239, 284, 300, the documents of which describe different aspects of every-day life and of simple commodity economy of Tungus of Gantimur. Some documents dated by 1689-1725, 1786 years. Special attention is devoted to those where the tribal names of Tungus of the Urul’ga Steppe Duma are presented. The full number of the quoted sources apart from the archive sources is of 19 subjects, including works by Alexeyev M.P., Vasilevich G.M., Georgi I.G., Dolgykh B.O., Patkanov S.K., Tugolukov V.A., devoted to the description of number and generic complement of Tungus of Siberia and partly of the Nerchinsk Uezd. The first part of the article compiles the historical issues, which can prove the ethnic and genetic connection of Tungus people of Nerchinsk with the Mongol-speaking Dauren. They are connected by “Manzhu letter”, shaman and penetrated “lamaizm” as appointed believings. The second part describes the history of Urul’ga Steppe Duma with the detailed analysis of the archival documents. The third part is devoted to the attempt to establish the approximate number of Tungus tribes and their ethnic and linguistic origin. It turned out that all Tungus population of Urul’ga leaded by kn’yaz’ Gantimur is of different origin as well in ethnic and linguistic relation, because they were divided into “wandering Tungus”. These Tungus were, in our opinion, those the few tribes of the Evenks, who wander with their 30 deer’s and were registered by accident to Urul’ga. The greater part of the tribes was “settled” ones, who like Dauren were grain farmers, cattle-breeders and hunters. “Nomadic” Tungus distinguished themselves by instability of location, having the habit of free motion to go to near-by Man’chzhu and Mongolia. “Riding” Tungus of Tukchinskiy, Uzonovskiy and Gunovskiy tribes were connected with khamnigan. The analysis of the documents dealing with description of the tribes of different years and censuses in Russia, gives the approximate number of taxpayer Tungus of Nerchinsk. It was important to establish the number of these Tungus tribes, because of their decrease. At last, to the first part of the 20th century they disappear with the Urul’ga Steppe duma. The number of their tribes decreased from 43 to 34, then to 25, constantly disappearing from censuses of the last years of the 20th century.

Keywords

Authors

References