День оленевода – праздник долган
Dolgans are indigenous minorities living in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).
Most of the Dolgans live in the Taimyr Dolgan-Nenets municipal district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (the rural settlement of Khatanga and the urban settlement of Dudinka), a small part of the Dolgans live in the Anabar ulus of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).
According to the 2010 census, the number of Dolgans in the Russian Federation is 7885 people, 1840 people live in cities, 6045 in rural areas.
Self-names are widespread - haka, dulgaan, tye kihite.
Dolgans differ in dialects: Western, Eastern and Popigai-Anabar.
The Dolgans formed as an ethnos relatively recently, in the 17th-19th centuries, by mixing and merging groups of other peoples - the Evenks (Tungus), Yakuts and Russians (the so-called Zatundrapeasants).
For the first time, the Dolgans are mentioned in the "Order to the steward Pyotr Golovin and the clerk Efim Filatov, sent to Siberia to the Lena River to build a prison and bring Siberian foreigners into Russian citizenship", dated August 6, 1638.
The first scientific information about the Dolgans is contained in the works of the researchers of Siberia in the 19th century. M.A. Castrena and A.F. Middendorf. Subsequently, the Dolgans were studied by B.O. Dolgikh, A.A. Popov, G.N. Gracheva, P.E. Efremov, V.A. Tugolukov, V.I. Vasiliev and others.
Thus, the famous Russian traveler, geographer and naturalist A.F. Middendorf in his book "A Journey to the North and East of Siberia" noted that the Dolgans are a very interesting mixed people, in which the predominance of the Yakut element is clearly expressed in everything.
He expressed the opinion that part of the Dolgans "Dziganskaya Horde" originally moved from the vicinity of the city of Zhigansk, lying under the Arctic Circle on the Lena River, probably at a time when the Cossacks of Mangazey and Yakutsk were trying to compete in robberies on the Lena river, and their leaders challenged the enslavement of each other's inhabitants of the Lena river valley., i.e. they fought not only among themselves, but also took away the yasak from the indigenous inhabitants (1633). Probably at this time the Yakut and Tungus tribes moved westward together.
They roamed in the upper reaches of the Khatanga and Pyasina rivers, in the mountains surrounding the Norilsk lakes, and used the lands together with the Zhiganskiy tungus, having adopted their way of life and partly the language. These nomadic Dolgans partly joined the Tungus and raised a small number of reindeer, as they feared that numerous wolves might recapture the herd. They ate game and fish. They were a lively, agile, dexterous, helpful people, with great dignity, wrote A.F. Middendorf.
A very important category of Dolgans was made up of sedentary settlers who occupied the entire space from Dudin to the Khatanga churchyard. In the summer they went to the tundra lakes to the north, where they prepared stocks of fish for the winter. They ate mainly fish, and although their freely roaming relatives looked at them "as if with a feeling of condolence", the benefits of baptism were given to them superiority over the nomadic, that they were proud that in difficult times they save their wandering brethren from starvation. This stemmed from what they said more than once that nomads rely on unreliable hunting luck, instead of taking up reliable fishing.
Matthias Alexander Castren, a well-known Finnish philologist, researcher of the Finno-Ugric and Samoyed languages, in his book "Traveling in Lapland, Northern Russia and Siberia in 1838-1844, 1845-1849." mentioned that three Yakut tribes were called Dolgans: 1) the Dolgan tribe living along the river. Khatanga, 2) the Adjan tribe, which recognizes the Russian name of Zhigany, and 3) the Dongol tribe, which lives, like the second, three days' journey from Dudinka, near the Norilsk lakes. They themselves behave from three brothers: Galkinga, Sakatin and Bijka, who migrated here from the Yakut side.
A deeper study of the Dolgans in historical and ethnographic terms began only in the Soviet era, after the 1926-1927 population census and expeditions of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences in the 1930s.
The outstanding Soviet ethnographer B.O.Dolgikh in his book "The Origin of the Dolgans" suggested that the formation of the Dolgans within the Taimyr District took place during the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. According to him, at the time of the census, the Dolgan population was divided into nine ethnographic groups.
1) Dolgans of the former Dolgan-Eseiskaya council with the generic name Dolgan (Dulgan). Their ancestors were the Tunguses of the Dolgan clan in the 17th century, who lived along the Lena between the mouths of the rivers Aldan and Vilyui. In the second half of the 17th century most of the Ust-Vilyui Dolgans moved to Olenek, where they were united by one name of the Tungus "Dolgatsky family". These are the ancestors of the modern Dolgans of the former Dolgan-Eseiskaya council. Some of them remained on the lower Lena River under the jurisdiction of the Zhigansky wintering place.
The next stage in the history of the former Ust-Vilyui Dolgans was their resettlement to the Mangazey (Turukhansk) district, which included the XVII-XVIII centuries and the territory of the Taimyr National District. In 1761-1763 within the Yesei volost of the Mangazey department, a new genus of "unbaptized Tungus" was noted, about 150 people, in which there is every reason to see the ancestors of the Dolgans of the Dolgan clan, who constituted the Dolgan-Essei council from 1824 until the revolution.
2) Dolgans of the former Dolgan-Tunguska council with the generic name Dongot. The Dongots were the largest offshoot of Bayagirs, which were part of the Dolgans, who lived in the 17th century. along the upper confluent of the Khatanga Kotuya, in the upper Vilyui River, in the upper Olenek River and partially extended to the Kochechumo river and its tributary, the Turu, from the Lower Tunguska basin. The transition of the Dongot clan to the North within the Taimyr National District took place between 1768 and 1816. At the beginning of the XX century Dongots consisted of four genera with Yakut names Mokoibuttar (mainly Levitsky) 39 people, Kharybalar (Sotnikovs and Laptukovs) 84 people, Orkutakhtar (mainly Yarotskys) 100 people, Tonkoydor (Sakhatins) 48 people.
3) Dolgans of the former Zhigan-Tunguska council with the generic name Edyan (Adyan) or Edigen moved to Taimyr from Yakutia, according to I.S. Gurvich, in 1769-1783, headed by Lelich Sebyagin. The center of this council on the map of the Yenisei province in 1822 is indicated between the lakes Melkoe, Glubokoe and Lama. Thus, this group of Dolgan ancestors, as well as the Dolgans proper, left Yakutia, but later than the Dolgans proper, probably at about the same time as the Donots migrated to the Norilsk Lakes region.
4) Evenks of the former Boganid-Tunguska council with the generic name of KarantoOn the map of the Yenisei province in 1822, their center is indicated westward of the middle course of the Boganida River. They are named here "Eseiskaya volost of the Kharitonov clan of the Tungus". According to oral legends, Karanto came to Taimyr, to the Boganida River from somewhere in the south, either from the upper reaches of the Khatanga and Kheta, or from the upper reaches of the Olenek or Vilyui. B.O. Dolgikh was inclined to believe that in 1645 there was a Karatun clan of 25 yasak payers in the Edyan (Adyan) tribe on Olenek. In 1769, the Tunguses of the Kharitan clan, with their wives and children, led by Belkich Maganechin, fled from the Zhigansky Commissar of the Yakut region to the Turukhansk “volost”. The similarity of the names Karatunsky, Kharitansky, Kharitonov and Karanto is obvious. In 1833, Ignatiy Elcha, Shantucha, Kharitonov, Shaklich, Uchkachu, Kunnikov, Neltanov signed the tax book of the Boganid council.
5) The Yakuts of the former Nizhne-Zatundrinskaya Yakut administration are the largest constituent part of the Dolgan people and one of the earliest of them in their appearance in the basin of the lower Khatanga and Kheta (in 1699). On the map of the Yenisei province in 1822, the center of the Yessey volost shows the village "Khatangskoye ono z Nosok". Obviously, the center of the Zatundra Yakuts was located here. The bulk of the Zatundra Yakuts at the beginning of the XX century lived in the lower reaches of Kheta, Popigaya, Anabara. The oldest, main patronomy of the Zatundra Yakuts is considered the Porotovs, who live along the Khete River. Probably, some of the Yakuts moved from Olenek to Khetu due to hunger strike that took place on Olenek in 1681-1682, caused by a change in the direction of migration of wild reindeer, when instead of going from the sea through the floats on Olenek, where their the hunters were waiting, left towards the Kheta river. The booklet of the Lower Tatundra Council in 1833 was signed by the Porotovs, Savins, Fedoseevs, Antonov, Tyuprin, Gidatov. Tyupins (Chuprins) were part of the Zatundra Yakuts already in 1727. Among the Zatundra Yakuts there is a large (179 people of both sexes in 1926-1927) patronymic of the Spiridonovs, which has another name Barakh. It is believed that they are of some special, according to some sources, Russian origin. In the Zatundra Yakuts, we see not only the largest constituent part of the Dolgan people, but it is also precisely that part of it that first brought the Yakut language to Taimyr and contributed to the spread of the Yakut language among other Dolgan ancestors who were not speaking in the past.
6) Zatundrapeasantswho formed earlier the Lower Zatundrapeasant society, after the Entsy and Nganasans, are the oldest inhabitants of the territory of the modern settlement of the main part of the Dolgan population. Russian industrial people appeared “beyond the tundra” already in the first quarter of the 17th century. From the modern patronyms of the Zatundra peasants at the end of the 17th century the Aksenovs and Rudnitskys (Rudinskys) already lived here. The first come from the townspeople, the second - from the service people of the "foreign list". (V.V.Aleksandrov discovered that the Posad Dementy Averkiev Oksenov and his family lived on the Kheta River already in 1701 - 1720. The serviceman, boyar's son Stepan Rudnitsky, in January, March 1682, made a census of the Khantai Enets and Avam Nganasans.)
During the XVIII century. The Zatundrapeasants were also counted as townspeople, then bourgeois, and only from the first decades of the 19th century in the documents appears a single Nizhnezatundrinskoe peasant society. Of the currently existing patronymics of the Zatundrinsky peasants, the Turkins and Uksusnikovs in the 18th century were also peasants, and the Aksenovs, Barkhatovs, Popovs, Maletins, Portnyagins were townspeople (bourgeois). In the metric books of the Khatanga Epiphany Church of the late XIX - early XX centuries, stored in the funds of the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore, among peasants of the Zatundrinsky Society are mentioned Ignatiy Vasilyevich Maletin, Vasily Alekseevich Tyuprin, Dmitry Alexandrovich Barkhatov, Andrey Evfimovich Suvorov, Alexander Prokopievich and Khvosttu , Iosif Sosipatrovich Rudynsky, Efstafy Martynovich Rudynsky, Mark Gavrilovich Portnyagin, Popovs: Methodius Lazarevich, Grigory Yevfimovich, Nazariy Nikandrovich with his sons Onisim and Afanasyov, Prokopiy Nikandrovich - the ancestors of G.R. Popov, the first Dolgan scientist and N.A. Popov, the first Dolgan journalist.
We know that the Zatundrapeasants began to marry the Yakuts at the beginning of the 18th century. But although Middendorf already noted the yakutization of Russian settlers on Kheta, right up to the middle of the 19th century the mass of the Zatundrapeasants has not yet dissolved in the surrounding Dolgan-Yakut population. However, then, in the second half of the 19th century, they began to quickly merge with the Dolgans. By 1926-1927 the Zatundrapeasants in essence did not differ from the latter and in any case did not consider themselves Russian. Such a fast Dolganization of the Zatundrapeasants in the late 19th - early 20th cent. was due to their transition to nomadic reindeer husbandry and abandonment of their traditional sedentary fishing economy using dogs as a draft animal. The new form of economy entailed closer, than before, contact between the Zatundrapeasants and the Dolgans, and as a result, there was a complete assimilation of this Russian-born group of the population of Taimyr.
7) The Yesei Yakuts are not descendants of the population of the Yesei area of the 17th-19th centuries, but represent the Yakut reindeer breeders who came to the area of Yesie Lake from the Olenek basin, probably in the 18th century Although in Vilyuisk the Yesie Yakuts were called “Yesie tungus”, most of them, according to their generic names, represented the descendants of descendant from central Yakutia, and in the culture, to a greater extent than among the Dolgans, purely Yakut features were noticeable. The most numerous among them were the Yakuts of the Betunsky nasleg, almost all belonging to the Chordu clan. This is followed by people from the Katygynsk nasleg, who belonged to the clans Botulu, Osogostokh, Ospekh and Maimaga. The names of the naslegs now serve as surnames for the descendants of the Yesian Yakuts in Taimyr. So the descendants of the Betu people have the surname Betu (Bettu), the descendants of the Betil people - Beti, the descendants of the Yakuts of the Katygynsky nasleg - have the surname Katygynsky or one of the generic names Maymaga (Maimago), Botulu, etc.
8) The Evenks of the former 2nd and 3rd Summer and Ilimpei administrations from the Tambegir, Malgachagir, Ioligir, Typtagir and Yakchar clans, who had mastered the Dolgan dialect of the Yakut language as their native language, who lived with the Dolgan population, also became a significant and increasing component part of the Dolgan people. The Ilimpei Evenks moved to Taimyr in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
9) The Enets (Samoyeds) of the Khantai council of the Sonuko (Saner), Soyta, Masuadai, Karasin councils - Muggadi, Bai and the Nenets (Yuraks) of the Yabtonge and Aseda clans, who learned the Dolgan dialect of the Yakut language as their native language, ended up among the Dolgans as a result of marriages between men of Entsy and Nenets origin and Dolgan women. Usually, such families continued to live in the Dolgan environment, and the next generation from these marriages was no different from the Dolgans. The main part of Enets who adopted Dolgan culture lived in the area of the Pyasina lake and the Upper Pyasina River.
Можно считать, что в составе современных долган около 45 % по происхождению тунгусов, около 42 % – якутов, около 11% – русских и около 2% – самодийцев.
Thus, during the XIX century in the north of Siberia, a new nationality was formed. The specificity of the process of the formation of the Dolgan nationality was the fact that it took place in the Far North, and therefore the formed nationality, like all the peoples of the Far North, was not very numerous. It was also significant that all the elements that formed the Dolgan nationality were Orthodox (at least formally), and in this respect, in general everyone opposed their neighbors from the north, the Nganasans, who, moreover, had completely different forms of material and spiritual culture and spoke another language.
