ӈәнә"са (нә"), ня"
834 (2002)
44 (2001)[1]
The Nganasans are thought to be the direct descendants of proto-Uralic peoples.[3] However there is some evidence that they absorbed a local Paleo-Siberian population. The Nganasans were traditionally a semi-nomadic people whose main form of subsistence was wild reindeer hunting, in contrast to the Nenets, who herded reindeer. Beginning in the early 17th century, the Nganasans were subjected to the yasak system of Czarist Russia. They lived relatively independently, until the 1970s, when they were settled in the villages they live in today, which are at the southern edges of the Nganasans' historical nomadic routes.
There is no certainty as to the exact number of Nganasans living in Russia today. The 2002 Russian census counted 862 Nganasans living in Russia, 766 of whom lived in the former Taymyr Autonomous Okrug.[4] However, those who study the Nganasan estimate their population to comprise approximately 1000 people.[Note 1] Historically, the Nganasan language and a Taymyr Pidgin Russian[8] were the only languages spoken among the Nganasan, but with increased education and village settlement, Russian has become the first language of many Nganasans. Some Nganasans live in villages with a Dolgan majority, such as Ust-Avam. The Nganasan language is considered seriously endangered and it is estimated that at most 500 Nganasan can speak the Nganasan language, with very limited proficiency among those eighteen and younger.[9]
History[edit]
Origins[edit]
The homeland of the Proto-Uralic peoples, including the Samoyeds, is suggested to be somewhere near the Ob and Yenisey river drainage areas of Central Siberia or near Lake Baikal.[14]
The Nganasan are considered by most ethnographers who study them to have arisen as an ethnic group when Samoyedic peoples migrated to the Taymyr Peninsula from the south, encountering Paleo-Siberian peoples living there who they then assimilated into their culture. One group of Samoyedic people intermarried with Paleo-Siberian peoples living between the Taz and Yenisei rivers, forming a group that the Soviet ethnographer B.O. Dolgikh refers to as the Samoyed-Ravens. Another group intermarried with the Paleo-Siberian inhabitants of the Pyasina River and formed another group which he called the Samoyed-Eagles. Subsequently, a group of Tungusic people migrated to the region near Lake Pyasino and the Avam River, where they were absorbed into Samoyed culture, forming a new group called the Tidiris. There was another group of Tungusic peoples called the Tavgs who lived along the basins of the Khatanga and Anabar rivers and came into contact with the aforementioned Samoyedic peoples, absorbing their language and creating their own Tavg Samoyedic dialect.[15] It is known that the ancestors of the Nganasan previously inhabited territory further south from a book in the city Mangazeya that lists yasak (fur tribute) payments by the Nganasan which were made in sable, an animal that does not inhabit the tundra where the Nganasan now live.[10]
By the middle of the 17th century, Tungusic peoples began to push the Samoyedic peoples northward towards the tundra Taymyr Peninsula, where they merged into one tribe called "Avam Nganasans". As the Tavgs were the largest Samoyedic group at the time of this merger, their dialect formed the basis of the present-day Nganasan language. In the late 19th century, a Tungusic group called the Vanyadyrs also moved to the Eastern Taymyr peninsula, where they were absorbed by the Avam Nganasans, resulting in the tribe that is now called Vadeyev Nganasans. In the 19th century, a member of the Dolgans, a Turkic people who lived east of the Nganasans, was also absorbed by the Nganasans, and his descendants formed an eponymous clan, which today, though linguistically fully Samoyedic, is still acknowledged as being Dolgan in origin.[16]
Contact with Russians[edit]
The Nganasans first came into contact with Russians sometime in the early 17th century,[10] and after some resistance, began to pay tribute to the Czar in the form of sable fur under the yasak system in 1618.[17] Tribute collectors established themselves at the “Avam Winter Quarters,” at the confluence of the Avam River and Dudypta River rivers, which is the site of the modern-day settlement Ust-Avam. The Nganasans often tried to avoid paying yasak by changing the names that they provided to the Russians.[18] Relations between the Russians and Nganasans were not always peaceful. In 1666, the Nganasans ambushed and killed yasak collectors, soldiers, tradesmen, and their interpreters on three occasions, stealing the sable furs and property belonging to them. Over the course of the year, 35 men were killed in total.[19]
The Nganasan had little direct contact with merchants and, unlike most indigenous Siberians, they were never baptized[10] or contacted by missionaries.[20] Some Nganasans traded directly with the Russians, while others did so via the Dolgans.[13] They usually exchanged sable furs for alcohol, tobacco, tea, and various tools, products which quickly integrated themselves into Nganasan culture.[21] In the 1830s,[22] and again from 1907 to 1908, Russian contact caused major smallpox outbreaks among the Ngansans.[23]
Religion[edit]
The traditional religion of the Nganasans is animistic and shamanistic. Their religion is a particularly well preserved example of Siberian Shamanism, which remained relatively free of foreign influence due to the Nganasans' geographic isolation until recent history. Because of their isolation, shamanism was a living phenomenon in the lives of the Nganasans, even into the beginning of the 20th century.[29] The last notable Nganasan shaman's seances were recorded on film by anthropologists in the 1970s.[29]
Language[edit]
The Nganasan language (formerly called тавгийский, tavgiysky, or тавгийско-самоедский, tavgiysko-samoyedsky in Russian; from the ethnonym тавги, tavgi) is a moribund Samoyedic language spoken by the Nganasan people. It is now considered highly endangered, as most Nganasan people now speak Russian, rather than their native language. In 2010 it was estimated that only 125 Nganasan people can speak it in the southwestern and central parts of the Taymyr Peninsula.