the Evenk way of life. Reindeer were held as common property of the band, but individuals sometimes also owned select reindeer (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 646–47). In contrast to many other reindeer herding peoples, the Evenki had completely domesticated reindeer. The reindeer milk that women collected was an important dietary supplement, and in the winter they stored frozen blocks of milk in the ground for extended periods. Men generally hunted wild reindeer and used the domesticated ones for transportation by riding the reindeer itself with a saddle. In the early twentieth century, Evenki began using reindeer sledges, but earlier they only used sledges pulled by people.
Although the Evenki had no permanent political leaders, there was a clan assembly (sagdagul), generally consisting of grown men, and sometimes women, who were heads of households (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 644). This assembly dealt with socioeconomic issues such as the adoption of children, territorial disputes, and punishments for infringements of proper conduct. Evenk oral tradition also relates that as influential members of the community, shamans sometimes acted as leaders in times of intergroup conflict.
“Shaman” is a term widely used in north Asian languages to indicate healers with varying degrees of spiritual abilities and leadership power (Humphrey 1994c: 206). The term itself may have evolved from the Sanskrit word sramana, a common designation for a Buddhist monk in ancient sacred texts (Mironov and Shirokogoroff 1924).15 The Russian language incorporated the term “shaman” from the Tungusic speaking peoples in the seventeenth century. In the Evenk version of shamanism, shamans interact with the spiritual world, which the Evenki believe to be composed of three elements: the middle earth, where people live; the upper world of the supreme god and other gods; and the underworld, where the spirits of the dead reside (Forsyth 1992: 54). It is possible that at one time the Evenki had, as Caroline Humphrey describes for the “inner Asian hinterland”—southern Siberia and northern Mongolia—two types of shamanism that differed according to how they represented social reproduction (1994c: 198–99). Humphrey terms one type “patriarchal” because she views it as focused on the continuation of patrilineal clans through shamanic influence over the symbolic reproduction of the patrilineal lineage. Humphrey calls the other type “transformational” because it was involved in all the forces in the world—natural phenomenon, humans, animals, and manufactured things. This second type of shaman manifested his or her power through the trance, while the first type would conduct sacred rites and was a diviner but could not master spirits or enter a trance.
Among the Evenki, the powers of the shaman could be inherited by men and women, but they were more commonly found among men. Shamans were recognized as arbiters between the spirit, animal, and human worlds; they were given the task of performing sacrifices of the unusual white-colored reindeer at ritual events such as weddings and funerals and the advent of the hunting season. Because the ability to smith iron was associated with the spirit world, shamans often adorned their skin clothing with animal representations of the spirit world made from iron. Then, as today, however, people were connected to the spirit and animal worlds through daily practices, not just through the medium of a shaman. In maintaining reciprocal relationships with spirit and animal worlds, a balance was maintained. These relationships continue to include feeding the hearth fire morsels of fat or a splash of vodka, killing animals at prescribed times, and respecting certain animals—like bears—thought to be closely related to humans. Many Evenki believe that these prescribed interactions with spirit and animal worlds ensure today, as in the past, that one’s household will be safe and healthy and that disregarding these relationships can, and historically could, mean dire consequences for individuals or whole clans (Anisimov 1950).
According to ethnographic accounts dating from the nineteenth century and more recently (Mordvinov 1860; Kytmanov 1927; Shirokogoroff 1933; Dolgikh 1960; Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964; Karlov 1982), the clan as the basic unit of Evenk social organization underwent various changes even before the radical reorganization implemented by the Soviets in the 1930s (as discussed later in this chapter). Although there is no written record prior to the seventeenth century, oral tradition holds that for most of the year Evenki lived in small bands consisting of two or three families that belonged to one or two interrelated clans (Tugolukov 1988: 525). In summer several bands would gather in camps of about a dozen tents and engage in exchange of trade goods such as tobacco and pelts. At this time parents also arranged marriages for their children, an arrangement that usually involved an exchange of reindeer between the families.
Vasilevich and Smoliak argue (1964: 645) that by the seventeenth century ownership of reindeer among the Evenki was delineated by individual families, and that these were “economically speaking” considerably separate from clans. These individual families accrued varying numbers of reindeer and apparently fought with one another over territory. In the same period, the development of trade relations with Russians, the depletion of the sable population, and the rapid Russian occupation of land contributed to the breakdown of former Evenk clan relationships. Evenki moved about as they lost control of land they had formerly used for subsistence activities, and this movement resulted in the creation of new communities consisting both of Evenki from different clans and of various other ethnic groups, including Kety and Sakha. Vasilevich and Smoliak (1964: 645) write that until the Russian Revolution these new communities engaged in collective labor instead of labor being based on the former framework within the joint family or clan.
Whether or not this ideal communal arrangement depicted by Vasilevich and Smoliak existed, there is evidence that in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries the increasing role of trade and taxation was causing internal strife among Evenki and between Evenki and other groups. From the seventeenth century onward, tsarist policy engaged Cossacks in collecting taxes, or iasak, in the form of furs from indigenous Siberians throughout Russia (Slezkine 1994: 13). As early as 1614, one group of Cossacks known as the Mangazeia imposed a fur tax on Evenki living in central Siberia near the Nizhniaia Tunguska River, and by 1623 nearly all the Evenki living near the Enisei River were paying tax in furs (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 623). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tsarist policies moved more toward trade and Christianization among the Evenki.
The Russian Orthodox Church and Shifting Relations of Control
While prior to the Soviet era most interaction between indigenous peoples and Europeans was connected to trade, even as early as the seventeenth century missionaries sought out converts among indigenous Siberians. Russian Orthodox Church schools were also expanding their efforts in Siberia by the eighteenth century, but they attracted few indigenous Siberian students (Bazanov 1936). One of the largest church efforts resulted in twenty elementary schools being set up in Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands in the mid-1700s; these lasted until the 1780s (Sgibnev, 3–4, cited in Forsyth 1992: 142). These schools largely served a Russian settler population, however, and did not actively seek to incorporate indigenous Siberians.
As for many other indigenous Siberians, the establishment of Russian Orthodox missions had little impact on the daily lives of the Evenki in central Siberia. In 1754 a Russian Orthodox mission was established on the banks of the Enisei River in Turukhansk, a town about 360 miles downstream from present-day Tura along the Nizhniaia Tunguska River. It appears that for years the mission took little interest in the surrounding populations of indigenous Siberians in the region. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the church was becoming involved in the budding systems of surveillance and control of indigenous Siberian populations that were to become fully developed in the Soviet era. From 1862 to 1915, the central Siberian region fell under the Enisei diocese (Eniseiskii dukhovnyi konsistorii), and those Orthodox missionaries working in Turukhansk Territory were instructed to keep records ranging from their daily activities to a registry of births, deaths, and baptisms (Anderson and Orekhova 2002: 97). One document in the Evenk District archive collection dated December 1855 lists the Tungus newcomers to the area and a count of those who were “believers” in Russian Orthodoxy.16 A September 1855 account notes marriage dates for members of the indigenous population along with information about their trade partners in Turukhansk.17 Archival documents suggest that relations between clergy and native peoples were often strained because of inordinate charges for ritual
