Yupik Transitions : Change and Survival at Bering Strait, 1900-1960 9781602232174, 9781602232167

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Yupik Transitions

Yupik

Transitions

Change and Survival at Bering Strait, 1900–1960

Igor Krupnik and Michael Chlenov

University of Alaska Press Fairbanks

© 2013 University of Alaska Press All rights reserved University of Alaska Press P.O. Box 756240 Fairbanks, AK 99775-6240

ISBN 978-1-60223-216-7 (paper) 978-1-60223-217-4 (electronic)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krupnik, Igor. Yupik transitions : change and survival at Bering Strait, 1900–1960 / Igor Krupnik and Michael Chlenov. pages cm ISBN 978-1-60223-216-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60223-217-4 (electronic) 1. Yupik Eskimos—Bering Strait—History—20th century. 2. Yupik Eskimos—Bering Strait— Social conditions. 3. Yupik Eskimos—Bering Strait—Social life and customs. I. Title. E99.E7K9 2013 306’.08997016451--dc23 2013010767

Layout by Natalie Taylor Cover design by Phil Raymond Cover illustrations: Front: “Cultures in Contact.” Yupik men and women from Egheghaq (Plover Bay) approach the George W. Elder ship of the Harriman Expedition in July 1899. (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, P11065)

This publication was printed on acid-free paper that meets the minimum requirements for ANSI / NISO Z39.48–1992 (R2002) (Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials). Printed in the United States

Contents List of Figures xi List of Tables xv List of Maps xv Museum and Institutional Acronymns xvi Foreword—Ernest S. Burch, Jr. xvii Prologue: 1987 xxi Preface: 2011—Igor Krupnik xxvii Acknowledgments xxxi

Chapter 1. Contact-Traditional Society, 1900–1923

1

“Old Society”: The Official Myth 1 Contact-Traditional Society 4 Agents of Change: Commercial Whaling 6 The Americans Step onto the Chukchi Peninsula 9 Gold Rush: In Search of a Siberian Klondike 10 The Russians Build Their Administration 11 New Modernizers: Traders and Commercial Agents 13 Arrival of the Soviet Regime: 1918–1923 14 Life That Had to Be Changed 16 Notes 17

Chapter 2. The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

19

Establishing the Yupik People in Asia 19 The Early-Contact Yupik Groups and Their Areas 21 Southern Area 21 The Sighineghmiit 21 The Imtugmiit and the Atqallghhaghmiit 25 The Avatmiit 26 The Qiwaaghmiit and the Tasighmiit 28 The Ungazighmiit 29 St. Lawrence Island 31 Northern Area 33 The Nuvuqaghmiit 33 v

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Diomede Islands 34 Population Histories: A Synopsis 36 Notes 38

Chapter 3. The Yupik Social System: A Model

39

Social Analysis: “Language” and “Speech” 39 “Eskimo” Social Organization 39 The Yupik Perspective 41 The Locus 42 The Social Structures -miit and -kut 42 Definition of Locus 43 The Locus as an Adaptive Mechanism 43 The Tribe 44 Features of the Yupik Tribe 44 Tribal Size 46 Tribe, Regional Group, or “Society”? 46 Tribal and Linguistic Boundaries 47 Tribal Identity and the Structure of Ethnicity 48 The Tribal Group 49 Features of the Tribal Group 49 The Clan 51 Clan versus Gens 52 Clan Features 52 Clan Territoriality 54 Patrilineality and Male Dominance 56 Clan Name 58 Clan Stereotypes 59 The Social and Ritual Role of the Clans 59 The Breakdown of the Tribes and Clans 61 A Model for Tribal Reintegration 62 The Locus as a Migratory Group 62 Notes 64

Chapter 4. Along the Shores of Yupik Land in Asia

67

Territories and Borders 67 The Fjord Zone 68 Sighineq 68 Imtuk 72 Movement Westward: Singhaq, Asun, and Kenlighaq 74 “Old Plover” 76 Avan 76 Ugriileq: The Village at the Trading Post 80 Wrangell Island, the Chukotkan Scoresbysund 80 The Mystery of the Qiwaaghmiit 82

Contents

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Qiwaaq and Tasiq 84 The Transformation of the Nangupagaghmiit 85 Cape Chaplin 86 The Universe of Ungaziq 86 The Social Topography of Ungaziq 87 Napaqutaq 90 Expansion to the Islands 91 Further Settlement of the Cape 93 Teflleq 94 The “New Land” 94 The Way West: New Impetus 94 First Voyages 96 Milestones on the Way West 97 The Chronology of the “New Land” 99 Nutapelmen: The Choice of the Laakaghmiit 102 Uwellkal: The End of Free Trapping 103 The Dezhnev Headland 104 The Ecology of Cape Dezhnev 104 The Social Geography of Cape Dezhnev 104 Nuvuqaq 105 The Island “Extensions”: St. Lawrence and Diomede Islands 108 St. Lawrence Island: Collapse and Recovery 109 Naukan Expansion: Big Diomede Island 113 Conclusion: The “Speech” and “Language” of Yupik Social Life 115 Notes 117

Chapter 5. Community Affairs The Village Village Topography The Village Community Types of Villages The Traditional Settlement Model The Model Develops: The Villages of the 20th Century The Neighborhood Dual Division of Villages Clan and Residential Neighborhoods “Master of the Land” The Nunaleggtaq Clan The Nunaleggtaq as Individual Leader The Ritual Role of the Nunaleggtaq The Umiilek Exchange and Contacts “Gone with the Ice” Wars and Raids

121 121 121 123 123 125 126 127 127 129 131 131 132 133 134 134 135 136

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Intertribal and Interethnic Marriages 137 Information Exchange 139 Intertribal Gatherings and Festivals 140 Traveling and Visiting 142 Yupik-Chukchi Contacts 145 Yupik-Chukchi Partnership 146 Yupik Attempts at Reindeer Herding 146 Conclusion 148 Notes 149

Chapter 6. Family and Kinship

151

The Lineage 151 The Relationship between Clan and Lineage 151 Territoriality of the Lineage 153 The Economic Role of the Lineage 154 Leadership in the Lineage and Its Ritual Functions 156 Lineage Descent Rules 158 Lineage, Ramage, and Alternate Filiation 160 The Boat Crew 162 The Angyalek: The Boat Captain 163 The “Fraternal” Boat Crew 163 The Clan Boat Crew and Forms of Adoption 164 Boat Crew Statuses 165 The Functions of the Angyalek 168 Boat Crews as Migration Groups 168 The Transformation and Disintegration of Kin-Based Crews 169 Family and Marriage Patterns 171 Family Typology: Some Explanations 171 The Family of the Early 1900s: Sources for Reconstruction 172 Patrilocality 173 The Fraternal Family 174 The Fission of Fraternal Families 174 Other Extended Families 176 The Conjugal Family 177 Fragmented Families and Adoption 177 Polygamy 178 Other Polygamous Marriages: Levirate and Sororate 179 Sister-Exchange 180 Wife Trading (Spouse-Exchange) 181 Marriage Rituals 183 Divorce and Remarriage 183 Transgender Persons and Homosexuals 184 Lone Individuals and the Disabled 184 Conclusion: The Transformation of the Yupik Family 186 Notes 187

Contents

Chapter 7. “Upstreaming”: Lifetime of the Yupik Social System

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189

Upstreaming 189 Two Historical Traditions 190 Before the Whalers: The British Wintering in Emma Harbor, 1848–1849 192 Russian-American Mariners’ Era: 1816–1840 195 After the “Big War”: Billings’ Voyage, 1791 197 Siberian Yupik Language Areas in the 1700s 199 The Ermeremket 202 Early Contact (pre-1800) Populations 203 Russian-Chukchi Wars and Chukchi Expansion: 1700–1770 207 Wars and Raids: Yupik Warfare and Lore Tradition 210 Veering into the Unknown: Whale Alley 214 Punuk Whalers and Warriors: The Origins of Military “Society” 217 Old Bering Sea Societies: Ancient Art and Graves 218 Conclusion: Upstreaming and the Beginning of the Contact-Traditional Society 220 Notes 222

Chapter 8. The New Life Begins, 1923–1933

225

Soviet Paternalism: The Ideology of the New Life 225 The First Soviet Reform 227 The Eskimo Native District 227 The Hunt for the Class Enemy 230 Shaman Ekker and the Anti-Shaman Campaign 232 The Anti-Shaman Campaign: Shamaness Kawrangaawen 234 The Soviet Administration Gathers Strength 235 Teachers and Schooling Take Root 236 Economic “Collectivization”: The First Steps 237 The Formation of the “Chukchi National Area” 238 The New Way of Life Takes Root 240 Conclusion 241 Notes 242

Chapter 9. Collective Farm Era, 1933–1955

243

The New Masters of the Russian Arctic: Glavsevmorput and the Gulag 243 The Collective Farm Era 245 A Second Journey to Ungaziq 246 Collective Farms and Tribal Areas 248 One Collective Farm—One Village 248 New Zones of Expansion: The Bays 251 Life in Bay Towns: Ureliki, Provideniya, Plover, and Pinakul 253 The Old Society Dies Out 255 The Old Society Dies Out: Anthropological Commentary 258 The Cultural Revolution: The Soviet Yupik School 259

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The Cultural Revolution: Yupik Literacy 260 The Building of the Soviet Eskimo “Nation” 261 The Soviet Modernization: A Summary 263 Notes 265

Chapter 10. The End of “Eskimo Land,” 1955–1960

267

The “Great Reform” 267 The Reform and the Native People 268 Patterns of Relocation 270 Farewell to Naukan 273 Our Beloved Ungaziq 278 The Plover Tragedy 282 The Aftermath 284 Conclusion 288 Notes 291

Epilogue

293

Survival Mechanisms and Patterns of Resilience 294 Survival and Patterns of Diversity 297 The Bering Strait Reunion 300 Notes 302

Appendices

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Appendix 1. List of Yupik Contributors Appendix 2. Central Siberian (Chaplinski) Yupik Kinship Terminology Appendix 3. Naukanski Yupik Kinship Terminology Appendix 4. Waldemar Bogoras’ Census of the Village of Ungyin (Ungaziq), Spring 1901 Appendix 5. List of Gambell (Sivuqaq) Residents, St. Lawrence Island: Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 Appendix 6. Yupik Population of Avan and Ugriileq from the Russian Missionary Record, 1910

Glossary References Index

305 308 310 312 316 328

331 339 373

List of Figures 0.1: Ice-covered Tkachen Bay, 1977 0.2: The beachfront of the village of New Chaplino, Tkachen Bay, 1977 0.3: Numtagnen of Imtuk (1900–1965), 1929 0.4: Yupik schoolboys of Sighineq, 1929 0.5: Aleksandr Ratkhugwi (1904–1977), “the Historian,” 1975 0.6: Ippi (1914–1993), “the Kin Expert,” 1979 0.7: Ivan Ashkamakin (1911–1991), the “Party Man,” 1988 0.8:Ukhsima I. Uksima (1915–1989), the “Modernizer,” 1988 0.9: St. Lawrence Island Yupik elders Willis Walunga, Conrad Ozeeva, and Nancy Walunga, 2010 1.1: Yupik man sitting inside one of the storehouses in Ungaziq, 1901 1.2: Yupik summer tent (tupeq) in Ungaziq, June 1901 1.3: “Dancing Eskimo girls,” May 1901 1.4: “Eskimo playing cards,” June 1901 1.5: Yupik men and women from Ungaziq aboard the USCG Bear, 1886 1.6: Yupik children from Ugriileq aboard the Schooner Polar Bear, summer 1913 1.7: Trading post at Dezhnev (Kengisqun), summer 1929 1.8: Captain Louis Lane with Russian “judge” and his wife off East Cape, summer 1913

xx xx xxiii xxiii xxiv xxiv xxv xxv xxviii 3 3 5 5 7 7 11 13

2.1: Ruins of an old semisubterranean house in Sighineq, spring 1929 24 2.2: Abandoned village of Imtuk, 1975 26 2.3: Ruins of the old underground houses in Avan, September 1975 27 2.4: Summer tents on the beach at Egheghaq (Plover Bay), summer 1899 27 2.5: View of Tasiq (Chechen), June 1901 29 2.6: Old underground houses and jawbone poles in Ungaziq, spring 1901 29 2.7: Old village on the Punuk Islands, 1874, drawing by Henry W. Eliott 32 2.8: Winter underground house on the Punuk Islands, 1874, drawing by Henry W. Elliott 32 2.9: Yupik houses in Nuvuqaq, summer 1913 34 2.10: Approaching the village of Imaaqlliq on Big Diomede Island, summer 1929 37 2.11: Village of Ungaziq, historical hub of the Ungazighmiit tribe, 1928–1929 37 3.1: Utykhtykak (1914–1976) of Sireniki, the last Atqallghhaghmii senior man, 1975 3.2: Vladimir Tiyato (1921–1984) and Zinaida Anaka (1921–1994), of the Akulghaaghwiget clan, 1977 3.3: Boat storage area of the Laakaghmiit clan in Ungaziq, 1928–1929 xi

51 55 63

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4.1: Sighineq: General view of the village from a trail to Imtuk, spring 1929 4.2: Sighineq: Ruins of the old Iilvaantaq underground house with the ceremonial whale jawbone pole, spring 1929 4.3: Sighineq: Ruins of the old underground house Uskuughnaq, spring 1929 4.4: Sighineq: The Silaakshaq neighborhood in the northern section of the village, spring 1929 4.5: Imtuk: The village section Naavneq, spring 1929 4.6: Sighineq: “American” plank house soon to host a new Russian school, 1929 4.7: Egheghaq: Yupik residents of Plover Bay, July 1899 4.8: Egheghaq: Yupik summer house (magnteghaswaaq, “small house”), summer 1899 4.9: Egheghaq: Yupik winter house (mangteghapik), summer 1899 4.10: Avan: View of the village in spring 1929 4.11: Avan: Drinking tea inside a Yupik house, spring 1929 4.12: Ugriileq: A-a-one (Uhwaawen, 1897–1936) and his family, July 1921 4.13: Wrangell Island: Yupik women and children resettled in 1926, 1934 4.14: Wrangell Island: The hub of the small Russian-Yupik colony, 1934 4.15: Ungaziq: View of the village from the sea, spring 1913 4.16: Ungaziq: Yupik woman in traditional garment on the village street, June 1901 4.17: Ungaziq: Quwaaren (ca. 1840–ca. 1910), “Eskimo trader Kuvar,” spring 1901 4.18: Ungaziq: One (of several) storehouses owned by Quwaaren, spring 1901 4.19: Siqlluk: View of the village, winter 1929 4.20: Yatylin/Yatelen (1905–1979), born in Napaqutaq on Itygran Island 4.21: Ungaziq: School building, originally erected in Teflleq, 1929 4.22: Ungaziq: Men repair large skin boat (ayuqllighhtaq) used for trade trips, 1901 4.23: Ungaziq: Sunbrown (Sam Brown?) and his father, 1913 4.24: Arinaun (1900–1985), from Avan, 1977 4.25: Nuvuqaq: View of the village from the nearby mountain, summer 1929 4.26: Nuvuqaq: Yupik houses with the foundations made of rock slabs and boulders, 1929 4.27: Nuvuqaq: Men work on repairing a family winter house, summer 1929 4.28: Nuvuqaq: “Eskimo from East Cape arriving at Nome, Alaska,” postcard from the early 1900s 4.29: Sivuqaq (Gambell): Three “strong men”: Iirgu, Sunaaghruk, and Amagu, 1912 4.30: Sivungaq (Savoonga): Yupik men and youth, summer 1921 4.31: Imaaqlliq: View of the village on Big Diomede Island, 1929 4.32: Imaaqlliq: Entrance of an old underground house, 1929 5.1: Summer tents (tupiit, sing. tupeq) erected on the beach at Sighineq, spring 1929 5.2: Boat storage racks in the upper beach area at Sighineq, spring 1929 5.3: Boat storage racks in Nuvuqaq erected on high slope, summer 1929 5.4: Same (?) boat racks in Nuvuqaq, summer 1981 5.5: The division of the village of Nuvuqaq (Naukan) in two “halves,” 1929 5.6: The village of Ungaziq in spring 1901 5.7: Central place (Qellineq) in Sivuqaq (Gambell), 1912 5.8: Ulgugwi (1912–1983), who drifted “to America,” and his wife Tekeghaghmii, 1977

69 70 70 71 73 75 77 77 78 78 79 81 83 83 88 88 89 89 92 92 95 97 99 101 105 106 106 107 110 112 116 116 122 122 124 124 128 128 129 137

List of Figures

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5.9: Ungazighmiit onboard the USS Bear, 1886 5.10: Men’s races in Ungaziq, spring 1901 5.11: Communal festival in Ungaziq, summer 1901 5.12: Men and women playing ball games at a summer festival in Ungaziq, 1928

139 141 141 143

6.1: Collective meat cache in Imtuk, 1929 6.2: Men repair the roof of the traditional winter house (mangteghapik) in Sivuqaq (Gambell), fall 1912 6.3: Traditional site for the fall ritual of “honoring the ancestors” off Sivuqaq (Gambell), summer 1930 6.4: “Kaikategin, the Eskimo,” from Nuvuqaq, 1929 6.5: Boat launch in Ungaziq, after the spring “boat-launch ritual” of ateghaq, April 1929 6.6: Walrus heads placed inside the house for the nasquneggqelek ceremony, 1928 6.7: Large extended family of Akulki in Sivuqaq (Gambell), summer 1912 6.8: “Man in woman’s dress” (a transgender man, aghnaasiq), 1901 6.9: Yupik family at Emma Harbor (Ugriileq), summer 1913

155

7.1: Wootair (Sighineq), February 1849; drawing by John Simpson 7.2: Ruins of ancient communal houses and jawbone poles at the Masiq site, 1981 7.3: Interior view of one of the communal houses at Masiq, 1981 7.4: Chukchi man posing in slat armor, with his shield and lance, 1900 7.5: Historical war scenes depicted on modern decorated ivory tusks from Chukotka 7.6: Old Yupik stone fortress at the abandoned village of Singhaq, 1975 7.7: Whale Alley (general view from the mountain facing NNE), 1979 7.8: Group of whale skulls on Whale Alley, 1979 7.9: Yupik girls dance inside a family house in Ungaziq, 1928

194 204 204 212 213 214 216 216 221

8.1: Yupik man confronts a Russian official on the deck of the USCG Bear, summer 1921 8.2: Nutawyi’s family inside their family house in Imtuk, 1929 8.3: Alalawen and Nutawyi, members of the Eskimo District Executive Committee, spring 1929 8.4: Alalawen and his wife, Ragtenga, inside their family house, spring 1929 8.5: Naukan (Nuvuqaq) cooperative store, summer 1929 8.6: Russian trade post in Dezhnev, summer 1929 8.7: Uksima, the Young Communist League member, 1929

155 158 162 167 167 175 185 187

226 228 231 231 239 239 241

9.1: Nelson Alowa (1912–2002), from Savoonga, and Willis Walunga, from Gambell, 1999

247

10.1: Ruins of abandoned family houses in Naukan, summer 1981 10.2: View of Naukan, summer 1981 10.3: Street in New Chaplino, summer 1976 10.4: Yupik houses in New Chaplino, 1977 10.5: A group of Yupik residents of New Chaplino, 1979 10.6: Petr Napaun (1912–1983), “the Yupik Captain,” 1977 10.7: Yupik daycare center in New Chaplino, 1975

277 277 281 281 286 287 289

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11.1: Student Allperagtenga at the Naukan village school, 1929 296 11.2: Yupik hunters in Sireniki, summer 1980 299 11.3: Native dancing team of New Chaplino holds a spontaneous performance (mid-1970s) 299 11.4: Shishmaref residents greet “Siberian” whaleboats, 1991 301 11.5: “Siberian” whaleboats in Shishmaref, Alaska, 1991 302

List of Tables 1.1: Coastal trading posts on the Chukchi Peninsula in 1923 2.1: Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) population by major communities, 1881–1923 3.1: Main features of the Yupik/Asiatic Eskimo locus institutions in the late contact-traditional era, 1890–1930 4.1: Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) population by major communities, 1926–1952 6.1: Major types of families in Ungaziq, 1901, and Gambell/Sivuqaq, 1900 7.1: Yupik village names of the 1700s and their later equivalents 9.1: Population of the Chukchi District by village council, 1939–1951 9.2: Number of collective farms (cooperative enterprises and associations) and state farms in the Chukchi area, 1928–1970 10.1: Population of the Chukchi Peninsula: Growth and urban-rural distribution, 1951–1979 10.2: Population by selected Native communities, 1951–1979

15 23 65 118 173 206 249 250 269 270

List of Maps 0.1: Bering Strait area and the Chukchi Peninsula (general map) xxx 2.1: Yupik area and major historical communities in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, ca. 1880 22 2.2: Historical Yupik villages and camps in southeastern Chukchi Peninsula and Senyavin Strait area, 1850–1900 31 2.3: Historical villages in the Cape Dezhnev area, 1850–1900 35 4.1: Historical Yupik villages and camps to the west of Provideniya Bay 68 4.2: Yupik villages and camps established in the Kresta Bay area, 1920–1940 98 8.1: Native communities and “village councils” in the Russian Bering Strait area, 1926–1928 229 10.1: Yupik relocations on the Chukchi Peninsula, 1940–1977 285

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Museum and Institutional Acronyms (in Illustration Captions) AMNH–American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY DMNS–Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Alfred M. Bailey’s Library and Collections, Denver, CO DU—David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Collection MAE–Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), St. Petersburg, Russia NAA–National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, MD NBWM–New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA NMAI–National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, MD PSU–McGoldrick Collection of Arctic Images, Michael J. Spinelli, Jr. Center for University Archives and Special Collections, Herbert H. Lamson Library and Learning Commons, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH

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Foreword

T

Charles Campbell Hughes once observed that “rarely has so much been written by so many about so few,” as in the case with the Eskimos. He could have added the caveat that this was true for all except the Yupik/Asiatic Eskimos of the Russian Chukchi Peninsula, about whom surprisingly little had been written at the time. Although Waldemar Bogoras produced a slim volume on the “Eskimos of Siberia” in 1912, it was limited entirely to the reproduction of folktales; it contained no ethnographic description or analysis. Some useful information on the Asiatic Eskimo is scattered about in Bogoras’ monumental work on the Chukchi, but there, appropriately enough, his focus was primarily on Chukchi, not Eskimos. Reliable information on the Russian (or “Siberian”) Yupik remained all but absent from the Western ethnographic literature until Hughes himself conducted pioneering research among the Yupik on the nearby St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, in the 1950s; most of his findings were published in the 1960s. This was long after most other Eskimo/Inuit populations in North America and Greenland had been described in considerable detail. Of particular interest was Hughes’ discovery of patrilineal clans, which were not even mentioned by Bogoras and which are not found anywhere else in the Eskimo/Inuit world. Just how relevant the St. Lawrence Yupik material was to their Yupik kinsmen on the Asian mainland could not be reliably determined when Hughes did his research. For more than sixty years, Soviet authorities forbade foreigners from visiting Chukotka, and the Yupik were near the bottom of the Soviet’s own research agenda. The few Russian scholars who did write about Asiatic Eskimos in those years were more concerned with conforming to the dictates of Marxist ideology than they were with accurately reporting on Native affairs. It was not until the authors of the present book began their study in the early 1970s that many of the patterns Hughes described for St. Lawrence Island were found to exist on the Asian mainland itself. For the next two decades, Igor Krupnik and Michael Chlenov continued to publish their research findings in an impressive number of papers, most of them in Russian. Finally, at the end of the 1980s, the official ban on contacts, travel, and publications in Western anthropological journals was lifted. Freed from these restrictions, the authors generously opened to their colleagues the richness of what they learned about Yupik life, past and present. This book is the most comprehensive summary of their twenty-year study. It is based on oral historical accounts obtained from elders during the course of nine research expeditions made to Chukotka between 1971 and 1990 and on the painstaking survey of he late anthropologist

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historical records and other relevant sources. By all standards, it closes the last important geographic gap in the world’s anthropological literature on Eskimo/Inuit people. Yupik Transitions is, in the first instance, a general description of Yupik life for the main portion of the 20th century. We learn that by the eve of the century, the Yupik were organized primarily in terms of what the authors call “tribes,” “tribal groups,” patrilineal clans, but also residential communities, extended families, and whaling crews. The system differed in many respects from traditional Eskimo social organization everywhere else in the Eskimo/Inuit world except on St. Lawrence Island. Although comparison was not their major objective, the authors’ familiarity with the general literature on Eskimos enables them explicitly to note many of the differences between the social phenomena they encountered and those reported from other areas. Yupik Transitions is also a superb study of social change. The situation existing during the 1900–1925 period is established as the baseline against which change is measured. The authors describe the changes the Soviets introduced in Chukotka and the Yupik responses to them. The book provides a fascinating and often distressing account of the earlier phases of the Soviet period (1925–1960), not as viewed from the urban and agricultural heartland of the country but as experienced in the remotest Arctic corner of the empire. It comes as a surprise to learn that the worst time for the Russian Yupik was not during the collectivization and purges of the Stalin era but during the decade of the following liberal reforms of the 1950s. This book could also play an interesting role in the history of ideas and concepts in anthropology and social studies in general. The authors describe a distinctive form of Eskimo social organization made of patrilineal-based tribes and clans, which existed at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. There would be no problem with that, except for the fact that the leading scholar actually to be in Chukotka during that early period, Waldemar Bogoras, gives not even the slightest hint of the existence of such a system in his writings. How could he have missed anything so important and obvious if it were really there? Ironically, anyone doing fieldwork among the Yupik of Chukotka these days is likely to conclude that Bogoras was correct in not mentioning Yupik “tribes” or patrilineal clans. This is because the system Krupnik and Chlenov carefully reconstructed for the 1900–1925 era is no longer in operation, and little knowledge of it has been retained among the Yupik of today. However, in addition to Hughes’ and their own corroborative findings from St. Lawrence Island, Krupnik and Chlenov’s analysis is supported by the evidence they adduce showing how the present situation developed out of the one existing at the beginning of the past century. It seems almost miraculous that the Yupik were resilient enough to survive the Soviet era as a distinct nation. The authors describe how they did so in a relatively straightforward narrative, one sprinkled here and there with hints of admiration and amazement. To me, however, the book says more about loss than about survival. The Yupik of today are very different from their ancestors of even one generation ago, not to mention four. Resilience and survival are also major themes in the history of this book. Work on the manuscript began in October 1987, and a draft of its first portion was completed by the end of that year. That was just when the former Soviet Union began to fall apart. The developments of the following years dramatically altered not only Native life in Chukotka but

Foreword

xix

also what anthropologists were to say about it. Faced with a rapidly changing situation on the ground, the authors suddenly found themselves working on a substantial manuscript much of whose subject matter, and all of whose tone, had been overtaken by events. Thus, the first chapters of the book had to be thoroughly rewritten, and the subsequent chapters dealing with the Soviet era had to be completely rethought. This entailed an enormous amount of work by the authors, but it yielded a substantial benefit to everyone else. This is because never again, ever, will anyone be able to reconstruct through field research the full range of phenomena Krupnik and Chlenov make available to us in this marvelous book. Ernest S. Burch, Jr. [2007]

Fig. 0.1: Ice-covered Tkachen Bay, a site of Nature’s beauty. (Photo by Nikolai Vakhtin, April 1977)

Fig. 0.2: The beachfront of the village of New Chaplino, Tkachen Bay. (Photo by Nikolai Vakhtin, summer 1977)

Prologue: 1987

I

of 1987, we were busy making preparations for our next visit to the Yupik people on the Russian side of the Bering Strait. Our departure, set for the summer’s end, was being continually delayed. All of Moscow was gripped with the throes of political awakening called perestroika (“restructuring”). It was more than tempting to stay behind and witness the sputtering of the old political system with our own eyes. Yet, there was another source of ambiguity. We had been already studying the Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) people for some sixteen years. The new trip was to become our eighth field visit to the area, our first being in 1971. We had researched and published extensively on the Yupik social system, kinship, settlement patterns, former tribes and clans, folktales, rituals, and early history. It seemed as though we knew almost everything about the people whom we were to meet again. We were personally acquainted with most of the adult members of a small nation of 1,500 spread across a handful of communities we visited over the years, often several times. It was truly high time to sit down and to synthesize the data we had amassed. The book that we envisioned was a sort of a detailed historical ethnography of the Yupik people in Asia. It was to feature their former life in long-abandoned villages based upon the stories of the past generations. Snow already blanketed the houses of Novoe (New) Chaplino, a small Yupik town of 450 residents, where we found ourselves, finally, in October 1987. The town made of rows of standard dreary-colored wooden houses was set deep in a fantastically picturesque Tkachen Bay (Figs. 0.1, 0.2). It presented a striking contrast between Nature’s beauty and the harshness of human existence. In a small vacant house at town’s edge, we unpacked our travel bags and laid our field notebooks all out on the floor. Now was the time to take stock, and it looked as if we had found an ideal refuge to start pondering the structure of the future book. Alas, a small Yupik town at Bering Strait proved to be a poor ivory tower. From old notebooks, interviews, and tape transcripts poured countless stories of what the small Yupik nation had had to endure. For nearly seventy years, these people at the farthest margins of Northeast Asia were a part of the Soviet communist state. The grip of state power was stubborn and consistent in its declared move toward a “new life.” It closed ancestral villages and relocated their residents to new communities. It built schools and hospitals, introduced ambitious reforms, and filled Native towns with newcomers. One government vision made way for the next as if by a stroke of an invisible hand. Over the years, the Yupik were forced to hunt seals and whales, work in fisheries and construction, develop a reindeer industry, and raise Arctic fox or hogs. n the summer

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To be sure, the history of the Yupik people of Russia had seen many transitions brought from the outside. Long before the arrival of Soviet administrators in 1923, foreign whalers and traders, gold prospectors, and missionaries were common visitors to the Yupik area. They introduced guns and alcohol, new food and diseases, as well as money, hired labor, and a host of other institutions not previously known across the Yupik land. And prior to them, the Yupik had faced the arrival of European explorers with their sailing ships and guns, of Russian Cossacks, the frontier militiamen, and, even earlier, of the warlike reindeer Chukchi on their military raids. Contacts and changes caused by the outside world were constant factors of life at the Bering Strait for the past few centuries, if not longer. How, then, did the Yupik muster the strength to preserve their culture through this chain of transitions, the “centuries of perestroikas” (restructuring), to use a colleague’s later metaphor (Grant 1995)? This was an earnest question. Of course, there did seem to be a ready answer: the Yupik had their traditional social system honed to aid them in adapting to the harsh Arctic environment and to ensure their cultural and physical survival. For a time, it also helped resist the invasion of outsiders and protect the old social order. Eventually that social system collapsed under the integration policies enforced by the Russian state. All that was left were memories about the “olden days” held by a few elders to be salvaged by visiting anthropologists and put into social models. Even if this scenario were true, what exactly was in the “old system” that allowed the Yupik to endure the centuries of changes, from the arrival of the Russian Cossacks in 1648 through the promise of Soviet communism that was never fulfilled? We tried to find answers to this question in the first draft of this book written in the winter months of 1987 that we spent in New Chaplino. For several years, we also found a new, consuming subject to explore that may be formulated in a single paragraph. A small indigenous nation at one of the most far-flung corners of the globe encountered the colonial expansion of the Western economic system, the process that comprised the core of the world’s recent history. In order to endure, the Yupik had to rely on defensive strategies they developed: social, ecological, cultural, and so on. The process of transition via change and adjustment had its phases, logic, and principles that deserve to be documented and subjected to analytical inquiry. With a new focus, our study ceased to be a “salvage” reconstruction of the former Yupik social system and morphed into a different project. Its broader goal was to analyze the social mechanisms used by a small nation to persevere under extensive and at times highly destructive interaction with the world economic system and a powerful centralized state. Of course, the specific experience of the Yupik was unique. Yet the process of change and adjustment in contact, that is, of losing structures of the old life and adopting elements of new culture, was universal throughout the Arctic, the Americas, and the entire world (see summaries in Crossby 1973; Fitzhugh 1985; Kunitz 1994; Taylor and Pease 1994; Viola and Margolis 1991). Equally common were the many policies of the Arctic nation states with respect to their indigenous people. Despite differences in the respective political systems, Native people of the Arctic, from Siberia to Alaska to the Nordic countries, often passed through similar transitions, from colonial subordination to more subtle policies of modernization and a welfare society. Having reframed the focus of our study, we also acknowledged its limitations. We were not the first to seek explanation of the contact transitions in colonial encounters by

Fig. 0.3: Numtagnen of Imtuk, 1900– 1965. His life spanned almost exactly the period of the “Yupik transitions” covered in this book, with three generations of his family featured in our narrative. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1929. Original Forshtein caption: “Nomtagnin, the ­Eskimo.” MAE #И–115-14)

Fig. 0.4: Unidentified Yupik schoolboys of Sighineq, 1929. These boys, their parents, and their peers endured the brunt of the transitions that befell the Russian Yupik nation. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1929. ­ MAE #И–115-17)

Fig. 0.5: Aleksandr Ratkhugwi/Ratgugyi (1904–1977), “the Historian.” In the mid-1970s, he was the only senior man from the former Sighineghmiit tribe and the last historian of his small group. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, 1975, Sireniki)

Fig. 0.6: Ippi/Ipi (1914–1993), “the Kin Expert.” Born in Ungaziq, Ippi was the supreme expert on the genealogies of the Ungazighmiit tribe and, specifically, of her native Laakaghmiit clan. (Photo by Levon Abrahamian, 1979, New Chaplino)

Fig. 0.7: Ivan Ashkamakin/Ashkamaken (1911–1991), “the Party Man.” Born in Ungaziq, he was drafted as a young activist into the Soviet bureaucracy and spent his life in various administrative positions in the area. Like Uksima (Fig. 0.8), he preserved keen memories of his childhood years and of his Yupik culture. (Photo by V. I. Mostyaev, 1988, Provideniya. Courtesy Igor A. Zagrebin)

Fig. 0.8: Ukhsima I. Uksima/­Uuggsima (1915–1989), “the Modernizer.” Born in Ungaziq, she married a Russian administrator and became a symbol of Soviet Yupik modernization. Nonetheless, she maintained strong attachments to her Yupik roots and childhood memories, particularly in her later decades. (Photo by V. I. Mostyaev, 1988, Provideniya. Courtesy Igor A. Zagrebin)

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invoking paradigms like “change,” “survival,” “survival strategies,” and so on. Our story thus contains two parallel accounts. The first is ethnohistory. It reflects our attempt to keep a coherent snapshot of the past and to show what caused the life to change during a clearly defined historical time. The chronological framework we selected for this book, from 1900 to 1960, was an obvious call. The year 1900, its symbolic starting date (or rather a decade between 1895 and 1905), was the baseline of personal memories of the cohort of Yupik elders we interviewed in the 1970s and 1980s (Figs. 0.3–0.8). We also relied on extensive archival records surveyed in Russia and, later, in the United States. The year 1960, an ending date to our study, marked what we believe was the final takeover of the Yupik institutions by the Soviet state and the end of the Yupik social system as we documented it. The second track of this book is social reconstruction. Neither personal memories nor testimonies from written sources could reveal the full plethora of norms and institutions under which the Yupik society evolved during the 20th century. Only the imagination of the anthropologist may construe the system with the desired completeness and put it on paper. What this book represents is our vision of the past social order of the Yupik people and its transformation. Along the way, we naturally took issue with other anthropologists who studied contact transitions among Inuit societies across the Arctic and with our predecessors, the official Soviet/Russian historiographers, in particular. When we began our writing in 1987, the only projection of the life and history of the Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) available to Western anthropologists was through the official Soviet accounts. We saw one of our main tasks to be documenting the Yupik story free from that perspective. Fortunately, events were to overtake us. Soon after we completed the first draft of this book, numerous new studies were published that offered more nuanced insight to the Soviet policies toward Siberian indigenous people (see Chichlo 1993; Diment and Slezkine 1993; Fondahl 1993; Forsyth 1989, 1992; Pika and Prokhorov 1994; Schindler 1992; Slezkine 1994; Vakhtin 1993, 1994a, 1994b, among others). The advent of these publications freed us from the need to cover in our book many of the subjects they addressed. In our view, the main theme in the contact history of the Yupik people was that of transition, that is, of change, adjustment, and perseverance. Old social institutions were destroyed, while new ones were created. The small Yupik nation had to experience unprecedented social stress, and people had to strain every nerve to maintain some degree of order in their daily lives. The first sections of the book describe the earlier social norms that governed Yupik life at the beginning of the 20th century. Whatever order they ensured was possible to maintain then, to a certain point. The pressure upon the Yupik quickly increased as the Soviet administration took roots in their area in 1923–1925. By the 1930s, it became the determining factor of further transitions to come. It also marked the arrival of a new era, which led the small Yupik nation to the subsequent social break and profound transformation. The final chapters of the book explore some of these dramatic changes. The ensuing transition is epitomized in the name of the state-run enterprise, called The Dawn of Communism, located in the town of New Chaplino, where the first chapters of this book were written in 1987. As we know, the era of Communism was not to dawn on the land of the Yupik and most certainly never will. (1987–1995–2011)

Preface: 2011 Igor Krupnik

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the Yupik people of Russia started in summer 1971 and went through a series of nine joint and individual field trips, the last one in summer 1990. Although we maintained contacts with our local partners and friends, and now increasingly with their descendants, we have not visited the Russian Yupik communities at Bering Strait for the past twenty years. This book is, therefore, an ethnohistory, or simply a history. The first several chapters of this manuscript covering the contact-traditional Yupik society were written in three months of fall-winter 1987 (see the Prologue). They were thoroughly revised four years later at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In 1992, we once again joined forces as fellows at the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center in Washington, DC. Several more chapters covering the Russian Yupik transitions in the 20th century were added in the course of six weeks; many rounds of revision were accomplished in the following decade. In 1996, we submitted the manuscript, then titled Survival in Contact, to the Smithsonian Institution Press. The manuscript was accepted for publication, but shortly after, the press ceased publishing science contributions, and the project was put on hold for several years. As I returned to the manuscript in 2007, I discovered powerful drivers to revisit the Yupik story: new data, innovative theoretical framework(s), and a renewed urgency. During our fieldwork among the Yupik in Russia, we did not have a chance to visit St. Lawrence Island, which is part of the US territory. Things have changed since 1987 and particularly since 1997, when I had the opportunity to organize several heritage projects with Yupik partners from two island communities, Gambell and Savoonga (Krupnik 1994; 2004; Krupnik et al. 2002; Krupnik and Oovi 2011; Oozeva et al. 2004). During the same decades, several outstanding contributions to St. Lawrence Island history and ethnography were produced (Crowell and Oozevaseuk 2006; Jolles 1995, 1997, 2002; Mudar and Speaker 2003). Expanded dictionaries of all three of the Yupik languages spoken in Asia were published (Dobrieva et al. 2004; Jacobson 2008; Vakhtin 2000), and later studies added new data on the Russian Yupik communities of the post-Soviet era (Kerttula 1997; 2000; Morgounova 2007; Nielsen 2007a, 2007b; Oparin 2012). We were fortunate to incorporate these new sources into our book. The other source of new material originated from the historical photographs of the Yupik people taken on St. Lawrence Island and the Asian mainland between 1880 and the 1930s. Eventually, we gained access to almost one thousand (!) historical photos from ur fieldwork among

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the area. Several dozen appear as illustrations to this book; none were available to us during our early fieldwork in the 1970s and 1980s. Major historical photo collections that we used include those of Waldemar Bogoras (1901) at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Aleksandr S. Forshtein (1927–1929) at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg, Russia; Riley D. Moore (1912) and Henry B. Collins (1928–1930) at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; Otto W. Geist (1927–1933) at the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Alfred M. Bailey (1921) at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado; Ben Kilian (1913) at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts; and the Harriman Alaska Expedition (1899) and Leuman M. Waugh (1929–1930), both at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Over the past fifteen years, much effort was put, in partnership with local experts, to identify people, landscapes, and activities and to record elders’ memories associated with the old photographs (Fig. 0.9; Bogoslovskaya et al. 2008; Krupnik et al. 2002; Krupnik and Mikhailova 2006; Krupnik and Oovi 2011). In terms of new framework, we received precious insight from several ethnological studies published after 1995, including those by Ernest S. Burch, Jr. on traditional social systems of the Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska (Burch 1998, 2005, 2006) and by Marc G. Stevenson (1997) on the social organization of the Canadian Inuit of the Eastern and Central Arctic. Our fieldwork and writing in 1987 would have been substantially different if these monographs and theoretical framework(s) were available to us. Burch, in particular, argued that using memories of elders born after 1880 to reconstruct “traditional” social systems could often be misleading (Burch 2010). To address this challenge, we revisited many historical sources, including folklore and archaeological evidence, to synthesize a

Fig. 0.9: St. Lawrence Island Yupik elders Willis Walunga (Kepelgu), Conrad Ozeeva (Akulki), and Nancy Walunga (Aghnaghaghniq) discuss old historical photographs from the 1920s. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, 2010, Gambell, Alaska)

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new vision on the origination and lifetime of the Yupik social system described in this book (chapter 7). Be that as it may, the current version of Yupik Transitions owes a lot to the intellectual input of many of our colleagues since 1987. Last but not least, we are now being driven by a new sense of urgency to release our story. In the course of our fieldwork among the Yupik in the 1970s and 1980s, we recorded a remarkable stock of personal memories of the elders born between 1900 and 1925, the true oral history of a small nation. We traveled with elders to the old villages where they were born or where their parents and grandparents once lived. As most of the elders we worked with gradually passed away, we ended up being the custodians of this recorded cultural legacy. We now see it as our duty to return it to the younger generation of the Yupik. More and more of the young people are now lamenting the loss of historical memory and are trying to rebuild their cultural and family roots. We believe the data presented in this book, as well as in our earlier Russian publications (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Ashkamakin 2004; Chlenov and Krupnik 2012; Krupnik 2000), should be available to the Yupik people of today to help in their search for cultural knowledge and to secure its preservation among the future generations. *** A few comments may be useful to the reader. The Yupik (Asiatic or “Siberian” Eskimo) constitute the westernmost and the smallest of the culturally and linguistically related Inuit (Eskimo) populations whose area extends across four countries, from Greenland across the northern margins of North America, all the way to the Asian side of Bering Strait that belongs to Russia (Damas 1984b; Dorais 2003; Hughes 1984a; Schweitzer 1999; Vakhtin 2001). The Russian Yupik, 1,750 people, according to the Russian census of 2002 (their number is close to 1,800 today; Oparin 2012), make up slightly more than 1 percent of the overall Inuit family. The St. Lawrence Island Yupik amount to 1,600 in two island communities, Gambell (Sivuqaq) and Savoonga (Sivungaq); a few hundred more live across the state of Alaska and elsewhere in the continental United States. Throughout this book, we refer to these people as Yupik, or Asiatic Eskimo, and not Inuit, because they do not have the word Inuit in their language and do not use it to refer to themselves. Their native tongue belongs to the Yupik group of the Eskimo (Eskaleut) language family, and in their own language, they call themselves Yupiget, which means the “real people.” When speaking in Russian, they commonly use the term Eskimosy (“Eskimo”), which is still their official Russian-language ethnic name in Russian scholarly publications, censuses, and personal papers. We opted not to introduce the term Inuit in this book to avoid unnecessary confusion. The Yupik people live today in scores of rural and semiurban communities along the northern shores of the Bering Sea and around Bering Strait (Map 0.1). Although the main portion of their home area lies slightly south of the Arctic Circle, between 64° and 66°N, it is a severe, Arctic land. Here the sea is covered with ice seven to eight months a year, from November till May or June. The coast is a series of rocky bays, capes, and fjords, divided by treeless and, it seems, lifeless tundra. Yet for the Yupik, their land was always a “friendly Arctic.” The Russian Yupik reside at the easternmost edge of Eurasia alongside, and in the majority of modern villages and towns, together with a more populous Siberian indigenous

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Barrow Wrangel Island

CHUKCHI SEA in Ber

RUSSIA

rait g St

Chukchi Peninsula Anadyr

New Chaplino

GULF OF ANADYR

Gambell

USA (Alaska) Kot Kotzebue z eb ue S oun d

Seward Peninsula Nome Norton Sound

St. Lawrence Island

BERING SEA M ap 0.1: Bering Strait area and the Chukchi Peninsula

people, the Chukchi. These neighbors exceed the Yupik by a factor of nearly ten (15,767 people according to the Russian census of 2002, about 16,000 today). The Chukchi lend their name to the official name of the northeastern tip of Asia, the Chukchi Peninsula, as well as to the title of the local Russian administrative unit, the Chukchi Autonomous Area (Chukotskyi avtonomnyi okrug, in Russian), where most of the Yupik reside. For this reason, although labels such as “Eskimos of the Chukchi Area” sound strange, this terminology does reflect local political geography and administrative practices of the past one hundred years. The St. Lawrence Island Yupik constitute almost 96 percent of the population of their island, with but scores of resident outsiders, mostly teachers and married-in spouses. In this book, the English transliteration of Yupik words and personal, clan, and geographic names follows the system developed at the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks (Jacobson 1990; Krauss 1975). Russian personal names are transliterated phonetically, mostly following the Library of Congress system, with some modifications explained in the text. We adopted the following conventions for various Russian administrative units: village council (selskii sovet), the smallest unit; district (rayon); area (okrug); province (oblast); and region (kray). Lastly, for the transliteration of Russian place names, we apply the system developed by the National Image and Mapping Agency (NIMA, formerly the US Board of Geographic Names) used in our earlier papers and in the publications produced by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, including its Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology series, 2001–2011.

Acknowledgments

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of the Yupik people of Arctic Russia in 1971–1990 and this volume as its final product were made possible thanks to the support of many people and institutions. Both authors were then on the staff of the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow (now the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which sponsored our fieldwork and early publications. The project continued in summer 1991 at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with the support of the Dean’s Fund, College of Liberal Arts, and the cooperation of the Alaska Native Language Center. We completed the first draft of the 700-page manuscript in 1992–1994 at the Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation (OPP-9213942). It goes without saying that the heroes of our book, the Yupik people of Russia, were in every way participants in this project. Voices of many of them resound on the pages of the book as a sign of our gratitude. We owe our deep appreciation also to our Yupik partners on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, particularly to Willis and Nancy Walunga, Christopher Koonooka, George Noongwook, John Waghiyi, the late Ora Gologergen, and Vera Metcalf from Nome. We thank these people and hope to count them among our readers. Several colleagues are to be noted in particular. Our predecessors in studies of the Yupik people in Russia, Vladilen Leontiev (1928–1988), Georgii Menovshchikov (1911–1991), and Dorian Sergeev (1927–1984), introduced us to Yupik life as they encountered it in the 1930s and 1940s. While we could not view it with our own eyes, they provided us with many living stories and their personal experience. Two other Russian anthropologists deserve our special gratitude: the late Valerii Alekseev (1929–1991) and his wife, Tatyana Alekseeva (1928–2008). In 1971, they invited us to join their team going to the Bering Strait for a study of physical anthropology of the Yupik people. That trip introduced us to the main Russian Yupik communities in the area; without this experience we might never have come to write this book. Between 1971 and 1990, we visited virtually every site where the Yupik have ever lived or now live along the Asiatic shore of the Bering Strait. Several friends and colleagues—Levon Abrahamian, Sergei Bogoslovsky, Ilya Peiros, Yurii Rodny, and Peter Schweitzer—­accompanied us on these trips and lent their energy and hearts to our endeavor. We use several of their photos taken on these trips as illustrations to the book. Our fellows in studies of Yupik language, archaeology, and subsistence ecology, Lyudmila Ainana, Sergei Arutiunov, Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya, Mikhail Bronshtein, and Nikolai Vakhtin, traveled with us across the Yupik area, discussed various stages of our project, and acted as co-authors on several articles and books. We thank them wholeheartedly for their contribution. ur field study

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We thank the late Ernest S. Burch, Jr., William Fitzhugh, and Michael Krauss for their friendly counsel, professional support, and, first and foremost, their unyielding encouragement over many years. They, as well as Levon Abrahamian, Yvon Csonka, the late Galina Gracheva, Sergei Kan, Yurii Rodny, Peter Schweitzer, and Nikolai Vakhtin were attentive readers of sections of this book. Michael Krauss and Steven Jacobson at the University of Alaska Fairbanks verified the spelling of many Yupik words and clan and geographic names. At the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology, Noel Broadbent, Aron Crowell, Ives Goddard, Stephen Loring, and William Merrill offered assistance and friendly advice. Our book features numerous historical photographs that illustrate Yupik life in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island in the early 20th century. We are grateful to several archivists and curators who gave us access to the collections and permissions to reprint the photos—Elena Mikhailova and Julia Kupina (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia), Barbara Mathé (American Museum of Natural History, New York), the late Lou Stancari and Heather Shannon (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Suitland, MD), Daisy Njoku (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, MD), Rene Payne (Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, CO), Melanie Correia (New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA), and Katherine Donahue, Susan Jarosz, and Alice Staples (McGoldrick Collection of Arctic Images, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH). Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya, Stephen Loring, Nikolai Vakhtin, and Igor Zagrebin kindly provided additional photographs that illustrate this book. An abridged version of chapter 10 was published earlier as a paper in the journal Études/Inuit/Studies (Krupnik and Chlenov 2007). Marcia Bakry and Rachael Marr at the Smithsonian Institution assisted in the processing of the maps and photo illustrations, and Cara Seitchek offered valuable editorial help in 2007 with the first draft of the manuscript. We are grateful to the staff of the University of Alaska Press in Fairbanks, particularly to James Engelhardt, acquisitions editor, and Sue Mitchell, who acted as production editor for our book. Two Press reviewers, Gail Fondahl and Peter Schweitzer, deserve our gratitude for their valuable comments to the text. Our special “thank-you” to Kathy Cummins, our editor from Bloomington, Indiana, and Judi Gibbs, our index-maker. They both worked tirelessly for several months to convert a manuscript with hundreds of references and zillions of Yupik names and terms into a consistent and polished book. For nearly three years, 1994–1996, Steven D. Jones was in the fullest sense a partner in our work as he translated the original-draft Russian chapters. The current form and style of many sections of this book are the result of his professionalism and dedication. As the work on the manuscript was in its final stage, Ernest S. (“Tiger”) Burch, Jr. passed away. We lost a friend and a colleague, also our strongest supporter and source of inspiration. Over the years, Burch offered invaluable advice, and shared his insight and many historical materials. He did not live to see the final text, but he enthusiastically endorsed its vision. The short Foreword that he wrote in 2007 to one of its earlier versions and that we added here posthumously is a small token of his many contributions to Yupik Transitions. Finally, we wish to express our love and thanks to our families. They were left for months on end to stay without their beloved, yet never lost faith in us and supported our deed with all their strength.

Chapter 1

Contact-Traditional Society, 1900–1923

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to portray a way of life that no longer exists becomes a historian by default. The historian’s prime tools include written records, like early publications and documents, and also photographs and other objects stored in libraries, archives, and museums. These records have histories of their own, and their creation and subsequent reading is the product of time, ideology, and motivation of their collectors and interpreters. Thus, they reflect primarily the outsiders’ vision. Often historical records do not match, and the resulting picture resembles a grainy patchwork. It requires other sources to enhance its resolution and produce a more detailed and compelling narrative. One could tap this other body of knowledge via different means— in personal narratives, storytelling, memoirs, and biographies. Unlike written records, these oral forms of knowledge are remarkably fragile. Unless put on paper or preserved on tape or, today, on videotape, they remain fluid and unsecured. People’s stories change, memories falter, and valuable information is often lost as well-informed narrators pass away. Anthropologists also generate records of their own, such as genealogies, interview transcripts, kinship charts, maps with old place names, and the like. They become anthropologists’ toolkits to construe a system that we cannot observe and to describe the relationships among people who are long gone. In our work among the Yupik, we relied upon all of these sources. We surveyed the archives, libraries, and museum collections, and interviewed dozens of Yupik elders born around 1900–1920. We then converted their narratives into genealogies, maps, charts, and lists. We learned quickly that our sources conveyed not one but several versions of a multifaceted virtual world. This chapter introduces one slice of that world, namely, the outsiders’ vision of the Yupik land and its people drawn from the written records of the late 1800s and early 1900s. n anthropologist anxious

“Old Society”: The Official Myth In early 1921, the chairman of the Kamchatka Province Revolutionary Committee, Ivan Larin, in advocating for the creation of a new Soviet administration on the Chukchi 1

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Peninsula, wrote the following: “its population [that of the Chukchi district] is comprised exclusively of half-savage aliens, who without proper supervision by the government are mercilessly exploited by Russian and American traders” (Borba za vlast’ Sovetov 1967, 93). That image of “half-savage aliens” was a pillar of the formerly color-blind vision of the old life of the Yupik and other indigenous people of Chukotka. It was for decades expounded upon in hundreds of Russian historical essays, including solid academic publications.1 In its canonical version, it contained but a few iconic elements: backwardness, illiteracy, and exploitation. It was the benevolent changes brought by the Communist Revolution of 1917 that saved the Native people of the Russian Arctic, illiterate, backward, and exploited, from imminent extinction. A quotation from an eminent Russian anthropologist illustrates a typical writing of the era: The Great Socialist Revolution of 1917 led to a brilliant flourishing of national culture among all the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. . . . Before October [the Revolution], what were known as the “small” and culturally backward peoples, especially those of the Siberian Far North, were illiterate one and all. They had no written language, no schools, and no hospitals. Backwardness and poverty, lack of cultural sophistication, and ignorance had wound a solid nest among them (Zelenin 1938, 16). For the Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) people, the subjects of our book, the situation was in no way different: Earlier the (Asiatic) Eskimos, one of the minority peoples of the North, had no literacy, and did not have a written language. They were brutally oppressed by the umiileks [big bosses], the masters of the land, the shamans, and Russian uriadniks [police officers], who took from the population valuable furs in the form of yasaks [pelts], and Russian and American merchants . . . the people was dying out. Terrible epidemics raged, claiming the lives of hundreds, but there were no doctors and no one to treat the ailing. . . . Only the Great October Socialist Revolution gave the Eskimos the chance to build their culture, national in form and socialist in content (Menovshchikov 1977, 14–15). Another source described the plight of the neighboring Chukchi people in almost the same words: Previous to the victory of the Great October [Revolution of 1917], the Chukchi were most backward and unfortunate. . . . Their work implements were primitive, not always making it possible to catch animals in quantity adequate for subsistence. Inhabiting vast expanses of tundra, they were at a primordial stage. Ruthlessly robbed and persecuted by Tsarist government officials, suffering from the excesses of merchants, usurers, and foreign, mostly American, hunter-trappers, the Chukchi were doomed to degenerate and die out . . . the victory of the Great October created all the conditions for the rapid development of the Chukchi (Krushanov 1987, 4–5).

Fig. 1.1: Yupik man sitting inside one of the storehouses in Ungaziq stocked with imported goods. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, spring 1901. AMNH Library #2559) (Note: Several of Waldemar Bogoras’ photographs in the AMNH Library collection were actually taken by his assistant, Aleksandr Axelrod, though all have been accessioned under Bogoras’ name.)

Fig. 1.2: Yupik summer tent (tupeq) in Ungaziq displays a combination of traditional Yupik elements and many objects introduced from the outside world. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, June 1901. AMNH Library #2561)

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Contact-Traditional Society The image of the Russian Yupik around 1900 as “primitive bands of half-savage aliens” was nothing but a myth, an ideologically skewed legend propelled by the stream of motivated sources. Perhaps the most compelling proof to the contrary came from the old garbage heaps that we examined at the abandoned Yupik sites from the same era. They contained a little of everything: shards of porcelain dishes, ruined American gramophones with broken records, remains of sewing machines, broken Winchester rifles, cartridge cases, bottles, American tobacco boxes, and a wide range of jars that once held various imported food, from biscuits to olive oil. All of these objects came from the markets in San Francisco, Seattle, Anadyr, and Nome; they were part of village deposits mixed together with rotten walrus hides, seal bones, broken wood, iron harpoon points, pieces of clay oil lamps, stone scrapers for working skins, and other Native artifacts of everyday use. Viewed through the lenses of its garbage pits and early photographs, the Yupik society was a community in transition. Apparently, the agents of the outside world had invaded its life swiftly and inundated it with a profusion of new goods and materials (Figs. 1.1, 1.2). Elements of the old lifestyle became oddly interspersed with new forms, material and ideological, introduced by the larger world.2 In this respect, the Yupik people of Russia experienced the same (or similar) sociocultural transitions as befell their Inuit kinsmen in Alaska, in the Canadian Arctic, and in Greenland. Numerous earlier studies have examined the transformation of Arctic peoples’ life brought about by the American, Anglo-Canadian, and Danish colonial powers.3 For this reason we are not likely to impress the reader with another story about the incursion of the outside world and its many agents—explorers, whalers, missionaries, and traders—into yet another indigenous group in the Arctic. Our specific purpose is to assess how an aboriginal society fared and how its social system evolved in collision with a particular ideology of contacts: Russian and, later, Soviet. The Chukchi Peninsula, formerly a part of the Russian empire, indeed offers a different story compared to the American side of the Bering Strait, Arctic Canada, or Greenland. Up until the year 1900, the area populated by the Russian Yupik had no permanent European settlements with colonial administrators, military, police, or trade posts, and no whaling shore stations with sailors hired from around the world.4 Nor did Christian missionaries, with the ideology of active transformation, have any visible presence on the Russian side of Bering Strait up to that time. One may reasonably assume that under this very peculiar Russian rule the Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) were able to maintain their internal order and way of life albeit under some altered form (Figs. 1.3, 1.4). Of course, by 1900 no Yupik community remained untouched by contacts—which justifies calling these communities “contact-traditional.” The term was first introduced almost fifty years ago (Helm and Damas 1963) and not all of its original criteria apply to the Russian Yupik. In this book, we apply the following criteria to term an aboriginal community as contact-traditional. Such a community had accumulated extensive experience of contacts with the outside world (Figs. 1.5, 1.6); remained attached to its traditional land; had direct and continuous access to outside artifacts and goods via trade or exchange; and did not have Europeans living among or next to its local people on a long-term basis (cf. Damas 1988, 106–111). In the latter case, a critical milestone is not the presence of resident outsiders,

Fig. 1.3: This famous (and obviously staged) photograph of “dancing Eskimo girls” features Yupik youth dressed in winter fur clothing posing for a visiting photographer. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, May 1901, Ungaziq. AMNH Library #1344)

Fig. 1.4: “Eskimo playing cards”—unlike the “dancing Eskimo girls,” a more natural image of contact-traditional village life. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, early June 1901, Ungaziq. AMNH Library #2457)

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such as individual teachers, missionaries, or traders (the latter often married to local women and raising mixed families), but rather the appearance of stable social units, like small groups or families of newcomers, living according to the standards of their own. From this point of view, the period around 1900 and the two decades that followed was still a time when the Yupik way of life and the influences brought by contact remained relatively balanced. As before, hunting for whales, walrus, and seals remained the staple of the Yupik economy and supplied the basic food to the people. The old system of settlement based on many historical villages was intact, albeit in an altered form. Many elements of material and spiritual culture inherited from the old days were in place: clothing and dwellings, personal decoration, native language, lore, rituals, and religion. Excerpts from elders’ narratives,5 as well as numerous historical photographs known from the era and used in this book, confirm such a vision. As we argue, many institutions that people created themselves continued to regulate the social order that governed Yupik life, albeit in forms often modified by contact. Accordingly, the contact-traditional social system remained the main mechanism ensuring people’s response to the changing conditions. Concerted efforts to integrate the Yupik and other indigenous people of the Chukchi Peninsula into the Russian and, later, Soviet administrative and economic system became the basic thrust of government policy in the 20th century. The complete collapse of the previous aboriginal social life, both Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) and Chukchi, and the creation in its place of a new social order were the main outcomes of this transition. In the following chapters, we are to document the functioning and the demise of the contact-traditional Yupik society in full detail.

Agents of Change: Commercial Whaling By the early 1900s, the Yupik people had already lived side by side with commercial whaling and whalers for fifty years; they had also endured the impact of Russian military and colonial expansion for almost 200 years (chapter 7). In the early 1800s, Yankee whaling ships from New England, seeking new hunting areas, had moved into the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. In 1845, they appeared in the northern Bering Sea, and in 1848, the American whaler Superior passed via the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean (Bockstoce 1984; 1986; 2006; 2009). In the same year, HMS Plover, a British naval vessel, wintered in Provideniya Bay, in the heart of the Yupik land (Hooper 1976 [1853]; chapter 7). It marked the first prolonged encounter of the Yupik with the Western world system represented by a British Navy crew. Over the next decades, dozens of American ships whaled off the Chukchi Peninsula, while periodically putting in on its shores. The arrival of American whalers radically changed the previous system of contacts between the Yupik and the outside world. Until the mid-1800s, the Chukchi Peninsula was the most distant and forgotten fringe of the Russian empire, literally the “end of the world.” Russia had abandoned its earlier efforts in the 1700s to annex this area after a series of unsuccessful military campaigns against the local people, particularly the warlike “reindeer” Chukchi (Bogoras 1975; Nefyodkin 2003; Vdovin 1965; chapter 7). For more than a hundred years, between 1770 and 1876, the physical presence of the Russian state in the Yupik land was limited to rare visits of small teams of Russian paramilitary servicemen (Cossacks)

Fig. 1.5: “Natives of Indian Point taken on board Steamer Bear” (original caption). Yupik men and women from Ungaziq aboard the USCG Bear off the coast of Chukotka, summer 1886. (Photo by Lieutenant Charles Kennedy. PSU #24)

Fig. 1.6: “William Hudson and Natives of Emma Harbor on board” (original caption). Yupik children from Ugriileq aboard the schooner Polar Bear, summer 1913. (Photo by Bernhard Kilian. NBWM 2008.21.543)

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and a handful of naval expeditions of discovery. The first came by sleds in wintertime; the latter arrived in Navy ships in summer. Both stayed for a few weeks, even days, and had but a cursory interaction with the locals. Russian settlements in the Kolyma River valley and the seasonal Aniuy Fair on the Omolon River some 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) west of Bering Strait remained the sole Russian outposts in this part of Northeast Siberia. Nonetheless, Russian goods—tobacco, beads, briquette tea, side arms, metal dishes— became a part of Yupik daily culture in the 1700s. They circulated via local exchange networks over the Chukchi Peninsula and even farther east to Alaska. The flow of goods led to the formation of an intercontinental trade network across the Bering Strait and Native people were fully in control of this network on both of its sides (Bockstoce 2009; Bogoras 1975; Burch 2005; Hunt 1975; Vdovin 1965). This all-Native trade functioned without Russian involvement, except for the supply of Russian goods at its starting points. After the arrival of the American whalers in 1850, the physical presence of outsiders became a constant factor of Yupik life. Between 1849 and 1870, some fifty to eighty whaling ships with many hundred sailors passed annually via Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean (Bockstoce 1986; Bockstoce and Botkin 1983). This concentrated influx of foreigners and interactions with them rather quickly led to noticeable changes. As early as 1856, sailors from the USS Vincennes surveying the Yupik area to the north of Cape Chaplin noted that the language of the locals contained words of pidgin English that the Natives used to converse with the outsiders (Heine 1859). The interactions were not limited to linguistic borrowing. New goods appeared in Yupik villages: rum, American chewing tobacco, rifles, ammunition, and metal articles. Whalers exchanged these for the furs, walrus ivory, and baleen that became the chief trade commodities (Bockstoce 1986; 2009). American whaling vessels usually set forth to their Arctic hunting grounds in early spring, starting from Hawaii or from San Francisco (Bockstoce 1986; 2009). By the beginning of May, they would be touching the Asian shore at Cape Chaplin, the first ice-free point on the Chukchi Peninsula. Here they traded, exchanging imported goods, and hired local hunters, often taking them along into the Arctic Ocean for the summer whaling season (Bockstoce 1986; Hunt 1975; Vdovin 1965). Some of them were to return months, even years later, and their paths could take them through Nome, Seattle, San Francisco, and occasionally even more distant lands. Initially the main centers of interactions with the whalers were secure anchorage sites at the two largest bays on the Chukchi Peninsula, Plover Bay at the entrance to the large fjord of Provideniya Bay, and Lavrentiya Bay. Soon, the whalers shifted toward the large Native villages on the open shore, especially the Yupik communities of Ungaziq on Cape Chaplin and Nuvuqaq (Naukan) on Cape Dezhnev and the nearby Chukchi community of Uelen. Contacts, exchange, and new trade goods were but a fraction of the changes introduced by the arrival of whalers. Less visible, though a more lasting outcome, was the overhunting of marine mammal stocks in the northern Bering Sea and the adjacent sections of the Arctic Ocean. Between 1849 and 1900, the total estimated commercial catch was over 16,000 bowhead whales and almost 150,000 walrus (Bockstoce and Botkin 1982; 1983). The removal of so many animals upon which the Yupik and other Native people depended was devastating. Famine, population losses, and the abandonment of many indigenous communities soon followed (Bockstoce 1986; chapter 2).

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By 1900, when whaling operations plunged after decades of predatory hunting, whalers became a sort of traveling merchants. The goods they commonly brought for trade included tea, sugar, tobacco, flour, biscuits, cotton textiles, rifles, cartridges, whaling ammunition, and boats (Kalinnikov 1912). Of the local products, the whalers were most interested in baleen, for which there was absolutely no demand on the Russian market. A new annual cycle was quickly set up in many coastal villages geared to the regular arrival of the whaling vessels, usually in May or June. This is how an eyewitness described it around 1909: The arrival of each vessel creates an entire epoch in the monotonous life of the Chukchis, all the more so because the whalers are the first heralds of the arrival of summer. . . . When three masts with a crow’s nest appear on the horizon, the entire population of the village runs out of the yarangas [skin tents]: one person gets the dogs ready, another prepares the skis, and the ship doesn’t even have a chance to reach the coast but that it is awaited by a crowd of people of all ages and genders. Everyone brings something to sell: one’s got a bundle of fox pelts, one’s got a polar bear skin on his sled, someone else only has a pair of ringed seal skins, a bundle of lines, several pounds of baleen and walrus tusk; women are carrying the boots they made, sewn rugs, purses, and other knickknacks. They immediately cast lines from the ship. The happy, bustling crowd draws it securely to the ice and quickly clambers onto the deck. And here the guests are expected and the hosts offer something: if much trading is anticipated, a shot of liquor, otherwise just tea, tobacco, and a lump of sugar. . . . In the late autumn, usually in October, the whalers again visit our coast for the hired Chukchis to disembark, and then make for San Francisco for the winter (Kalinnikov 1912, 172–173). For their trade operations, the whalers favored larger Yupik villages with active Native whale hunting, where they could hire experienced hunters as oarsmen and harpooners for the passing whaling ships. A small group of indigenous middlemen and power brokers quickly emerged. The sources from the whaling era preserved a few local names, such as Yupik trader Kuwar (Quwaaren) from Cape Chaplin, repeatedly referred to as “the richest man on the coast” (Bockstoce 1986, 195–199; Jackson 1895, 589; Krause 1984, 102); a certain “Sunbrown” (Uughqaghtaq), also from Cape Chaplin and later Uwellkal (chapter 4); “EastHead Charlie” from the village of Avan; Kapuza (evidently Qepusaq, in Yupik) from Plover Bay; a Chukchi trader from Lavrentiya Bay known by the name of “I-Hope-So” (Hunt 1975, 213; Vanderlip 1903, 309); and others. However, by the year 1900, American whaling along both the Chukotkan and Alaska shores declined greatly, due to the catastrophic drop in baleen prices (Bockstoce 1986; chapter 4). Soon after, the system of commercial ties that bound the crews of seasonally arriving whaling, merchant, and patrol vessels with energetic and entrepreneurial Native middlemen collapsed.

The Americans Step onto the Chukchi Peninsula Once whalers opened this remote area, other American-led commercial initiatives spread into it. By the 1870s, both sides of the Bering Strait, the Siberian and the Alaskan, gradually

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had become parts of a single economic system. It was linked to the US Pacific Coast with its main centers in Seattle, San Francisco, and, later, Nome. The system was built and thrived on commercial exploitation of local resources: initially marine mammals, whales, walrus, and seals; later mineral riches, above all gold; and finally furs. In 1865, the joint Russian-American Western Union Telegraph Company commenced construction of a new telegraph line intended to link Europe and America via Siberia and Alaska. The American survey team under George Kennan appeared at the mouth of the Anadyr River; another small team wintered between Anadyr and Provideniya Bay (Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988; Hunt 1975; Kennan 1870). Even the American Civil War echoed on the Chukchi Peninsula, when in 1865 the Confederate warship Shenandoah attacked and burned thirty-seven Yankee whaling vessels off the Russian side of the Bering Strait (Bockstoce 1986; Hunt 1975). Russia’s sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 created a newly established international border in the Bering Strait that forced both the Russians and the Americans to devote more attention to the area. A Russian Navy boat arrived periodically on a summer patrol of the area during the 1870s and 1880s (Onatsevich 1877; Sulkovskii 1882; Vdovin 1965). In 1879, an American patrol vessel, USS Thomas Corwin, began cruising the Bering Strait, putting in alternately on the Asiatic and American shores (Hooper 1881; 1884). A few Russian officials toured the area on brief inspection missions to assess the status of the Native population and local resources (Olsuf’iev 1896; Resin 1888). During these same decades, some American public figures, seamen, and administrators sounded the alarm regarding the disastrous situation of the Alaska Natives. In response, the US General Agent of Education in Alaska, Sheldon Jackson, developed a plan to introduce reindeer herding to Alaska based upon the example of Siberian Native herding. In 1892–1893, Jackson’s agents purchased several hundred domesticated reindeer on the Chukchi Peninsula and in Kamchatka from the local Chukchi and Koryak herders and transported them to Alaska (Hunt 1975; Jackson 1895). American ships hired by Jackson continued to visit the Chukchi Peninsula regularly throughout the 1890s.

Gold Rush: In Search of a Siberian Klondike In 1896, the discovery of the gold deposits on the Klondike River in the Yukon Valley prompted the last major gold rush in American history. A year later, gold fever had spread to the Seward Peninsula adjoining the Bering Strait. Here in 1899 a tent city of gold prospectors, the future town of Nome, sprang up; its population soon exceeded 20,000 (Koutsky 1981a; Ray 1975). Shortly after, American prospectors appeared on the Chukchi Peninsula, spreading rumors about the richness of gold deposits in Siberia (Bogdanovich 1901; Hunt 1975; Vanderlip 1903). Russian merchants and entrepreneurs, who were mastering the more southern reaches of the Russian Pacific region and the Kamchatka Peninsula, could not pass up such a windfall. In 1900, the Russian government granted a concession to develop the gold deposits on the Chukchi Peninsula to St. Petersburg entrepreneur V. M. Vonliarliarski. The newly established Russian-controlled Northeast Siberian Stock Company opened its office in Nome in 1902. Shortly after, three company support bases called “stations” or “posts”

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were built on the Chukchi Peninsula. These were Mikhailovsky Station (Fig. 1.7), on the southern side of Cape Dezhnev; Nikolaevsky Station, in Lavrentiya Bay; and Vladimirsky Station, in Emma Harbor in Provideniya Bay. The stations of the Northeast Siberian Company established in 1903–1904 were the first settlements built by outsiders on the Russian shore of Bering Strait. They consisted of a station house and storehouses manned by a small permanent staff made up of the station chief and his assistants: prospectors, mining specialists, and guards. All of them were outsiders: foreigners, Russians, and locals of mixed origins called “Kamchadals,” primarily from the Kamchatka Peninsula. These people were the first non-Natives to set up residence in local communities. They also facilitated the appearance of new actors from among the locals themselves: middlemen and traders with whom the later Soviet authorities would soon wage uncompromising war.

The Russians Build Their Administration Up until these years, there was hardly any Russian administrative presence on the Chukchi Peninsula. When the Americans arranged the first tourist cruise from Nome to the Asiatic side of Bering Strait in 1903, they did not have to deal with a single Russian official in the area. Whereas Nome had already evolved into a flourishing town with boardwalk streets, movie theaters, bars, newspapers, and stores, the Russian side of Bering Strait remained a desolate land. Administratively it was the farthest periphery of the Kamchatka Province, the end of the world to many Russians. In 1888, the Russians established a special administrative unit called the “Anadyr District” (okruga) to embrace the northernmost expanses of the Kamchatka Province, including the Chukchi Peninsula. Its center, beginning in 1895, was located at Mariinsky Post, the precursor of the present-day city of Anadyr at the Anadyr River estuary, some 600–800 kilometers (370–500 miles) from the Yupik land at Bering Strait. It consisted of

Fig. 1.7: Trading post at Dezhnev (Kengisqun), south of Cape Dezhnev. Some of the buildings were originally erected for the Mikhailovsky Station of the Northeast Siberian Stock Company in 1903–1904. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И-115-103)

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the local administrative headquarters, Cossack barracks, and a few wooden houses built for the Cossack families. For a full decade (1895–1905), the administrator of the Anadyr District, who had a few local troops called “Anadyr Cossacks” in his command, was the sole resident Russian government officer between Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kolyma River. Prior to that, there was none at all. Things might well have continued for many long years were it not for the Gold Rush. Eventually, the hunt for gold riches on the Chukchi Peninsula proved unsuccessful and Vonliarliarski’s enterprise ended in a bust. Nevertheless, Russian authorities, concerned at the absence of constant supervision over the shores that had ceased belonging to no one, decided to establish a police outpost in the area (Vdovin 1965). The first Russian government officer, a certain Captain Belugin, put up his residence in Lavrentiya Bay in 1906, at the former station of the bankrupt Northeast Siberian Company. In 1909, a separate “Chukchi District” (uyezd) was established to cover the Chukchi Peninsula proper. The residence of its head was first in Provideniya Bay and, in 1912, in the Chukchi village of Uelen (Fig. 1.8). Russian officer Baron Kleist became the first head of the new Chukchi District (Dikov 1989; Vdovin 1965). The last representative of the pre-Soviet Russian administration, military clerk Diadenko, who replaced Kleist in 1915, transferred the district office back to Emma Harbor, inside the Provideniya Bay fjord, in the center of the Yupik land. By this time, the site in Provideniya Bay already had a small colony made up of a few Russians and people of mixed origins (Kamchatka Creoles) who worked at the trading station owned by Julius Tomsen and at the coal storehouse as guards and warehouse workers. We know the names of several of them, like Vasilii Bychkov, a Russian,6 and the Kamchadals (Creoles) Iosif Pavlov and Stepan Popov. All three were married to local Yupik women, and their children became the first offspring of mixed marriages raised with non-Native fathers as part of the Yupik community (chapter 4). Diadenko also made the first attempt to create a local administrative network in the form of “village elders” selected from among the local residents. A small elite group of sorts had emerged made up of Native traders known up and down the coast and of local middlemen who worked for visiting schooners, both American and Russian. To outsiders and the passing Russian officials, these people performed the duties of semiofficial representatives of their communities. Diadenko was apparently the first to formalize this process. The first Russian schools and Orthodox mission were established on the Chukchi Peninsula around or after 1910. The push, again, came from Alaska. The Governor General of the Amur Province reported in a note to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1910 that “our” (i.e., Asiatic) Eskimos from the village of Ungaziq requested that a school be opened in their community. They reportedly had criticized the Russian government because “it displays less concern for them than the Americans do for their Eskimos” (Soliarsky 1916, 140; Vdovin 1965, 257). In 1909, a Russian Orthodox missionary, Father Amfilokhii, from Alaska, settled in Provideniya Bay and started a mobile church school. Finally, around 1915, the first Russian school opened in the Yupik village of Teflleq on Cape Chaplin (chapter 4). This was the only act of the early Russian administration still recalled by Yupik elders in the 1970s. The teacher was a Russian Orthodox priest remembered as Father Nikolai. He died shortly after and his family left the area altogether.

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Fig. 1.8: Captain Louis Lane (in the middle), with the Russian “judge” (visiting district administrator?) and his wife aboard the schooner Polar Bear off East Cape, Siberia. (Photo by Bernhard Kilian, summer 1913. NBWM 2008.21.237)

Diadenko’s efforts clearly followed the pattern of the Russian colonial policy adopted elsewhere in Siberia as well as earlier in Alaska (Kan 1988). It combined the creation of a local administrative structure composed of the Native elite with Russian educational and Orthodox missionary activity. Diadenko’s tenure was, nevertheless, short lived. He died in 1916, and for the next few years the Siberian side of the Bering Strait had no Russian administration whatsoever.

New Modernizers: Traders and Commercial Agents Of much greater significance was the influence of a few non-Native traders who settled on the coast. Some of them, such as Olaf Svenson (Swenson) and Charley Carpendale, first came to the Chukchi Peninsula in 1902 as members of the gold prospecting parties brought by the Northeast Siberian Company from Nome (Swenson 1944; Tolmachoff 1949).7 Others arrived as independent merchants and prospectors or as representatives of the Russian Siberian trading houses around 1910. In order to master this remote land, both Russian and American firms were compelled to rely on people whom chance had brought to these shores. As elsewhere in the Arctic, people of Nordic and Baltic extraction were quite visible: Olson, a Dane; Bent Vaal (Wall), a Norwegian; Swenson, a Swede; Julius Tomsen, a Latvian-born German; and August Masik, an Estonian. There were surprisingly several immigrants from the Northern Caucasus: the Ossetians Fedor Karaev and his brothers

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Aleksandr and Moisei; the Dagestanis Khadzhimet Gazdarov and Bek-Sultan Galiev; and the Ingushes Sandro Malsagov and Magometh (Mohammed) Dobriev (Borba za vlast’ Sovetov 1967, 126; Mukhachev 1962, 55; Syomushkin n.d., 13; Table 1.1). Russian and Anglo-Saxon surnames were fairly rare. Also among the trading agents were Russian Siberian Creoles from the Anadyr River valley, Trifon Diachkov and Boris Shitikov. The trading agents settled in the local communities, Chukchi and Yupik, and, as a rule, married local women and established families. They created a network of small trading posts and storehouses. The agents (“traders”) acquired furs, baleen, walrus ivory, and, to a lesser extent, seal and reindeer skins. In exchange, they provided local residents with (primarily American) weapons and ammunition, whaling guns, metal objects, dishes, inexpensive fabrics, flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, and some alcohol. The alcohol was delivered illegally and in relatively modest volumes as both the Russian and American administrations prohibited its sale to the Natives. In many coastal villages, such locally based trade led to the emergence of aboriginal traders and intermediaries, upon whom both the agents and the Russian administrators tried to rely. These people were the true product of the contact-traditional era. They spoke several native languages, Chukchi, Yupik, and often some Western Alaska Inupiaq, and at a minimum some English and Russian. They also knew how to do business with officials and merchants of various nationalities. Native traders worked together with the agents and helped them establish links with the inland Chukchi herders and distant coastal communities. Curiously, the establishment of locally based traders marked a kind of reverse from the previous era, when the contacts centered on dealings with whalers. By 1910, a new system based on commercial trapping, that is, hunting for Arctic fox and fur trading, replaced the whaling industry as the main venue of contacts. The 20th century brought in increased demand for pelts for new brands of urban female clothing in Europe and North America (chapter 4). The decline of the whaling industry and the rise of commercial trapping was a common transition that befell the Arctic peoples from Greenland to Siberia. And wherever it happened, the earlier trade networks of the whaling era fell into disuse (Alunik et al. 2003; Eber 1989; Fainberg 1971; Usher 1970; see chapter 4). The rocky points and fjords inhabited by the Yupik people in Asia lost their economic advantages, for trapping was oriented toward the fur resources of the open coastland and inland tundra.

Arrival of the Soviet Regime: 1918–1923 The year 1917, a turning point in Russia’s history in the 20th century, had initially little bearing on the Chukchi Peninsula. Neither of the two Russian revolutions that took place in that year had any impact on this remote area. From the moment of Diadenko’s death in 1916 and up to the summer of 1918, when the first representative of the Bolshevik administration arrived in Uelen, there were no recognized Russian officials in the area and neither the Yupik nor the Chukchi experienced any visible change due to the toppling of the government in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and Moscow. Yet the state attitude toward the Siberian people eventually changed in the most fundamental way. For this reason, the period of the nascent Soviet administration between 1920 and 1930 marked the final phase of the contact-traditional era and the institutions it created.

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Table 1.1: Coastal trading posts on the Chukchi Peninsula in 1923 Location

Agent Name

1. Kresta Bay 2. Cape Bering 3. Provideniya Bay 4. Cape Chaplin 5. Lorin village 6. Yandagay village 7. Cape Dezhnev 8. Cape Serdtse-Kamen

Hudson’s Bay Company, trader D. Smirnov, trading since early 1921 Branch of Swenson and Company A certain Tomsen, has a schooner, does not pay taxes, uses state coal Artel [team] of Canadians with schooner Iskom Branch of Swenson, agent Elkov, trade of Dobriev; do not pay taxes Trade of Karaev, Magometh [Dobriev] engaged in trading Trade of Karaev and Swenson, agent Silvermar American Vaal engaged in trading, illegally acquired missionary schooner abandoned on the shore; with him is a certain Sokolovsky American Olson Trade of Karaev and Kosygin Branch of Swenson company Trade of Karaev Division of Swenson Felix Company Trade of C. Carpender and Khadzhimet Gazdarov

9. Yandakino village 10. Ryrkarpiy village 11. Portagin village 12. Enurmin village 13. Cape Ayana 14. North Cape 15. Uelen village

Source: Chekmarev 1923, 1. Original author’s spelling of personal and geographic names has been retained.

As elsewhere across the former Russian empire, the Soviet regime arrived in the Yupik area with a new ideology of social relations. Regardless of what it was, the new authorities considered the previous social order and way of life unacceptable a priori. It is not surprising that early Soviet sources described the Siberian Native peoples as mere victims of the former regime and abound with descriptions of cheating, robbing, and making drunkards of the aborigines by various “exploiters,” above all traders and foreign companies. Combating them and, ultimately, eliminating them became the banner of the new epoch. An unpublished manuscript by a certain Tikhon Syomushkin, presumably written in the mid-1930s, offers the most detailed description of that early Soviet era. It has a title typical for the time, “Preliminary Materials on the Administrative Management Structure on the Chukchi Peninsula, Contemporary Soviet Construction, and Future Prospects” (Syomushkin n.d.).8 In its author’s opinion, the “Soviet” period in the area began only in 1923. As elsewhere in the Russian Pacific and throughout Russia itself, the preceding years of civil war between the Bolsheviks and various White Guard regimes saw incessant changes in administrations. Various “governors” and “representatives,” Soviet and White Guard, arrived in the summer by a trade steamer coming from Petropavlovsk or Anadyr. The activity of such short-term administrators was mostly restricted to the district center in Uelen and to a few nearby Chukchi villages, as well as to Provideniya Bay (Khrenov 1920), and their power did not expand beyond levying taxes on American and Russian traders. They were unable to exert any influence on local residents spread in dozens of villages and camps. The first Soviet administration in the Bering Strait area started in Uelen in December 1922 with local trader Fedor Karaev at its head. He had the official title of “plenipotentiary of the Kamchatka Revolutionary Committee for the Chukchi and Anadyr Districts.” An industrious businessman well familiar with the area he was appointed to govern, Karaev

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yupik transitions

tried to incorporate the existing network of trading agents, the majority his trade partners or representatives, into the nascent Soviet system. He divided the coastal zone of the Chukchi Peninsula into seven precincts (volosts) and appointed one of his representatives to each. The list of his appointees was quite remarkable: Tegrugyi, Chukchi trader; Iosif Pavlov, Creole guard at the Provideniya storehouse; Magometh Dobriev, trader, an Ingush; Nechipurenko, Karaev’s deputy, Russian communist; Rawtergin, Chukchi hunter; Vaal, Norwegian trader; and Olaf Swenson, Swedish-American trader (Syomushkin n.d., 13). In winter 1923, Karaev conducted a dogsled survey of all of the coastal communities in the district and left behind a number of reports of great interest (Karaev 1923; Materialy po statistike 1925).9 In that same year, the Karaev Brothers Company and the Canadian Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) obtained the concession for trade and supply for all of Northeast Siberia. In 1924–1925, however, the agreement with the HBC was abrogated. The new provincial authorities quickly dismissed Karaev, an able local administrator, and replaced him with one of his deputies, the communist I. Burk. The latter in turn had to relinquish the position himself six months later to another communist appointee, Grigorii Losev (Dikov 1989; Revkomy 1973). Immediately upon his arrival in summer 1924, Losev began to remove Karaev’s officials, putting in their places new people recruited from among the locals. Losev’s administration, stationed in Uelen, consisted of four people: the “governor” himself, the chief of police, the inspector of finances, and the police constable. The famous Greenlandic explorer Knud Rasmussen witnessed its heavy-handed style when he arrived on the Chukchi Peninsula in September 1924 on the last leg of his trans-Arctic journey across Greenland, Canada, and Alaska. Losev’s officers immediately detained Rasmussen and ordered him to leave for the lack of a Soviet entry visa (Rasmussen 1927, 366–370). Yet Losev’s rule was short lived and ended in the summer of 1925; and so the revolving door of the passing Soviet administrators continued until the end of the decade.

Life That Had to Be Changed The Russian administrative presence in the Yupik land, though gradually viewed as an established fact, had hardly disrupted the foundations of Native life. A few Russian officials in Uelen or Provideniya Bay were more a harassment to the foreign visitors and local traders, as attested by Knud Rasmussen or American sport hunter John Burnham in 1921.10 They were barely a factor in Natives’ daily existence. A more common picture was a trade agent (or two) settled in a Native community, usually married to a local woman and clinging to the support of his Native clientele. Scores of smaller villages and camps ruled by their Native leaders functioned with total disregard to the Russian law, as witnessed by a few visitors who happened to get into the “Native country” outside the Russian administrative posts.11 The villages of earth-covered huts and tents roofed with walrus hides were scattered, as before, on the rocky points and gravel spits. Hunters in skin boats and wooden whaleboats cruised the sea or ventured into the ice to hunt seals, walrus, and whales. Despite the presence of many foreign goods, people still lived mainly on the meat of marine mammals and other subsistence products obtained from the land and the sea.

Contact-Traditional Society, 1900–1923

17

At night, shaman drums jingled in the Native houses lit by seal-oil lamps. People rubbed oil onto wooden figurines of the spirit-protectors, washed with urine, and brought dogs for sacrifice. Men, women, and children were dressed in skin clothing; they heated their houses with the burned blubber of the animals hunted at sea. The faces and hands of women were tattooed, and parents named their children after auspicious animals, dead relatives, and objects washed ashore by the sea. For a few visitors, who had crossed from the bustling streets of Nome 325 kilometers (200 miles) away or disembarked from the Russian steamers arriving from the southern administrative hubs at Petropavlovsk or Vladivostok, that life seemed hardly touched by the impact of the “civilized world.” Whether we call the Yupik communities of the early 1900s “contact,” “contact-traditional,” or “modified,” they continued to live primarily according to their internal norms. Therefore, we have to switch lenses to zoom onto the social institutions that governed the Yupik world.

Notes 1. See more on the early Soviet vision of Siberian indigenous people in Forsyth 1992; Grant 1995; and particularly Slezkine 1994. 2. One could get this impression from the less ideologically motivated sources of the time, which include Bogdanovich 1901; Bogoras 1901; 1975 [1904–1909]; Gondatti 1897a; 1898, Kalinnikov 1912; Kirillov 1908; 1912; Olsuf’iev 1896; and Starokadomskii 1946, as well as from later historical summaries by Hunt 1975 and Vdovin 1965; 1987. Waldemar Bogoras’ extensive ethnographic and photo collections secured during his travel through the Yupik land in 1901 (now housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York) offer the best insight into the material culture and local people’s appearance of the era. 3. See Alunik et al. 2003; Burch 1975; Eber 1989; Hughes 1960; Hunt 1975; Jenness 1962; 1964; 1965; Partnow 2001; Ray 1975; Robert-Lamblin 1986; Ross 1975; Stevenson 1997; Taylor 1974, to name but a few. 4. On St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, the first American teachers, Vene Gambell and his family, settled in summer 1895 (Gambell 1898; Jackson 1895). 5. Some of these narratives have been published in Russian as a special collection (Krupnik 2000). 6. Vasilii Bychkov, age thirty-two, his Native wife named Olga, and a newborn son Ioann (Ivan) were listed in the Chukchi Mission parish record of 1910 (Ispovednaia vedomost’ 1910; appendix 6). The same record includes another Russian guard, Ignatii Nadtochii, age thirty-eight. 7. For a thorough historical review of the traders’ activities on the Chukchi Peninsula and personal sketches of some of the characters of the era, see Hunt 1975, 262–312. 8. Syomushkin, a young Soviet administrator and teacher, traveled extensively across the Chukchi Peninsula in 1924–1929. He later became a renowned Soviet novelist and published several popular novels and collections of short stories on the area and its residents (i.e., Syomushkin 1965 [1948]). 9. Karaev’s junior brother Aleksandr also published a useful report on the area (Karaev 1926).

18

yupik transitions

10. John Burnham, professional big-game hunter, crossed into the Chukchi Peninsula in summer 1921 on behalf of the US Bureau of Biological Survey in “search for a new species of mountain sheep” (Burnham 1929, 4). The specimens he secured are currently in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (Bailey 1971, 79). 11. See Harald Sverdrup’s account of his dogsled trip along the Chukchi Peninsula in ­winter– spring 1921 (Sverdrup 1930). American sport hunter John Burnham, though harassed by the Russian officials in Provideniya Bay (Burnham 1929), made no references to the Russian presence on his 1921 boat journey and hiking between Provideniya and Kresta Bay. Philip Maskin (Masqen), a Yupik hunter from Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, was another visitor in the early 1920s who met no Russians in the area (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 115–135).

Chapter 2

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

T

the contact history of the Yupik land in Asia outlined in chapter 1 has many shortcomings. It skips most of the Yupik communities besides major hubs and offers little detail on people’s social life of the time. It cites hardly any Native names and lacks a Yupik voice. To add such a voice to our narrative, other records are to be sought, namely, Yupik stories about the “olden times” and personal memories. Yupik elders whom we interviewed in the 1970s and 1980s usually kept memories of the events in which persons known to them participated that extended up to 100 to 120 years from the time of documentation. The same range of four to six generations (two to three generations from the people born between 1900 and 1930) was the common depth of the genealogies we compiled (Chlenov and Krupnik 1983, 131). For this reason, events most removed in time, if associated with persons remembered by name and relations, must have taken place around 1870–1880 and no earlier than 1850–1860. Today, as the elders born during the first decades of the past century gradually pass away, the genealogical memory of the Yupik in Chukotka rarely extends beyond 1900.1 Elders of the 1970s, particularly those knowledgeable about the past, had a solid grasp of the time associated with their parents’ early years (1880–1910); sometimes even their grandparents’ time (1860–1890). This chapter offers a summary of what we learned from elders’ narratives and historical accounts centered on the events and people that they personally remembered (Yupik, ungipamsuget). We will match those narratives with written sources from 1850–1900 whenever possible. Prior to that date was what the Yupik themselves view as their “distant past,” the time described in their traditional stories or legends (Yupik, ungipaghaatet; Jacobson 2008, 563; Rubtsova 1971, 549). Such earlier stories and legends that offer glimpses of Yupik life in the more distant past are reviewed in chapter 7. he synopsis of

Establishing the Yupik People in Asia The presence of two distinctive groups among the indigenous people of the Chukchi Peninsula then called the “reindeer” and the “sitting” (coastal) Chukchi and the association of the 19

20

yupik transitions

latter with the Alaska Eskimos was first recognized in the late 1700s (Vdovin 1954). By the 1860–1870s, the existence of the “Eskimo-like” people in Asia distinct from the neighboring Chukchi was well known to many visitors and scholars, and even the name “Asian Eskimos” was introduced on maps and in certain writings (Dall 1870; 1875; 1877; 1881; Krause 1882; 1993; Nelson 1983 [1899]; Nordensheld 1936; Petroff 1884; Powell 1891; Rink 1887). Nonetheless, more specific information on the Asiatic Yupik people as an ethnic group made of several subdivisions, each with a name, territory, and language or dialect of its own, was lacking for several more years. The absence of such knowledge about the Yupik was quite notable, particularly when compared to what was known about many other Eskimo groups in North America. Local Eskimo groups (“tribes”) had been identified in Western Alaska since the 1840s (Zagoskin 1967 [1847]) and, later, in North Alaska and Canada. Their tribal names quickly became popular in travelers’ reports, maps, scholarly writings, and censuses of the time (Boas 1888; Dall 1875; 1877; Murdoch 1892; Nelson 1983 [1899]; Petroff 1884; Rink 1887; Turner 1894). For the Russian Yupik, a similar organization was recorded only in 1895, in the aftermath of a dogsled survey undertaken by Nikolai Gondatti, the first appointed Russian administrator in the area. Gondatti (who happened to be a trained anthropologist and later became a renowned scholar and a Siberian provincial governor) visited most of the Native communities on the Chukchi Peninsula. He conducted a local census and collected word lists and texts in several local languages (Gondatti 1897a; 1897b). Besides corroborating the distinction between the “nomadic” (“reindeer”) and “settled” (coastal) Chukchi, Gondatti identified three other coastal groups that spoke separate languages. He named them the Aiwuanat, the Pe’ekit, and the residents of the village of Wute’en (Russian, Wute’entsy) and estimated their numbers at 670, 300, and 80 people, respectively (Gondatti 1897a, 168; 1898, 30–31). All three names recorded by Gondatti were incidentally the Chukchi forms.2 Gondatti argued that these groups were made of former migrants from the American continent and nearby islands and that the residents of Big Diomede Island constituted a fourth group that was alien to the Chukchi but “somewhat related” to the three other on the Asian mainland (Gondatti 1898, 31). Russian linguist Vsevolod Miller (1897), who studied the word lists and other language materials collected by Gondatti in 1895, confirmed that the three Asian groups belonged to the “Eskimo tribes” and that their languages had the closest affinity to the Eskimo dialects of Western Alaska.3 Shortly after, in 1901, Waldemar Bogoras, Russian political exile-turned anthropologist, re-tracked Gondatti’s route and corroborated Gondatti-Miller’s typology (Bogoras 1975, 19–21). He named the three groups Aiwa’nat, Nøøkalit or Pe’ekit, and Wute’elit, respectively. He also reported the name Yu’it (“people”) by which the Asian Eskimos apparently called themselves. That term, Yū-it, was first used for the Eskimo people in Asia by American naturalist William Dall (1881, 862).4 Bogoras called the residents of St. Lawrence Island the Eiwhue’lit and argued that their language is similar to that of the Asiatic Aiwa’nat, so that the islanders were merely a “colony” from the mainland. All of Bogoras’ terms, again, were Chukchi names for the respective Yupik groups. The Gondatti-Miller-Bogoras division of the Asiatic Eskimo into three groups, the Aiwa’nat, the Nøøkalit, and the Wute’elit (plus the residents of Big Diomede), was used in the Russian population census of 1897 that produced their first total count of 1,307 people,

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

21

according to Gondatti’s enumeration in 1895 (Patkanov 1912, 890). The three-group division was then adopted in numerous later publications, Russian and American alike (Bogoras 1934a, 1934b; Hodge 1910; Jochelson 1928; Swanton 1952). New Russianized names for the groups, Chaplintsy, Naukantsy, and Sirenikovtsy, were introduced after the 1940s (Leont’iev 1973; Menovshchikov 1959; 1964), and they were in use when we started our fieldwork among the Asian Yupik in the 1970s.

The Early-Contact Yupik Groups and Their Areas Naturally, local subgroups and linguistic divisions had been the fabric of Yupik social life and sociopolitical geography long before they were “discovered” by outside visitors. The following section summarizes what we learned from the elders about the former Yupik population areas and historical villages roughly between 1850 and 1900. Elders’ interviews and narratives recorded in the 1970s helped identify the names of old communities and the location of many abandoned sites that, otherwise, were not listed in travelers’ journals, sailors’ maps, and other early accounts. The network of historical Yupik communities and population areas on the Chukchi Peninsula is described here counterclockwise, from the Gulf of Anadyr to Cape Dezhnev, that is, from southwest to northeast (Map 2.1).5 By the late 1800s, the Yupik area had shrunk to two enclaves at the southern and northeastern edges of the Chukchi Peninsula separated by an almost 200-kilometer (125 miles) stretch occupied by the coastal Chukchi. The larger Yupik area, the southern, from around Provideniya Bay to the Senyavin Strait islands, included several subgroups with a combined population of 800–850 around 1900 (see Table 2.1). It was closely connected to the Yupik population on St. Lawrence Island (about 330–350), then a US territory. The much smaller, northern, area around Cape Dezhnev was the home of yet another Yupik group, the Nuvuqaghmiit (about 300–330 people). The latter were culturally and politically aligned to the residents of the Diomede Islands (some 200 altogether) in the middle of Bering Strait. We will follow this geographic division in our overviews of the Yupik land in Asia throughout this book.

Southern Area The Sighineghmiit The westernmost group of the Yupik people during the early contact era, the Sighineghmiit (also Sireniktsy, Sirenikovtsy, and/or Wuteentsy in the Russian sources), owed their name to their main historical village of Sighineq (Wuteen, in Chukchi; Sireniki in later Russian adaptation). It was located on the open coast, some 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) west of Provideniya Bay, and was commonly reported during the 1800s under its Chukchi name, Wuteen/Wootair (Gondatti 1898; Hooper 1976 [1853]; Krause 1882), that also appeared on Russian maps of the 1700s (chapter 7). The village apparently had a long history as attested to by the ruins of ancient underground houses dated to the Old Bering Sea era of the first centuries bce (Krupnik 1983, 71–73; Rudenko 1947, 43–44; Fig. 2.1). In winter 1849, it had twenty-five houses (Hooper 1976, 91) and probably about 150–180 residents.

M ap 2.1: Yupik area and major historical communities in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, ca. 1880. Black dot–Eskimo (Yupik and Inupiaq) communities; open dot–Chukchi communities. Tribes and tribal groups mentioned in the text: 1–Sighineghmiit 2–Imtugmiit 3–Atqallghhaghmiit 4–Avatmiit 5–Qiwaaghmiit 6–Tasighmiit 7–Nangupagaghmiit 8–Ungazighmiit 9–Napaqutaghmiit 10–Nuvuqaghmiit 11–Imaaqllighmiut

U

LF

an

Nunligran

.

1

(Alaska)

UNITED STATES

7

9

0

0

ig

8

Llugren

St.

R.

G

0 0

wr e nc

BER

10

20 Miles 20 Kilometers

10

Southwest Cape

Pugughileq

St.

La

wr

en

ce

Isl

A

Kukulek

SE G N I

d

Northeast Cape

Kiyalighaq

Punuk Islands

Southeast Cape

an

11 Imaaqlliq

Nuvuqaq

Ualeq 10

Inchoun

e B Nunyama ay

Yandagay

La

Pu’uten

Sivuqaq Meregta Sivungaq Nasqaq Tapghuq Kangii

Northwest Cape

Nyghchigen

Masiq

Gu

Kigi

en

25 Miles 25 Kilometers

Napaqutaq

Me ch

m

6 2 Sighineq OF 3 Imtuk Tasiq Ungaziq 4 AN AD Qiwaaq 5 Atqallghhaq Avan YR

mR vaa

BERING SEA

St. Lawrence I.

k rup Ku

Enmelen

iP la

o am

ch

su

GULF OF ANADYR

uk

CHUKCHI SEA

in

Anadyr

RUSSIA

Ch

Wrangell Island

en

Nu ni

lf

Table 2.1: Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) population by major communities, 1881–1923 Community

1881

1895

1901

1909

1913

1921

1923

Sighineq

. . .

77 (15)

58 (8)

(5)

49 (15)

(20)

57 (11)

Imtuk

. . .

43 (9)

65 (12)

(23)

93 (33)

(23)

110 (22)

Atqallghhaq*

. . .

abandoned

–

–

–

–

–

Egheghaq

(8)

24 (4)

9 (2)

(7)

15 (2)

abandoned

–

Ugriileq

–

–

. . .

. . .

. . .

(6)

52 (10)

Avan

. . .

101 (17)

98 (14)

(12)

110 (28)

(10)

92 (17)

Qiwaaq

(4)?

–

–

. . .

23 (5)

(9)

74 (14)

Tasiq

(4)?

140 (25)

94 (18)

(15)

54 (15)

(11)

52 (9)

Ungaziq

(12)?

500 (51)

442 (61)

(60)

334 (69)

(35)

190 (32)

Ungiyeramket

–

–

–

–

45 (9)

. . .

110 (20)

Teflleq

–

–

–

–

15 (4)

(10)

. . .

Napaqutaq

. . .

52 (5)

37 (4)

(13)

46 (10)

(6)

55 (11)

Siqlluk

. . .

–

. . .

(4)

31 (4)

(4)

. . .

Pagileq

(8)

–

–

. . .

. . .

(2)

abandoned

Uwellkal/ Kresta Bay

–

–

–

–

–

–

52 (9)

Nuvuqaq

(ca. 50)

299 (50)

(48)

(60)

. . .

(ca. 40)

318 (55)

Imaaqlliq (Big Diomede)†

. . .

97

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

42 (8)

Kunga†

. . .

38

. . .

abandoned

. . .

–

–

Ingaliq (Little Diomede)†

. . .

85

115 (27)

90 (25)

. . .

101 (23)

. . .

Sivuqaq (Gambell)‡

. . .

. . .

286 (63)

218 (60)

. . .

165 (31)

. . .

Pugughileq‡

. . .

. . .

25–30 (5–7)

27 (5)

. . .

19 (5)

. . .

Sivungaq (Savoonga)‡

–

–

–

31 (2)

. . .

97 (11)

Kangii‡

–

–

–

6 (1)

. . .

20 (3)

§

§

. . . . . .

* Atqallghhaq (Akatlak) is listed in Krause (1882, 134) as a “habitable site,” but with no reference to the number of houses or residents. † Inupiaq-speaking communities. ‡ For St. Lawrence Island and Little Diomede, the figures are from the US Population Censuses of 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920, respectively. § Figures include residents of reindeer herders' camps, who eventually moved to Sivungaq (Savoonga) around 1921–1922. Note: Figures in parentheses are number of houses/households. Key: – = uninhabited; . . . = no record; ? = unreliable or questionable data. Sources: For 1881: Krause 1993, 40 (map); 1882; for 1895: Patkanov 1912, 892–896; for 1901: Bogoras 1975, 29–30; for 1909: Kalinnikov 1912, map, 49–50; for 1913: Revizskie skazki 1913; for 1921: Sverdrup 1930, map; for 1923: Materialy po statistike 1925, xxviii–xxix.

24

yupik transitions

Fig. 2.1: Ruins of an old semisubterranean house in Sighineq built of whale bones and skulls. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #И–115-62)

The villages and camps of the Sighineghmiit once extended farther westward for 120 kilometers (80 miles) along the shore of the Bering Sea (Gulf of Anadyr). Several old sites between Cape Bering and Sighineq were still remembered in 1975 (Krupnik 1983, 68–70; 1991b, 6–7; 2000, 437–439; Menovshchikov 1964, 7). Besides the main village of Sighineq, the elders recalled six other sites connected to the group’s main hub during the 1800s and early 1900s. The westernmost, Saanlek (Senlin, in Chukchi), was located at Cape Chenlin on modern maps. It was followed (from west to east) by Asun (Achon or Ech’ut, in Chukchi), on the spit that separates Lake Achon from the sea; Kurgu, in a hidden valley some 10 kilometers (6 miles) southeast from the mouth of the Kurupka River; Singhaq, at Cape Chin’gan on modern maps; and Yaquq, at Cape Yakun. The last site, Kenlighaq in Kenlighaq Bay, was just a few kilometers westward of Sighineq. None of those smaller villages appeared on the 18th century maps, though some evidently had a long history. Of these, Asun and Kenlighaq were short-term camps in the early 1900s (chapter 4), though probably with several earlier periods of occupation. Kurgu and Yaquq were relatively small communities abandoned around 1850–1880. Saanlek, also abandoned around 1880, might have had some 80–100 residents.6 In 1975, the elders still remembered at least some people who were born or once lived in those villages (Krupnik 2000, 437–443). The largest site, Singhaq, with the ruins of several dozen semisubterranean houses once could have had a population of at least 150 people, if not more. Its residents were the first Yupik people to encounter European sailors, when they approached Vitus Bering’s ship St. Gabriel in eight large skin boats in August 1728 off Cape Chin’gan/ Singhaq (Krupnik 1983, 70–71; Russkie ekspeditsii 1984, 72, 83–84).

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

25

The often-reported claim that the Sighineghmiit (or other Yupik groups?) at some point inhabited the entire southern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula (Dolgikh 1960, 551–552; Menovshchikov 1964, 7–8; Vakhtin 1991, 99–100; 1994a, 38; 2000, 25) found no corroboration in the oral tradition of the Sighineghmiit, at least as recorded in the 1970s. If that happened, it apparently took place prior to the early-mid 1800s (chapter 7). The contact history of the Sighineghmiit was a saga of accelerated population decline and shrinking of the group’s home territory. The village of Singhaq became extinct or abandoned prior to 1850, if not earlier, since no personal names or memories of families associated with it remained by 1975. Other narratives allude to a massive loss of life in Sighineq itself, due to starvation or a sea ice accident, also prior to 1850 or shortly after (Krupnik 2000, 39–40; Menovshchikov 1964, 117). Between 1850 and 1880, the residents of Kurgu, Saanlek, and Yaquq abandoned their home sites and moved to Sighineq or nearby Imtuk (see below). Of Saanlek, Bogoras reported that its inhabitants “in their majority died from starvation in 1880. Those who remained, turned to reindeer breeding or resettled to Wuteen [Sighineq] and onto [St.] Lawrence Island” (Bogoras 1901; 1975 [1904], 29; 1934a, 14). By 1890, the remaining members of the group, some 120–140 people, congregated at the easternmost edge of their former area, in Sighineq and nearby Imtuk.

The Imtugmiit and the Atqallghhaghmiit The now empty 25-kilometer (15 miles) stretch of the Bering Sea shore between Sighineq (modern Sireniki) and Provideniya Bay was once the home area of two small groups, the Imtugmiit and the Atqallghhaghmiit. The former numbered about forty people around 1890– 1900 and the latter, just thirty. The Imtugmiit were apparently the founders of the village of Imtuk or “John Holland’s Bay” on the American maps of the whalers’ era (Bockstoce and Batchelder 1978; Fig. 2.2). Under its Chukchi name Imtun (Yeem-toon), Imtuk appeared on the Russian maps of the 1700s (chapter 7) and was listed as such by Hooper, who passed it in winter 1849 (Hooper 1976, 91). The Atqallghhaghmiit came from their old village of Atqallghhaq (Akatlak), at Cape Lesovsky of modern maps, at the western entrance to Provideniya Bay. It was populated during the 1860s and 1870s, if not earlier (Dall 1866; Krause 1882, 35, 134; 1993, map; Nelson 1983 [1899], map; Onatsevich 1877). From that site the Atqallghhaghmiit moved westward to Imtuk, no later than in 1880–1885, with a short stopover in nearby Angetequq Bay.7 In 1975, elders still remembered the names of people or families that once resided in Atqallghhaq (Krupnik 2000, 448–451). There were dim memories, reportedly still alive in the 1950s, suggesting that both groups once lived on St. Lawrence Island and were, thus, relatively late migrants to the Asian mainland (Dorian Sergeev, personal communication, 1961). Such memories reemerged in the 1990s, thanks to renewed contacts between the mainland Asian Yupik and the residents of St. Lawrence Island and people’s search then for common roots. Neither the time of migration nor the area of their previous residence on the island was known to the elders we interviewed in the 1970s. According to the post-1990 recollections, the Atqallghhaghmiit might have come from the Southwest Cape area on the island, perhaps from its main village of Pugughileq (see below). Neither of these mainland villages, Imtuk and Atqallghhaq, had ruins of large underground houses as in Sighineq although their pre-1800 occupation cannot be excluded.

26

yupik transitions

Fig. 2.2: Abandoned village of Imtuk, with the traces of winter surface houses and whale jaw poles. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, September 1975)

The Avatmiit The next Yupik group, the Avatmiit (some 120–140 around 1900), occupied a 50-kilometer (about 30 miles) stretch of the open shore, from the western side of Provideniya Bay to Cape Chukotsky, and the interior of the Provideniya Bay fjord. Their name came from the main village of the group, Avan (population 101 in 1895; 98 in 1901), also called Avan’ in Russian or Estikhet, apparently distorted from the English name of the late 1800s, “East Head” (Bockstoce and Batchelder 1978). The Chukchi name for the village, Eunmyn, appeared on Russian maps from the 1700s (chapter 7) and was recorded by British sailors in 1849 as Ahwoonmool (Hooper 1976). Avan was evidently a fairly large precontact community as seen from its many old underground houses, some going back to the Punuk era (Gusev 2006, 38–39; Krupnik 1983, 76–77; Rudenko 1947, 42–43; Fig. 2.3). Several smaller villages and camps clustered around Avan on the ocean shore and inside Provideniya Bay. The three most important historical sites were Egheghaq (also known by Europeans as Rirak or Plover, Plover Bay, after the HMS Plover wintered in Provideniya Bay in 1848–1849); Ugriileq (Wugrel or Gugrelen, in Chukchi) in the inner Emma Harbor, inside the Provideniya Bay fjord; and Aasaq, east of Avan, on the open shore. Ugriileq (Woorel) was a vibrant community of some seventy residents during the Plover wintering of 1848–1849 (Hooper 1976). Egheghaq was uninhabited in 1849, but it had some thirty to thirty-five residents in 1895 (Gondatti 1898; Fig. 2.4) and possibly more in the 1880s (Krause 1882, 35; 1993, map; Sulkovskii 1882). Both Egheghaq and Ugriileq appeared on 18th-century Russian maps under their Chukchi names, Ian and Wugrel, respectively. Aasaq was remembered by its name only.

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

27

Fig. 2.3: Vasilii Ankatagin/Angqatagen poses among the ruins of old underground houses in Avan, his native community, which was closed in 1941. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, September 1975)

Fig. 2.4: Yupik summer tents (tupiit) on the beach at Egheghaq (Plover Bay). The village reportedly had 30–35 residents around 1899. (Photo: Harriman Expedition, July 1899. NMAI #P11071)

Avan, the main village with the large number of ancient dwellings, was apparently a stable community during the early contact era. Egheghaq and Ugriileq were its satellites. The population here changed often, and some sources mention people’s presence, while others do not. Aasaq probably disappeared before 1850. Some of its inhabitants evidently crossed to St. Lawrence Island (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 3–7); other families resettled to Avan (Sergeev 1962, 37).

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The Qiwaaghmiit and the Tasighmiit To the east from the Avatmiit lay the territory of another relatively small group, the Qiwaaghmiit, who bear the name of their chief village, Qiwaaq, or “Kivak” of the Russian sources (Kikwen, in Chukchi). Qiwaaq was once a fairly large coastal community, with a long history as seen from the ruins of ancient houses with artifacts dated to the Old Bering Sea era (Krupnik 1983, 78; Orekhov 2008; Rudenko 1947, 39–41). It appeared on the early Russian maps of the 1700s but was listed as a small “hamlet of five huts” in winter 1849 (Hooper 1976, 44) and had four houses in fall 1881 (Krause 1993). During the 1800s, two other smaller sites were occupied in the vicinity of the main village: Kurupkeraq to the west, near Cape Chukotsky (remembered by its name only), and Nuvuq to the east, with six houses in winter 1849 (Hooper 1976, 118). Both sites were presumably abandoned by 1880, if not earlier, as elders remembered no personal names of any people formerly associated with either Nuvuq or Kurupkeraq. Of all the mainland Yupik groups, the Qiwaaghmiit experienced the heaviest losses during the early contact era. Sometime around or after 1880, they abandoned their main village of Qiwaaq altogether. “Kivan [Qiwaaq],” wrote Bogoras, who passed through the area in 1901, “disappeared during the last famine [of 1880?]. It was apparently a rather large village, for in Chechin there are also people from Kivak, and in Indian Point [Ungaziq] as well. There are as many as 20 families altogether. . . . People from Unyin [Ungaziq], and even more from the vanished village of Kikven [Qiwaaq], are constantly leaving for [St.] Lawrence Island” (Bogoras 1901, 33a, 93a). By 1900, the weakened Qiwaaghmiit numbered a mere 100–120 people of whom some seventy were scattered in the nearby communities and about thirty to fifty (six or seven families) relocated to St. Lawrence Island. Their descendants, whose numbers have grown to some 150 people, continue to live there to this day. The mainland Qiwaaghmiit tried to integrate with another nearby group called the Tasighmiit (seventy to eighty people), or Sesil’yt in Chukchi, after their main village of Tasiq (in Chukchi, Sesin; and in Russian, Chechen). Tasiq/Chechen was also an old community of coastal hunters that appeared on the 18th-century maps and had a great number of ancient underground houses. It was an unremarkable hamlet of five houses in winter 1849 (Hooper 1976, 121) but grew up again to more than 100 residents by 1895 due to the influx of the Qiwaaghmiit. In the late 1800s, the majority of the Tasighmiit were bilingual. They spoke Chukchi but also some Yupik, which probably reflected a strong admixture of the Yupik-speaking Qiwaaghmiit and the old relations between the two groups. Due to that fact, several authors called them the “Chukchi-Eskimo métis” (Gondatti 1898, 31; Karaev 1923). The only person to touch upon this theme was again Bogoras. “Chechin, apparently, was once an Eskimo village, and the vallkary [remnants of the old underground houses] on the hill are of Eskimo origin. But the Chukchis settled here from the interior not all that long ago. All were former reindeer-herders who had lost their herds . . . there are three Eskimo families. Now virtually every Chukchi has several reindeer, and some have several dozen” (Bogoras 1901, 93a; Fig. 2.5). Following Bogoras, we may view Tasiq/Chechen as being once a Yupik community that somehow switched to the Chukchi language as a result of in-migration, population losses, and the flight of its earlier Eskimo residents. This transition, perhaps, took place during the 1800s, if not earlier.

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

29

The Tasighmiit, in turn, were connected to another mixed Chukchi-speaking group called the Nangupagaghmiit (about eighty people), who lived in the interior area around Provideniya and Tkachen bays. The Nangupagaghmiit were small-scale reindeer herders, albeit with some dim memories that traced their origins to St. Lawrence Island. There was once a historical village called Nangupagaq near today’s Gambell (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1985), and people with that same name, Nangupagaghmiit, have been living in Gambell at least since the late 1800s (Krupnik et al. 2002).

The Ungazighmiit The Ungazighmiit, the largest of the Asian Yupik groups, also known as Aiwan(y)/Aiwuans (at least since Gondatti’s time), took their name from their main village of Ungaziq at the tip of Cape Chaplin (Fig. 2.6, chapter 4). The village itself had several other names: Unyin, in Chukchi; “Indian Point” on the American maps of the 1800s; and Chaplino, in Russian after the 1930s. It was a large community with a long history of occupation of the very productive hunting area at the southeastern tip of the Chukchi Peninsula (Krupnik 1983,

Fig. 2.5: View of Tasiq (Chechen). The village had about 100 residents around 1900. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, June 1901. AMNH Library #2550)

Fig. 2.6: Old underground houses and jawbone poles in Ungaziq. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, spring 1901. AMNH Library #2577)

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81; Rudenko 1947, 35–37). It appeared on several Russian maps of the 1700s (chapter 7) and was visited by the British sailors in winter 1848–1849. The latter called it Oong-wy-sac (Ungaziq) and counted thirty-three skin houses with an estimated population between 300 and 400 people (Hooper 1976, 106). Overall, the Ungazighmiit, as a group, numbered about 500–550 people around 1895. Their territory extended from the land of the Qiwaaghmiit/Tasighmiit at the entrance to Tkachen Bay and to the Senyavin Strait to the north. Elders recalled the names of six other smaller villages that once existed at and around Cape Chaplin. To the southwest of Ungaziq, they listed Ingleghnaq, on rocky Cape Sivulkut at the entrance to Tkachen Bay; Uqighyaraq, at the beginning of the southern pebble spit that creates Cape Chaplin; and Uuggsaghat, on the same spit, closer to Ungaziq. Three villages to the north included Teflleq (“Tyflak” in Russian), about 16 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Ungaziq; Ungiyeramket (literally, “people from Unyin” in Chukchi), 5–6 kilometers (3–4 miles) beyond Teflleq, and Eggsughat, at the foot of the rocky point of Cape Martens (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 67–74; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983, 133; Krupnik 1983, 80–84; Map 2.2). Most of those sites, including Ungaziq, contain ruins of the earlier subterranean houses, though none, except Ingleghnaq, appeared on the Russian maps of the 1700s. Scores of small villages and camps affiliated with Ungaziq were located farther north, on two islands of the Senyavin Strait, Itygran (Yttygran) and Arakamchechen (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 57–59, 65–66; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983, 133–134; Krupnik 1983, 84–85). Elders still recalled their names in the 1970s; some villages also appeared in the old narratives, in visitors’ writings, and on the early Russian maps. Siqlluk, on the northern shore of Itygran Island, and Napaqutaq, on its southeastern shore, were reportedly medium-size communities of the early contact era (chapter 4). Several other historical sites, Amyak, Tevyaghaq, Sivughat, and Estegraq on Itygran Island, and Pagileq, Yarga, and Kigi on Arakamchechen Island, were apparently short-term settlements or seasonal camps. In the lore of the Ungazighmiit, they often featured as their summer hunting areas (chapter 3). Only at Kigi (Kegenin, in Chukchi) on Cape Kygynin, the ruins of several underground houses, now almost destroyed by coastal erosion, speak of a once fairly large community (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 59–63; Rudenko 1947, 34–35). Kigi was abandoned no later than in the mid-1800s, when its residents, reportedly, moved to Ungaziq (Aivangu 1985; Menovshchikov 1962a). During our fieldwork in the 1970s, the Ungazighmiit still perceived the Senyavin Strait area, or at least Itygran Island and the southern shore of Arakamchechen Island, as their old home territory. The elders also viewed the residents of Napaqutaq, the Napaqutaghmiit (about eighty people), as originating from “farther north” and migrating to the area populated by the Ungazighmiit from Mechigmen Bay (chapter 7). Evidently, this happened prior to 1800. By about 1850, the border between the Chukchi and the Yupik in the southern section of the Chukchi Peninsula had stabilized along the Senyavin Strait. The Chukchi occupied the northern and western side of Arakamchechen Island, and the Yupik clung to its southern shore and Itygran Island. During the 1800s, Ungaziq consolidated its position as the main Yupik settlement in the area and the largest Native community on the entire Chukchi Peninsula. The development of American commercial whaling and trade after 1850 apparently put an end to many small nearby villages. One by one, their residents moved to Ungaziq, although they

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

31

maintained their old sites as seasonal hunting camps. After 1900, due to the worsening economic situation, the Ungazighmiit once again dispersed into a dozen smaller villages across the Cape Chaplin area, so that the old residential pattern was reestablished, albeit for a short time (chapter 4).

St. Lawrence Island The Eskimo population on St. Lawrence Island has at least 2,000 years of documented history (Ackerman 1984; Blumer 2002; Collins 1937; Crowell 1985; chapter 7). By 1800, the islanders and the Yupik people of the southeastern Chukchi Peninsula shared a common language and many cultural features and maintained regular connections. Islanders’ oral

ey Bay gn

Cape Kygynin

en Island Kigi chech m ka a r A Mayngeguq

SEA

Sen yav

in Str a

Pe nk i

it

Yarga

ev Bay lesh Abo

Napaqutaq

cheku yum Str ait

Engaghhpak Cape Martens Eggsughat

New Chaplino

RI

Ro mu

Che

BE

let Ba y

Siqlluk

Itygran Island

NG

Pagileq

Ba hen ac Tk

Ungiyeramket

Lake Naayvaq

Teflleq

y

Ungaziq Uqighyagaq Cape Chaplin Tasiq Uuggsaghat Cape Sivulkut Ingleghnaq

Kivak Lagoon

Nuvuq Cape Plosky (Nuvuq) Qiwaaq

Kurupkeraq Cape Chukotsky

G U L F O F A N A DY R M ap 2.2: Historical Yupik villages and camps in southeastern Chukchi Peninsula and Senyavin Strait area, 1850–1900

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tradition and several early Russian maps identified five to eight major population centers on the island that existed prior to 1850 (Burch 1988; 2005; Burgess 1974; Krauss 1975; Krupnik 1983; 1994; Silook 1976; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987; 1989). These included Sivuqaq (modern Gambell) on the northwest cape; Kukulek on the northern shore, next to the modern village of Savoonga; Qangeghsaq and Kiwatangaq on the Punuk Islands (Figs. 2.7, 2.8) off the main island’s eastern shore; Kiyalighaq at Southeast Cape; Sikneq and Siquvek on the southern shore; and Pugughileq, near Southwest Cape.

Fig. 2.7: Old village on the Punuk Islands, 1874. Most of its residents perished during the starvation of 1878–1880. Drawing by Henry W. Elliott (Elliott 1886, 443)

Fig. 2.8: Reconstruction of a winter underground house (nenglu) on the Punuk Islands. Drawing by Henry W. Elliott, 1874. (Elliott 1886, 446)

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

33

When St. Lawrence Island became a US territory after the sale of Alaska in 1867, it supported a substantial Yupik population. Several estimates put the number of residents around 1,500 in several dozen villages and family hunting camps.8 In winter 1878–1879, the islanders suffered from a catastrophic famine and, possibly, epidemics. According to several estimates,9 the population dropped from 1,500 to 300–400 in one or two years, and almost all of the historical villages became extinct or deserted. At the time, the tragedy was widely publicized via the accounts of the crew of the USS Thomas Corwin and several scientists who visited the islands in 1880 and 1881 (Hooper 1884; Muir 1917; Nelson 1881). The catastrophe of 1878–1880 was a turning point in the history of the Yupik people on the island. It is assumed that the pre-1850 population was divided in five to eight groups organized around large permanent villages, very much like their kinsmen on the Chukchi Peninsula (Burch 1988, 228; 2005, 38–39; Burgess 1974, 59–63; Krupnik 1994, 51). The starvation decimated the communities on the northern, southern, and eastern sides of the island, except for a few families and even some lone survivors (Krupnik 1994, 54–55; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989). The remaining residents concentrated in the two villages closest to the Asian side: Sivuqaq, modern Gambell, opposite Ungaziq; and Pugughileq, at Southwest Cape, tied to Avan and the Provideniya Bay area. As most of the island was depopulated, the Yupik from the mainland soon expanded to the now desolate area. This expansion relied on traditional ties between the island and the nearby Asian shore, all the more so because people on both sides spoke the same language. By the year 1900, an estimated 40 percent of the islanders, some 100–120 people, were migrants from the mainland or their descendants, who moved in prior to or after the famine of 1878 (Krupnik 1994, 57–58). Many island clans to this day carry names that speak to their mainland origins: Aymaramka (Aymaramket), Avatmiit, Qiwaaghmiit, Siqllugmiit, Ingleghnaghmiit, and so on (chapter 4). As the Russian and American presence on both sides of the Russo-American border strengthened in the 1900s, this previously united cultural area split into two segments, which gradually began to diverge from one another. Contacts between the island and the mainland remained regular; but after 1920, the resettlement all but ceased. For several decades the islanders viewed the mainland Yupik as their fellow tribesmen (and vice versa), until the Cold War transformed the area around Bering Strait into a zone of antagonism and isolation (chapter 9).

Northern Area The Nuvuqaghmiit The fate of the Yupik people in the northern area around Cape Dezhnev during the contact-traditional era was more stable. The inhabitants of the rocky promontory at the easternmost edge of the Asian continent belonged to a single group called Nuvuqaghmiit, also known as Peeki or Nøøkalit/Naukantsy in the earlier Russian sources. Similar to what happened in Ungaziq, virtually all of the Yupik people in the area eventually gathered in one central village, Nuvuqaq or Naukan. By the year 1900, Nuvuqaq, also known as “East Cape” (Fig. 2.9), had 350 residents;10 it was the second-largest Native community on the Chukchi Peninsula after Ungaziq.

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yupik transitions

Fig. 2.9: Yupik houses in Nuvuqaq. (Photo by Bernhard Kilian, summer 1913. NBWM 2008.24.407)

Like Ungaziq, Nuvuqaq swelled thanks to its role as a large aboriginal whaling site and key trade center with American whalers. Oral tradition of the Nuvuqaghmiit and Russian maps from the 1700s list several other villages within the same area (Map 2.3), including the two large communities of Mamruaghpak (Memrepen, in Chukchi) to the north of Nuvuqaq, and Nunak (Nunegnin, in Chukchi) to the south. The residents of those villages were described as rivals or even at war with each other (Menovshchikov 1958, 67; 1975, 9; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 124–127; chapter 7). According to genealogies we compiled in the 1970s, the last residents left Mamruaghpak for Nuvuqaq no later than 1880, and perhaps even earlier. By 1900, Nunak also ceased to exist as its inhabitants gradually relocated to Nuvuqaq. A few smaller historical villages or camps once dotted the Cape Dezhnev area, but only their names remained by the 1970s, like Uyaghaaq, Sanluvik, Wallqallek, and others. Their residents evidently relocated to Nuvuqaq or to the nearby Chukchi community of Uelen (Ualeq; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983, 131; Krauss 2004b, 397–401; Menovshchikov 1975, 9; 1987, 50, 171), leaving no identified descendants in the 1970s.

Diomede Islands One last group geographically and culturally related to the Yupik people in Asia comprised the inhabitants of two Diomede Islands. The international border between Russia and the United States passed between the two islands in the middle of Bering Strait, Big Diomede and Little Diomede, following the treaty on the sale of Alaska of 1867. It became a section of the international dateline, but also a political boundary, for the first time separating “Asiatic” from “American” Eskimos. The two islands are divided by a narrow strait of 4 kilometers (2.2 miles); it is assumed that their residents always formed one group made up of a few intermarrying villages. During the 1800s, the population on both islands was around 300 people. It gravitated linguistically toward the American side as people spoke the Iñupiaq dialect, analogous to the language of the Alaska mainland (Burch 1980; 2005; Heinrich 1963; Krupnik 1994). Nonetheless, historically or originally (?), the Diomeders might have been Yupik speakers (Chlenov 1988a; 2006; Krauss 2000).

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

35

CHUKCHI SEA Ualeq

Mamruaghpak Kengisqun

Nuvuqaq

Walqallek Atghalqaq

66°

Cape Pe’ek

Nunak

B e r i n g St

Cape Dezhnev

rait

Sanluk

BERING SEA 0 170°

0

5 Miles 5 Kilometers

M ap 2.3: Historical villages in the Cape Dezhnev area, 1850–1900

Both islands are steep cliffs in the middle of Bering Strait (Fig. 2.10) that can be easily seen from both the Alaskan and the Siberian side on a clear day. They were once densely populated and served as major stopovers in the intercontinental trade between Northeast Asia and North America. The Asiatic Yupik people call the islanders Imaqllighmiit (Imaqllighmiut in Inupiaq), although this word refers today to the former residents of Big Diomede only (Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 21). Two historical villages existed on Big Diomede Island: Imaaqlliq (also Imaglin or Imelin in the Russian sources) on the southern side and Kunga on the northern side. There was but one settlement on Little Diomede, called Ialiq in Naukanese (Ingaliq, in Inupiaq), the modern village of Diomede. The combined population of the Diomede Islands dropped during the American whaling era from 300 (?) around 1850 to approximately 150–180 in 1895 (Krupnik 1994, 66). This was not a catastrophic crash similar to what befell St. Lawrence Island but rather a gradual decline. Nonetheless, the losses, similarly, weakened the island community

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and stimulated an influx of migrants from the adjacent Asian and Alaska mainlands. By the late 1800s, the two islands already had a mixed population in three medium-size villages that would eventually reconsolidate into a single community in the early 20th century (chapter 4).

Population Histories: A Synopsis As seen from this brief summary, the Eskimo people in Asia and on the nearby islands suffered significant population losses during the 1800s, particularly between the years 1850 and 1890. Certain larger groups, like the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit, demonstrated a high level of resilience and could have even grown in numbers by attracting new members from the nearby areas. Others, like the Avatmiit, the Sighineghmiit, and the Diomede Islanders, were holding to their traditional homelands, though in reduced numbers. A few communities went through a population crash and were dispersed, even decimated, like the Qiwaaghmiit and the residents of St. Lawrence Island. Overall, the mainland Asiatic Yupik numbered about 1,300 people in 1895–1900; to this, we may add 300 culturally related residents of St. Lawrence Island and 180 people on the two Diomede islands (Krupnik 1983, 86–87; 1993, 32; Patkanov 1912, 890).11 Based on the known group territories and the number of populated historical villages, we may estimate the average size of the Asiatic Eskimo groups around Bering Strait in 1800 at about 250 to 300 people. That estimate certainly applies to the Sighineghmiit, the Avatmiit, the combined Qiwaaghmiit/Tasighmiit, and the Big and Little Diomeders. The Nuvuqaghmiit in three large villages were, perhaps, more numerous (350–450?), whereas the most populous Ungazighmiit were perhaps close to 500 (Fig. 2.11). The population of St. Lawrence Island, 1,200–1,500 overall, similarly, was split in several medium-size communities or areas of 200–400 people each (Burgess 1974). The status of other smaller groups, like the Imtugmiit, is hard to estimate. The total count would be then some 1,700–1,800 people on the Asian mainland and about the same number of residents on St. Lawrence Island and the two Diomede Islands, or some 3,500 people combined. Even by such a conservative estimate, the Asiatic Eskimo population shrank almost by half between the years 1800 and 1890. The decline was by no means universal and individual groups followed distinct population trajectories. The most numerous Ungazighmiit and Nuvuqaghmiit apparently suffered minor losses and were able to cope through regrouping and aggregation at one major site. One may assume that they preserved a stronger social framework and more elements of their former social system than the more affected groups. The much smaller Avatmiit and the Diomede Islanders succeeded in keeping most of their known historical communities, albeit at a reduced size. Lastly, the Sighineghmiit and the Qiwaaghmiit/Tasighmiit suffered at least 50–60 percent population decline due to famine or assimilation and abandoned most of their former villages. To survive, these groups had to undertake a major social reconfiguration or were doomed to merge with their neighbors. The Yupik people on St. Lawrence Island, who had lost 70–80 percent of their kinsmen between 1870 and 1890 and all but two of their former villages, were in the most dire need of stabilization and reintegration. Both processes did happen during the last decades of the contact-traditional era, as Yupik migrants from the mainland helped revitalize the

The “Olden Times,” 1850–1900

37

Fig. 2.10: Approaching the village of Imaaqlliq on Big Diomede Island, summer 1929. Native houses and plank cabins are seen on the cliff. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-123)

Fig. 2.11: Village of Ungaziq, historical hub of the Ungazighmiit tribe and once the largest Native community in Chukotka. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1928–1929. MAE #И–115-31)

island population. Similarly, “Siberian” migrants from Nuvuqaq and the nearby Asian villages, as well as Big Diomeders and King Islanders, were settling on Little Diomede. Here, a similar recovery and reconsolidation became evident by the early and mid-1900s (Krupnik 1994, 67–68; chapter 4). This outline of social geography of the Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) people during the ­contact-traditional era is essential to assess the functioning of their social system in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Yupik had experienced Russian colonial pressure since the early 1700s; but it was the second half of the 19th century that brought an unprecedented level of interactions with Americans, Russians, and other outsiders of various backgrounds,

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including Hawaiian sailors, Scandinavian adventurers, and drifters from many nations. The decades of the 1870s and 1880s were particularly challenging. Nonetheless, one could find evidence of successful social revitalization even in the most afflicted Yupik communities, like the Sighineghmiit, the Avatmiit, the Qiwaaghmiit, and the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island (chapter 4). It allowed a small nation of barely 2,000 people to maintain its social and cultural integrity, despite the abandonment of large sections of its former home area and the heavy human losses of the preceding decades.

Notes 1. The situation is different on St. Lawrence Island, where Yupik stories that list people by personal names often go back for two to three additional generations, that is, to several decades prior to the 1850s (cf. Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987). 2. The first two names in the forms of “Ayguan” and “Peyak” were first recorded by another Russian visiting official, A. Resin, who covered the area in summer 1885 (Resin 1888, 177). Gondatti was definitely well acquainted with Resin’s report. 3. This linguistic connection has been known at least since the 1790s (chapter 7), but Miller was the first to corroborate it by comparing Gondatti’s word lists in all three of the Asiatic Yupik languages. 4. Interestingly, Dall argued that the term Yūit was a corruption or shortening of In-yū-it or Innūit, the most common name of the Eskimo people in North America. The correct form, in fact, is Yupik (sing.) or Yupiget (plural). 5. The original list was first compiled in the 1970s (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov 1973; Krupnik 1977; Krupnik and Chlenov 1978; 1979) and was later used for the map we prepared for the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians (Hughes 1984b, 248). 6. It might still have had some population in 1881, as Aurel Krause’s Native guides reported to him the villages west of Provideniya Bay as “Uten (Wuteen/Sighineq), many houses, Atschongun (Asun), Tschendlin (Saanlek), Nonludan (Nunlegran)” (Krause 1882, 35). 7. The text “Once in Angetequq, I woke up (began to remember myself)” was recorded in 1940 by Ekaterina Rubtsova from Rengtuwyi (ca. 1875–ca. 1945), the elder of the Atqallghhaghmiit group (Vakhtin 2012, 91). 8. See most recent summaries of the island population history and of the famine of 1878– 1880 in Crowell and Oozevaseuk 2006; Jolles 2002; Mudar and Speaker 2003. 9. Bockstoce 1986, 138–140; Burgess 1974, 28–32; Collins 1937, 22–24; Doty 1900, 287; Elliott 1898, 165–166; Hughes 1960, 12–13; 1984c, 262–263; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 53–55; see Mudar and Speaker 2003 for the most detailed estimate of the island population losses in 1878–1880. 10. Onatsevich (1877, 30) reported that in summer 1876 Nuvuqaq had over 300 residents in more than forty houses, according to personal count. The Krause brothers counted “about 50 houses” in August 1881 (Krause 1993, 75) that equaled perhaps some 350 people. 11. A close estimate (2,000 people) was made by Aurel Krause (1883, 261), based upon his coastal survey in 1881, including the residents of St. Lawrence and Diomede islands.

Chapter 3

The Yupik Social System: A Model Social Analysis: “Language” and “Speech”

T

of the Inuit (Eskimo) people has been the subject of dozens of studies. One cannot help but be struck by how differently individual authors treated this topic and how the various and often conflicting paradigms have been shifting over the years. The anthropologist also faces another perspective of a very different kind, which is the interpretation of a social system by the Native people themselves. We sought, to the degree possible, to combine both visions, namely, to identify Yupik social institutions using indigenous interpretation but also to analyze them according to particular models developed by anthropologists. Of course, social models do not exist in reality, and this is one of their basic properties. The implementation of a theoretical model takes place in countless social interactions, both random and regular. Thus, a model of social organization is merely an array of idealized constructions or, rather, a framework within which components of social life are united and correlated with one another. We may liken this approach to Ferdinand de Saussure’s notion of “language,” and then refer to the social ties that operate in real life by what he termed “speech” (Dinneen 1967, 196–199; Saussure 1931, 30–32). In its basic form, “speech” is structured using the laws and principles of “language.” Yet the living speech never repeats the “language” in that it has specific rules of its own. These rules, be it in the realm of linguistics or, in our case, of social interactions, cannot and need not be exhaustively described in each particular situation. Using this analogy, the people who live within the familiar set of social institutions always interpret their myriad interactions from a perspective of social “speech.” The task of the anthropologist is to strike a bridge from the minutiae of everyday “speech” to the rules of grammar of social “language,” that is, to anthropological theory. he social organization

“Eskimo” Social Organization At the turn of the 20th century, when the first basic ethnographies of Arctic peoples appeared, anthropologists viewed the Inuit (Eskimo) as a showcase of atomized “primitive” society, with its social order focused entirely around kinship and respect for elders. Eskimo 39

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communities of classical ethnographies possessed neither the orderly organized power structure nor the established institutions of leadership described elsewhere (see Boas 1888, 170–174; 1901, 116–118; Bogoras 1975, 544; Jenness 1922, 83–85, 94–95; Murdoch 1892, 427–429; Nelson 1983 [1899], 303–304; Turner 2001 [1894], 186–190). The basic institutions in the framework of this social system were the nuclear family, the local band, and some larger, although quite amorphous, territorial groupings that anthropologists termed “tribes.” Consequently, anthropologists even labeled such a system and the kinship terminology related to it “Eskimo” and applied it as a broader model in their social theories (Morgan 1997 [1870]; Murdock 1966 [1949]; Spier 1925). Its basic features are as follows (Chlenov 1973, 1; Murdock 1966, 227): •  Independent nuclear families constitute the principal unit of social structure; •  There are no exogamous unilinear kin groups; •  Incest taboos extend bilaterally; •  In kinship terminology, cross and parallel cousins are merged, while there is strict terminological distinction between cousins and siblings. According to Murdock (1966), who first introduced the concept of the “Eskimo” type of social organization, such a system was by no means attached or limited to the Eskimo people. What is more, it does not reflect any sort of “primitiveness” on the part of its bearers. “Eskimo” type social systems exist widely across the world, including among the majority of European nations and contemporary Americans, as well as among many agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, from the Pueblo Indians to the Andaman Islanders in the Indian Ocean. However, an influx of new data eventually challenged this typology, particularly with regard to its application to the Inuit/Eskimo people themselves. Giddings (1952, 8–9) recorded among the Yup’ik people on Nunivak Island (Nunivaghmiut) in Western Alaska a kinship system that was nothing like the textbook “Eskimo” type. In the following years, a number of similar “non-Eskimo” systems were described among various Eskimo groups across the Arctic, both Yupik/Yup’ik and Inuit/Inupiat (Chlenov 1973; Guemple 1972; Heinrich 1963; Heinrich and Anderson 1971). The foundations of Inuit (Eskimo) societies turned out to be complex and, even more importantly, quite varied. Often even neighboring and culturally related Inuit groups possessed significantly diverse kinship terminologies and social structure (Damas 1969, 135– 138; 1975a, 23–24; Stevenson 1997, 4–14). The patterns of Eskimo social organization were diverse not only in space but also in time. In any event, the actual life of any Inuit/Eskimo society was a far cry from the idyllic image of a “community, built upon the basis of the free accord of free people,” with no authoritative power over them (Birket-Smith 1936, 144). The interpretation of the social system of the Yupik people was the subject of a particular debate in the 1950s and 1960s. Soviet anthropologists tended to describe the social structures of the Yupik, as well as those of their Siberian neighbors, the Chukchi and the Koryak, according to Marxist evolutionary theory. This postulated the transition from maternal to paternal “gens” as a universal pattern in human history (Fainberg 1955; 1964; Menovshchikov 1962a; Sergeev 1962; Simchenko 1970). Their Western colleagues viewed the Bering Strait Eskimo social systems from a completely different perspective, as independent local phenomena that had developed unrelated to social patterns of other Arctic societies, let alone of universal “historical laws” (Giddings 1952; Hughes 1958;

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1960; Whitten 1964). This added a peculiar twist to our study of Yupik social institutions in the 1970s, as we tried to interpret the nature of various social units we called “groups,” “divisions,” and “areas,” as in chapter 2.

The Yupik Perspective We will start from the Yupik language as the initial point in building our social model. For many of the basic terms of Yupik social organization used in this book, like tribe, clan, or lineage, there simply are no Yupik equivalents. In Yupik, one cannot directly ask another person “What tribe are you from?” or “What is your father’s clan?” Such words simply do not exist Instead, one may construe a conversation conducted between two Yupik people as follows: —Where are you from? (Nakuminguziin?) The respondent would normally answer with the name of the community in which he or she lives: Ungazighmii, Sighineghmii, Portagmii, that is, Ungaziq, Sighineq, Provideniya (in Yupik, Porta means “port”). In order to establish a person’s group affiliation, one must ask the following question: —Where were you born? (Nakuminguyaggtuq?) The response to such a question could be the name of the village where the respondent was born but also could be the name of the social group of which he/she considered himself/herself a member. Thus the answer, again, could be “ungazighmii nguyaggtuq” (“born Ungazighmii/in Ungaziq”; or sighineghmii, avatmii, or portagmii). On the level of social grammar, it is impossible to differentiate the two, because in Yupik the locative suffix -mii (plural, -miit) is used for both terms. If it is essential to identify historical (traditional) group affiliation, one should frame the question as follows: —Where was your father born? (Nakuminguyaggta atan?) Here the response would be more specific: “Ungazighmii nguyaggtuq” (literally, “[father] born Ungazighmii,” Sighineghmii, Avatmii, etc.). In this context, the word Portagmii could not be used, according to the elders we interviewed: If people ask about our parents, only the large old villages are mentioned. Only five answers are possible: Ungazighmii, Qiwaaghmii, Avatmii, Sighineghmii, and Nuvuqaghmii. We never name small villages (Sergei Mumi 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 4331). In this case, the reference is to large social units, which we shall here term “tribes” (see below) and which the Yupik people viewed as established social groupings identified by “large old villages,” that is, former tribal centers. To establish a person’s clan affiliation, an additional question is necessary: —Ramkequllghhet?—Literally, “What people (ramka, i.e., group, Chukchi loanword) are you from?”2 Such a question may produce the desired answer: Laakaghmii, Aghqullughmii, Sighunpaghmii, and so on, that is, individual clan names.

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Of course, we have created an imaginary dialog between two Yupik individuals who do not know each other’s origins. To be more precise, such a dialog is an artificial attempt to demonstrate to an outsider the traditional “grammar” of the Yupik social organization. In real life, in order to find out the tribal and even clan affiliation of a person one did not know well, the first question, “Where are you from?” typically sufficed. In posing each successive question, the questioner has in mind groupings that from our perspective relate to different hierarchical levels: village, tribe, and clan. In the Yupik social system, all these categories somehow belonged to one class. To be sure, on the level of “social language” this class has its own internal hierarchy, for the elders were quite ready to agree with the anthropologist that different phenomena were actually being discussed (“Only the old, ancient villages are mentioned, the small villages are never mentioned”). On the level of “social speech,” all of these many names are of the same type.

The Locus The Social Structures -miit and -kut Once again, we shall take the Yupik language as the point of departure for describing Yupik social institutions. Although the meaning of the term ramka, “clan” in Yupik, is quite confused (Jolles 2002, 14) and there is no term for such a concept as “tribe,” there are words for other social units. Regardless of their level they are commonly formed using the locative suffix -mii (plural, -miit or -miut in the languages of the Western Alaska Yup’ik and the Inuit of North Alaska, Canada, and Greenland). This locative nature denotes the sought-after category that we believe made up the basic structural unit of Yupik society. Of course, one could merely call this basic unit “miit” or “miut,” as has been proposed a few times (Correll 1976, 173; Damas 1972, 25–26). This would be a hard sell, as without a root the suffix sounds strange even to speakers of the language, and for an outsider the term conveys no information whatsoever. Because the locative suffix -miit defines a group’s tie with a specific territory, we propose to term this category the locus (Chlenov 1988b). The Yupik people also have other corporate social units formed using the collective suffix -kut (rhymes with “moot”). These are the names of unilineal and/ or ambilineal groups of relatives derived from the personal name of their founder.3 The founder is always a real person—either a living elder or, more frequently, a deceased one—but is one who is personally remembered by his descendants, as such names never originated from long-deceased unknown people. This latter category clearly coincides with what anthropologists call “lineage” in their kin classifications (Fortes 1953, 25–27). In such a corporate descent group, genealogical ties are real and readily traceable. Among the Yupik, the genealogical depth of the lineage in the 1970s seldom extended further than three to four generations from its middle-aged members. For example, in Sireniki at the time of our fieldwork in the 1970s, the descendants of the renowned whaling captain Pangawyi, who passed away in 1970, proudly referred to themselves in Yupik by their lineage name Pangawyingkut. Similarly, the descendants of the well-remembered boat captain Ivaaqaq in Ungaziq (who died in the late 1930s) liked to use their lineage name Ivaaqangkut, as did the Pekuutangkut, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Pekuutaq from Qiwaaq, who died around the same time. On St. Lawrence Island, Yupik

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elders assembled a list of thirty-seven “historic lineages” named after their male leaders, which was called Neghighluku Sivuqaghhmiit 1900 Piingaaluku—literally, “Old St. Lawrence Island Families around 1900” (St. Lawrence Island Manual 1986, 8). All men listed there as the heads of “historic families” are remembered through genealogies and their names are recorded in the island censuses of 1900 and 1910 (chapter 6).4 Remarkably, neither the elders we interviewed in Chukotka in the 1970s nor St. Lawrence Island Yupik experts could offer a Yupik term for such social groupings.5

Definition of Locus The concept of lineage allows us to define “locus” as a basic unit upon which we may build other components of the Yupik social system. The locus is a group of intermarrying lineages; it is territorially localized at a given time or in historic memory and is perceived by its members as a corporate unit reflected in its own name (Chlenov 1988a). One of the most important properties of the locus is its ability to relocate as a single body by forming a resettlement group. Therefore, the locus ought to be politically autonomous (at least theoretically). In the ideal model, the locus also has to be self-sufficient economically and demographically (again, theoretically), that is, to act as a self-sustaining economic and reproductive unit. When several migrating locuses grouped or settled together, they might retain their integrity and form aggregates in which each held a more or less equal status. Finally, one of the perceived features of a locus is a particular dialect or language of its own or, at least, a striving on the part of its members to view their own speech as separate from that of the others.

The Locus as an Adaptive Mechanism As the organizational unit of the contact-traditional Yupik society the locus also possessed certain adaptive mechanisms. It had to provide its members a quick and rather painless strategy for atomization and equally rapid regrouping. Under conditions of social, ecological, or demographic instability, the social system built of autonomous units ­(locuses) made it easier for the society to split and regroup with limited losses. A good example was a rapid “disintegration” of the Yupik community of Ungaziq in the years 1905–1925 under economic and environmental pressure (chapter 4). Over the course of just a few years, numerous individual locuses broke away from this largest Yupik hub of some 500 people. They moved out to form separate villages, to join other Yupik communities, or to resettle to St. Lawrence Island. Yet others quit the ancestral land altogether and sought new homelands some 800 kilometers (500 miles) away, far beyond the community’s historical borders. The specifics of group interactions in the Bering Strait region stem from the fact that the area was densely populated, at least since the Old Bering Sea time of 2,000 years ago (chapter 7). It was quite difficult to find unoccupied niches where a breakaway unit (locus) might have existed in protracted isolation. The richness of marine resources around Bering Strait ensured, under favorable conditions, a rapid restoration of human population and the formation of large village sites. Such large villages were long-term clusters of social activities (Mason 1998) and hubs where smaller social groupings could aggregate. This was how the residents of St. Lawrence Island restored their social system after the

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catastrophe of 1878–1880 (chapter 2) by regrouping in one large community, Sivuqaq, modern Gambell. The small bands of survivors preferred to gather at one place, where they had a better chance for reintegration (Krupnik 1994). Apparently, this was a tested pattern, as small isolated groups eventually merged together, forming new associations. These new associations became the cores of the emerging new tribes. The situation was quite different for those ancient groups that left the Bering Strait region and moved to other sparsely populated or uninhabited areas. That, we believe, happened to the ancient Eskimo migrants who moved along the northern shores of Alaska to the Canadian Arctic, under what archaeologists call the “Thule migration” at the turn of the first millennium ce (Friesen 2000; Krupnik and Chlenov 2009; McGhee 1969/1970; 1984; Maxwell 1985). Archaeologists argue that this migration was a movement of small groups, perhaps weakly linked to one another and often separated by vast, uninhabited expanses. As the ancient Thule Eskimo, the ancestors of the modern Canadian Inuit, expanded across the Central Arctic, the migrating locuses spread out and became fragmented and isolated (see Damas 1975b; Fainberg 1955; Friesen 2000; Giddings 1952; Heinrich 1963; Heinrich and Anderson 1971; Hughes 1958; Stevenson 1997; Whitten 1964). Ultimately, we believe, this process led to the emergence of the social system that Murdock termed the “Eskimo” type of social organization. The locuses, that is, the various local groupings defined by the -miit/miut names, did remain the major element of migrants’ social structure. They expanded by growing numerically and splintering rather than by aggregating into associations with others of their kind, as was the common practice in the Bering Strait. In the absence of large permanent communities, rather loose regional groupings have emerged made of independent “local bands” that episodically or seasonally congregated at certain sites during the annual economic or ritual cycle (Balikci 1984; Damas 1969; 1972; 1975a; 1984a).6 Of course, we are not the first to seek the causes for the transformation of the ancient Eskimo social system in isolation, large distances, scattered population, and scant resources. Still, the concept of the migrating locus introduced here permits a reassessment of this transition under a common analytical model.

The Tribe Returning to the Yupik people of the Bering Strait, their ideal social model always supposed the aggregation of several semiautonomous groups (locuses) within a well-defined common territory. Those associations made up the highest taxonomic unit in the traditional Yupik social system. Following our previous publications, we term such stable historical aggregations of several locuses the tribes (Chlenov 1973, 12; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983, 131; Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 20).

Features of the Yupik Tribe The first and most pronounced characteristic of the contact-traditional tribes, as seen by the Yupik people themselves, was their territoriality, that is, the presence of a defined territory. The borders of tribal territories were commonly attached to capes or other prominent coastal markers and were clearly of ancient origin. In talking to elders in the 1970s, we did not encounter any ambiguity or lack of clarity in defining the boundaries of historical

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tribal lands. The decline and fall of individual villages or entire tribes and the abandoning of tribal territories did not cause a breakdown of the borders themselves. Moreover, in the elders’ memory, they remained unchanged as far back in time as the historical tribal makeup was remembered. When the Soviet administration was established in the Yupik area in the early 1920s, the territories of the first village councils and, later, of the collective farms were marked using these same borders (chapter 8). A second important feature of the Yupik tribe was its internal structure. The tribe, as an organized agglomeration of locuses, was a “maximal locus” in itself, that is, the largest economically and reproductively sustainable unit attached to a certain home territory. By definition, it was divided into a number of individual segments, which in case of a crisis might easily separate from it. Even the smallest Yupik tribes of the late 1800s and early 1900s had such smaller inner segments, which we call clans (see below). That internal structure sparked the social life of the tribe by engendering organized social interactions, be it marriage and residence rules, or clan antagonism or cooperation. All of the known Yupik tribes of the contact-traditional era—the Sighineghmiit, the Avatmiit, the Qiwaaghmiit, the Ungazighmiit, the Nuvuqaghmiit, as well as the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island—had ancient villages, located within their home territories, that were later abandoned. The hunting grounds of these ancient villages normally became sections of the tribal land. At least some of the clans traced their origins to those old villages from which their ancestors once resettled into a tribal hub. This tradition was typical among the Yupik groups on the Asian shore as well as those on St. Lawrence Island (Hughes 1958, 1145). It may be an element of the historical tradition essential to tribal cohesiveness. It was demonstrated in the course of the peopling of Kresta Bay in the 1920s, when the settlers tried to “inherit” the old semiunderground houses in their new home area, to which they had no historic ties (chapter 4). They simply transferred the Yupik tribal structure they knew, as if modeling their own place in the new location: I go to honor the ancestors at the nenglut (underground houses), where the old Wallqaraghmiit [earth dwellers] lived. They all died. . . . I go to the nenglut that are close to here. The distant nenglut, the ones at the lake, are the oldest. The Chukchis lived there, that’s what Aliiqan [the first settler] used to say. The ones I go to, there were Ungazighmiit there. Aliiqan said that the Sanighmelnguut were our people. I think there was another row [of houses] there, the Sighineghmiit, or was it Imtugmiit (Ekaterina Kutkhaun 1976). A common tribal name was another characteristic feature. These tribal names always derived from the name of the main historical village within the tribal territory with the locative suffix -miit. Naturally, these words are easily understandable not only as the names of tribes, but also as signifying the residents of the villages themselves. This could be a specific pattern of the Asiatic Yupik and their relatives on St. Lawrence Island since the old group (tribal) names of their counterparts in Alaska commonly came from the names of rivers, bays, and other distinctive topographic features.7 One other pattern typical for the Yupik tribes was endogamy. To be sure, endogamy was inherent to any locus-based Yupik social unit (see below). The tribe as the largest traditional social grouping was the most suited to maintain the required level of endogamy,

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that is, to assure to its members the stable selection of marriage and reproductive partners. According to genealogies we compiled, the frequency of intratribal (“endogamous”) marriages in the early 1900s within the two largest Yupik tribes, the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit, was around 80–90 percent. The much smaller Avatmiit also displayed a steady endogamous preference. It is only in the smallest tribes, the Sighineghmiit and the Qiwaaghmiit, that endogamy had all but vanished due to the groups’ meager numbers.

Tribal Size Endogamy as the foundation of the locus system invariably implies a certain minimal as well as maximal size for the breeding populations that made up the endogamous tribes. All the Yupik tribes at the turn of the 20th century, and in the late 1800s, were numerically rather small, most certainly due to population losses during the early contact era. The largest, the Ungazighmiit, had some 500 people; the Nuvuqaghmiit, some 350; the Avatmiit and the Sighineghmiit, some 100–120 each; and the Qiwaaghmiit (combined with the Tasighmiit), 110–130 (chapter 2). All other smaller groups had approximately 100–130 people altogether. At this time, the Sivuqaghmiit numbered 300–350 people and the Inupiaq-speaking residents of the Diomede Islands, about 150; both groups included a substantial number of recent migrants from the mainland Yupik tribes (see chapter 4). We have some indirect evidence that prior to the 1870s certain Yupik tribes used to be larger, though, perhaps, not substantially larger. We assume that in the past, the size of Yupik tribes fluctuated between 200 and 600 people (chapter 2). There are hardly any grounds, ethnographic or otherwise, to believe that there were once Yupik tribes numbering many hundred or even a few thousand people, as was argued elsewhere (Dolgikh 1960, 554; 1970, 355; Menovshchikov 1962b, 12–13; 1964, 7–8; see chapter 7). Yet if the upper boundary of the tribal population could be guessed but intuitively, the lowest size of a sustainable tribe, both as the minimum breeding population and a viable social entity, was obvious. In the late contact-traditional era, this number was about 120–140 people. Even this minimal level was quite precarious since it required substantial influx of additional marriage partners from outside. Yet it was sufficient for the tribal system to function in that it permitted the incorporation of individual families, lineages, and even small locuses of newcomers. If the size of the tribe dropped below that level, as befell the Qiwaaghmiit, or came critically close to it, as among the Sighineghmiit, the group invariably had to merge with other locuses, even acquiring a new name.

Tribe, Regional Group, or “Society”? We have yet to answer, probably, the most important question: to what degree does the term tribe correspond to the type of social institution that we have described? Lavrentyi Zagoskin (1967 [1847]) and William H. Dall (1870; 1877) were the first to use the word tribe to define local divisions among the Yup’ik and Inupiaq people in Alaska, with their characteristic names formed using the suffix -miut (-miit). Later, Franz Boas (1888) unambiguously applied it to the medium-size territorial groupings among the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Russian scholarly writings of the time, similarly, referred to small to medium subdivisions of the Siberian indigenous people as “tribes” (sing. plemya). This was precisely how the three “tribes” of the Asiatic Eskimo—the Aiwuans, Wuteens, and Peeks—identified in the Russian census of 1897 were understood (Patkanov 1912; chapter 2).

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In the 1940s and 1950s, Russian anthropologists put together a more refined definition of “tribe” for the social groupings they encountered among the indigenous people of Siberia. They based it upon a fixed set of features: the possession of a defined home territory and the sense of integrity; an internal structure composed of smaller exogamous units (gens and/or moieties); a specific dialect and certain features in material and spiritual culture; and a traditional name and identity separate from other similar groups (Dolgikh 1949, 73; 1970, 334). Aside from the exogamy of the inner components, such a definition is quite suitable for our purposes. Western anthropologists generally followed a similar trajectory: from viewing Eskimo “tribes” as vague geographic or subcultural groupings (Birket-Smith 1936, 144) to recognizing the increasingly complex and integrated nature of such institutions. Unlike their Russian counterparts, Western anthropologists applied many names to basically one and the same social phenomenon. They called it “regional band” (Damas 1969; Guemple 1972; 1976), “tribe” (Damas 1969; 1984b; Oswalt 1967; Ray 1967; 1975; 1983), “regional group” (Burch and Corell 1972), “regional or tribal division” (Stevenson 1997), “territorial group” (McGhee 1976), ”grouping” (Pratt 1984), “village group” (Fienup-Riordan 1984), “maximal band” (Damas 1972; 1984a), “society” (Burch 1975; 1980; Sheppard 2000; 2009; Shinkwin and Pete 1984), “local group” (Stevenson 1997), “polity,” and even “nation” (Burch 1998; 2005; 2006). Despite all the differences in terminology, most of the authors stressed the possession of a distinctive territory, a particular name, a dialect or subdialect, a feeling of internal unity and difference from other groups, and a preference to marry people from within the same group (endogamy) as the foundation for such associations (Burch 2005, 3–5). Therefore, the fact that the Eskimo people were organized in medium-size social units, with their own territories, names, and internal ties, is not subject to doubt—in Asia and North America alike. We are inclined to view all of these social groupings as typologically similar, though not identical, because the principles of their organization in the Yupik and Inupiaq social systems among the Western Alaska Yup’ik and Siberian/St. Lawrence Island Yupik people differed very strongly. Our use of the term “tribe” for such units among the Yupik people in Asia (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov 1973; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; Krupnik and Chlenov 1979) was inspired by the vision of the structural integration of several lower-level components (clans) as the key building element of these institutions.

Tribal and Linguistic Boundaries Perhaps the only prominent feature of the locus still missing from our discussion is language. The relationship of linguistic and ethnic affiliation is complex, because the ethnic functions of language are largely reduced to its ability to unify, but more frequently to differentiate, human societies. To this the Yupik people and their languages offer a good illustration. Today’s linguists identify three Yupik languages in the Bering Strait region: Central Siberian Yupik (CSY), Naukanski Yupik (NY), and Sirenikski (S) (Krauss 1973; 1975; 1980; 1985; 2004a; 2005; Rubtsova 1971; Woodbury 1984). The first language, CSY, by far the largest, has three dialects: Chaplino, Imtuk, and Avan (Rubtsova 1971, 5); the Chaplino dialect also has a special variety spoken on St. Lawrence Island (Jacobson 2008, vii). In addition, CSY had three now-extinct versions used by the Atqallghhaghmiit, the Qiwaaghmiit, and the Napaqutaghmiit, which reportedly differed in some minor characteristics (Krupnik and Chlenov 1979).8 All of the latter, including the subdialect of

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St. Lawrence Island, are/were fully intelligible versions of CSY. The Sirenikski language, already almost extinct by the middle of the 20th century, was mostly unintelligible to other Yupik people; it had two very close variants, Sighineq and Saanlek (Krupnik 1991b, 6–7; Vakhtin 1991, 99; 2000, 25). Finally, the Naukanski language had no known dialects. Communication between the Naukanski and CSY speakers was strained, as the two languages were barely intelligible in direct interaction.9 This rather complex linguistic classification is a far cry from the known tribal makeup of the Yupik society. From a linguistic point of view, the Ungazighmiit, the Qiwaaghmiit, the Avatmiit, and the Sivuqaghmiit, not to mention the smaller groups, such as the Napaqutaghmiit, the Imtugmiit, and the Atqallghhaghmiit, essentially spoke a single language, Central Siberian Yupik. Yet Yupik elders unanimously asserted that all of these groups used to have their “own” languages. To support this claim, they referred to the real and significant differences between the Chaplinski, Naukanski, and Sirenikski languages and then said, “Those are other languages, not ours.” Those five that I named: the Ungazighmiit, the Avatmiit, the Qiwaaghmiit, the Sighineghmiit, and the Nuvuqaghmiit, were all considered completely different. They all have their own separate [unique] speech: In Chaplino, they have their own, in Qiwaaq, they have their own, the Avatmiit have their own, the Sighineghmiit have their own, and in Naukan, there’s a completely different one, not at all resembling the others (Sergei Mumi 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 433). It is clear that the Yupik perspective of language differences is quite removed from that of linguists. The Native speakers use minute peculiarities of speech, intonation, specific words or idioms, and even traditions of bilingualism as evidence for clear-cut distinction—”it’s another language, not ours.” For the Qiwaaghmiit, their Yupik-Chukchi bilingualism was such a distinguishing feature. The Qiwaaghmiit elders, however, liked to stress that their ancestors formerly had “another language of their own [that was] completely different from the Ungazighmiit.” They would cite individual words that the Qiwaaghmiit allegedly used to pronounce somewhat differently than the Ungazighmiit. It goes without saying that the CSY dialect of the Avatmiit, with its minor, though clearly heard phonetic difference, was also viewed as a “separate Avan language.”

Tribal Identity and the Structure of Ethnicity The above-mentioned features made up the foundation for tribal identity, the only form of ethnicity known in the contact-traditional Yupik society. All our efforts to discover, among the elders of the 1970s, some sort of a “Yupik” ethnicity, that is, a common Asiatic Eskimo (or generally, Eskimo) identity, were met with no success. The elders clearly distinguished coastal Yupik from the inland reindeer Chukchi people (Quillet, in CSY). But they often listed the neighboring communities of the maritime Chukchi next to other Yupik groups, while emphasizing that they were “completely different from us.” The tribal level of identity with the absence of what we now call “ethnic markers” (besides language) was the main factor that prevented early visitors from differentiating the Yupik and the maritime Chukchi people in Asia. The concept of a common “Eskimo language” (Yupigestun) and the Asiatic Eskimo name for themselves, Yupiget (“real people,” Yupit in Naukanski), if they ever existed in the past, were applied in a very specific context, and

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not as ethnic labels. “Eskimo” identity in Asia, as we know it, was seemingly a product of the 20th century, specifically, of the Soviet administrative policies of the 1930s (chapter 9). The traditional forms of identity (tribal, clan, and other) thus relied on a heightened perception of even minor cultural and language differences within the generally similar cultures of the Yupik and the maritime Chukchi people. To the contrary, the strong differentiation of local people from the Europeans, for whom characteristic names appeared early on, was obvious. The southern Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island Yupik call the Russians and, generally, Europeans, Laluramket, from the Chukchi “mustached people.” The Nuvuqaghmiit notably have two terms: Anguyat (“enemies”) for the Russians and Anguyapit (“real enemies”) for the Americans. Specific words for the Russians (Russighmiit), the Norwegians (Noruisemeen), the English (Inglisameen), and the Americans (Amarakaghmiit), appeared in the late 1800s only, if not later.

The Tribal Group For Yupik elders, their former social system was expressed in an idealized set of several old tribes. Each of the tribes, in turn, had a certain number of clans, each occupying a fixed position in the tribe’s main village. In real life, however, this model was far from universal. A notable departure was the existence of small independent groups that did not fit into the known tribal aggregations, like the Imtugmiit, the Atqallghhaghmiit, and the Napaqutaghmiit (chapter 2). Such solitary groups were relatively small, although in some instances they could approach the lower limit of a small tribe (sixty to eighty people). We term such small self-sustaining units (locuses) with their own territories and historic tradition tribal groups (Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 23).

Features of the Tribal Group Yupik elders could explain the difference between a tribe and a tribal group only intuitively, as they were unable to formulate it in terms of their traditional social model. Direct questioning usually resulted in long and inconclusive disputes about which tribe a particular tribal group belonged to, ending with an emotional “sia-ia-ia-ia, nalluqaqa!,” literally, “Oh, I don’t know!” Nonetheless, the differences between tribe and tribal group can be articulated within an anthropologist’s social model. Like tribes, tribal groups had their territories acknowledged as “their land” not only by the groups themselves but by the neighboring communities as well. These territories always were of more modest size than those of the tribes; in fact, they were usually limited to the hunting grounds of one village. The Atqallghhaghmiit were a good example. According to the elders’ recollections, they once inhabited two communal winter houses in their home village of Atqallghhaq at the entrance to Provideniya Bay: I was only in Atqallghhaq once myself, I was there with my father as a little girl [around 1910]. There are two nenglus [semisubterranean houses] there. My father told that they used to live in these nenglus, not he himself, of course, because he was born in Angetequq. The nenglus in Atqallghhaq were small, probably only one family lived in each one. My father said that they lived in one winter house, his father Engaggayin, and in another, Angqawyi’s father, I never

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heard his name. They later moved from there for Angetequq. In Angetequq there were also two houses, like in Atqallghhaq. They also lived there with their families (Ainana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 450). We have a story of a wandering locus that recalls its “own” old territory, yet has barely preserved memory of the last inhabitants who lived there. Having left their home site at Atqallghhaq around 1880, the Atqallghhaghmiit moved west, onto the land of another small group, the Imtugmiit. Together they formed a joint community in Imtuk, starting the creation of a new, two-clan tribe. There was usually no more than one village in the land of tribal groups. If there were more than one, there was no deep tradition associated with them. Even to whom some of the old villages of the tribal group belonged was sometimes unclear; that never happened with the villages of the big tribes. Another distinctive feature of the tribal group was that the borders of its territory vacillated, were often disputable, and did not have clearly acknowledged landmarks. We have already referred to a striving on the part of the Yupik tribes to justify their status by claiming a language of their own via stressing even minor linguistic or phonetic differences. This was also typical of tribal groups, although the basis was even shakier. Some Napaqutaghmiit contended that their ancestors once “used to speak a completely different language from the Ungazighmiit” (Klara Nasalik 1977). Yet they were unable to provide any examples. For the Tasighmiit and the Nunagmiit, their “own” language was in fact their mixed speech, in which, according to the elders, a sentence could begin in Chukchi and end in Yupik. The Nunagmiit Eskimos liked the Chukchis tremendously. They spoke Naukanski well, but were unable to pronounce certain words and would use Chukchi instead. When they moved to Naukan, they began considering themselves Naukanians, but whenever they had had a bit to drink, they would always cry that they were Nunagmiit. Before, when Nunak was still alive, they never called themselves Naukanians (Alpen 1976). The few elderly Atqallghhaghmiit we spoke to in the 1970s (Fig. 3.1) also referred to a former “language” of their own. Ekaterina Rubtsova, a meticulous linguist, had recorded stories from members of various Yupik tribes and tribal groups, carefully noting expressions and words that seemed unusual to her. In the stories she recorded in 1940 from Rentuwyi (born around 1875), the most respected Atqallghhaghmii Elder of her time, she identified about twenty “Atqallghhaghisms” that she believed differed from the Chaplinski CSY forms (Rubtsova 1940). Some forty years later, Michael Chlenov verified this list with the Yupik teacher Gleb Nakazik from New Chaplino. The latter perceived Rentuwyi’s narratives to be texts in his own language with but three instances of minor differences.10 The conclusion is apparent: distinctiveness of language, which the Yupik tried to assert for each tribe or tribal group, was more an element of social grammar than of real life. The sole characteristic that strongly differentiated tribal group from tribe was the absence of clans and internal clan division. This is not surprising when we view a tribal group as an overgrown independent locus. Endogamy was more complicated. The genealogies of the Napaqutaghmiit (about eighty people around 1900–1920) indicated that they still tried

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Fig. 3.1: Utykhtykak/Uteghtekaq (1914–1976) of Sireniki, the last Atqallghhaghmii senior man in 1975. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, October 1975)

to marry primarily among themselves. For the tiny Imtugmiit and the Atqallghhaghmiit (twenty to thirty people each) this simply was not possible. Apparently, endogamy for a tribal group depended on the group’s size, degree of isolation, and/or cultural distance from the neighboring communities. Usually tribal groups were transitional formations as they eventually merged with larger neighboring tribes. All Yupik tribal groups of the late contact-traditional era—the Imtugmiit, the Atqallghhaghmiit, the Napaqutaghmiit, the Nunagmiit, the Nangupagaghmiit, and the Tasighmiit—ceased being self-sustainable units by the early 1900s. The Tasighmiit and Nangupagaghmiit even spoke Chukchi (or predominantly Chukchi) and were transitional groups not only at the tribal level but ethnically as well. Somehow, a typical path for a tribal group was to join a bigger tribe and to become incorporated into its social structure: the Napaqutaghmiit into the Ungazighmiit; the Tasighmiit into the Qiwaaghmiit; and the Nunagmiit into the Nuvuqaghmiit. Yet in certain cases, tribal groups could themselves start a new tribe, as in Imtuk around 1880 when the Atqallghhaghmiit joined the local Imtugmiit to form a new aggregation (chapter 4).

The Clan Above we examined the established association of locuses, the tribe, and the nonintegrated, individual locus, the tribal group. We shall term an individual locus integrated within the framework of a larger community a clan. Elsewhere we defined the Yupik clan as a preferentially endogamous, patrilineal kin group linked to a certain (former?) territory or to one codified in lore and carrying out certain social and economic functions (Chlenov 1973, 6–7; Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 20). The clan members view such a unit as a corporate

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group of relatives divided into smaller component subgroups, lineages (chapter 6). This definition requires some commentary.

Clan versus Gens The names of major Yupik tribes were reported in the literature by the late 1800s, and Yupik language and dialectal areas were established even earlier (chapter 7). However, the lower-level social units, the clans, remained unknown until much later. Neither Bogoras in Ungaziq in 1901 nor American teachers stationed on St. Lawrence Island after 1895 ever mentioned any Yupik clans. It was the visiting anthropologist Riley Moore who first recorded the names of five clans in Gambell in 1912 (Moore 1923, 340). Following his lead, archaeologist Henry Collins collected the names of ten Gambell clans from his Yupik assistants in 1928 (Jolles 2002, 101–102; Krupnik et al. 2002, 230–231). Nikolai Shnakenburg (1939, 83–85) produced the first and quite incomplete list of the Asian Yupik clans he called “family groups” in his unpublished manuscript. These clan names were most probably taken from the writings and field notes of his colleague Aleksandr S. Forshtein (1904–1967).11 In both cases, the idea of clans as major social units of Yupik society got no traction. When the clans were “rediscovered” among the St. Lawrence Island Yupik (Hughes 1958) and on the Asian mainland in the 1950s and 1960s (Menovshchikov 1956, 941; 1962a; Sergeev 1962), two conflicting paradigms were immediately offered to interpret them. Hughes (1958, 1144; 1960, 250–251), who studied these groups in Gambell, called them “patrilineal clans” or “patriclans,” drawing on Murdock’s definition of the clan as a unilineal descent group (Murdock 1966). Hughes (1958, 1146) argued that such kin groups evolved in the process of aggregation of small villages that were formerly predominantly endogamous bands into larger historical communities, like Gambell. Unlike Hughes, Russian anthropologists usually held to the Marxist (i.e., Morganian) interpretation that argued that all human societies universally transitioned from maternal exogamous gens-based to paternal gens-based organization. They viewed the absence among the Yupik, as well as among their Siberian neighbors, the Chukchi, the Koryak, and the Itelmen, of any traces of exogamous gens as a deviation from Marxist social theory. Citing Shnakenburg’s (Forshtein’s) list and, especially, following Hughes’ report on the clans on St. Lawrence Island, Russian authors identified similar institutions among the Yupik on the Asiatic shore as “paternal exogamous gens” (Menovshchikov 1962a, 29, 32; Sergeev 1962, 36, 40; also Fainberg 1964; Menovshchikov 1959; Simchenko 1970). The choice in terminology between “gens” and “clans” then transformed into an oath-like choice between Marxist and Western anthropology in describing what looked to us like one and the same social institution. In our studies among the Yupik people in Asia and later on St. Lawrence Island, we found no evidence of the existence of any exogamous gens, either paternal or maternal. Yet the very division of the Yupik society into unilineal kin groups was not subject to doubt. We made our choice in favor of Hughes-Murdock’s patriclan definition in our initial report of 1971 (Chlenov 1973) and followed this interpretation later on.

Clan Features We begin with endogamy. At first glance, it contradicts patrilineality. Indeed, if marriages are concluded within a group, and if the husband and wife are members of the same social

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group, then how would lineality be an issue? This is precisely the case in the social systems of the Inupiat of North Alaska and the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, who had no unilineal kin structures (Balikci 1970; Burch 1975; Stevenson 1997). In such endogamous communities that are not socially integrated with others, lineality disappears, and the “Iroquois” kinship system is replaced by the “Eskimo” one (Pospisil 1964; Whitten 1964). In the Bering Strait where the neighboring communities maintained continuous interactions and where potential marriage partners were always nearby, endogamous rules became preferential, and not prescriptive. This means that the clan implements its preferential endogamy in accordance with its size and other local circumstances. Here, on one side, were large and thriving clans of the Ungazighmiit, such as the Laakaghmiit, Armaramket, and the Akulghaaghwiget, each of twenty to thirty families (100–150 people) around 1900. Under their traditional marriage norms, the majority of marriages were within their own clan, that is, were endogamous: The Armaramket don’t treat one another like kin. In fact, we even tried to get Armaramket to marry other Armaramket. It was considered bad if they married anyone else. It was better if the husband and the wife were from one [clan]. . . . But the Armaramket married Sighunpaghmiit, Laakaghmiit, and others (Dmitrii Atelkun 1976). Another elderly expert, Ippi (Ipi) of the Laakaghmiit clan, strongly supported this statement: They used to try to marry among themselves so there wouldn’t be quarrels between the father’s and mother’s relatives (Ippi 1976). Moreover, members of the larger clans often viewed clan endogamy as a “normal” marriage pattern: My father Umqegergen was a true Akulghaaghwik. I don’t remember his parents, they died a long, long time ago, but they were also our people, Akulghaaghwiget. All our relatives are Akulghaaghwiget: my wife Anaka, too, and the wives of my father’s brothers, and my mother Kayuka. And my father’s brothers’ children, their names are Akuliq and Kanaya, their wives are Akulghaaghwiget too (Vladimir Tiyato 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 444–445; Fig. 3.2). On the other hand, in the smaller clans in Ungaziq, also among the Nuvuqaghmiit, the preferential clan endogamy was not a common option. Among the Nuvuqaghmiit between 1880 and 1920, judging from the genealogies, intraclan marriages constituted a mere 20 percent. Finally, in small clans of the Avatmiit, Qiwaaghmiit, and the Sighineghmiit, intraclan marriages were rare or had vanished altogether. On St. Lawrence Island, even the two largest clans of the early 1900s, the Pugughileghmiit and the Sanighmelnguut/Aymaramket, did not demonstrate any marriage preference in terms of spouse selection. This might reflect the transitional stage of the island community then recovering from the demographic collapse of 1878–1880 (chapter 2). Intraclan marriages were nonetheless quite popular among the Pugughileghmiit, and they were even more common in the pre-1880 generation. Among a few Pugughileghmiit families that remained in Pugughileq after 1880, almost all marriages were endogamous (Krupnik et al. 2002, 42–53).

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Clan Territoriality A major organizing force of the Yupik clan was its perceived tie with a certain ancestral territory. Many clans retained memory of such an ancient territory where its members once lived prior to joining the large tribal center. That memory of the “ancient territory” (or village) often surfaced in the very name of the clan formed by the suffix -miit (i.e., Pugughileghmiit, Mamruaghpagmiit, Saanlegmiit). At the same time, the clan’s site in the tribe’s central village also projected itself in the clan name (i.e., Unegkumiit, “southern people”; Sanighmelnguut, “those living across (the main line); etc.). Thus, several clans had two (or more) names reflecting different lines of territorial identification. This framework was best traceable in Nuvuqaq (Naukan). A deep ravine divided the village into two approximately equal portions, southern and northern (chapter 5). Each of the sides was home to several clans with their specific residential sections. The clans of the Mayughyaghmiit and the Kepenngughmiit, historically tied with the village of Nunak lying to the south of Nuvuqaq, lived on the southern side. The clans that originated from the village of Mamruaghpak to the north, the Mamruaghpagmiit and the Qekuaghmiit, took up residence on the northern side.12 The clans of the Mamruaghpagmiit and the Qekuaghmiit were considered related, or at least close. The former name clearly originated from the village of Mamruaghpak, from which the clan moved to Nuvuqaq, presumably in the late 1800s (chapter 2). The second name, Qekuaghmiit, however, stemmed from the name of a large semisubterranean house (qaygi in Naukanski Yupik) that was either called “Qekuaq” or was located in the section of the village with that same name, where the clan members resided as a group. Most certainly, the residents of Mamruaghpak had moved to Nuvuqaq in several waves. The first migration took place when people still lived in underground houses (rather than in smaller family dwellings). That first group, evidently, settled in the section of Qekuaq, from which the name of the clan originated. Later migrants from Mamruaghpak could have built their houses separately from their fellow kinsmen and were, therefore, called Mamruaghpagmiit. Eventually, this distinction has become muddled, and many elders in the 1970s often mixed various names for the same groups. The events on the southern side of Nuvuqaq proceeded in a similar fashion. The early wave of migrants from Nunak (and/or other southern villages?) founded two communal underground houses, Kepennguq and Alighpak, from which the clan names Kepenngughmiit and Alighpagmiit were derived (see also Krauss 2004b, 392–393). The two clans had almost disappeared by the 20th century. Later arrivals from Nunak settled in the section of Mayughyaq (in Naukanski, “incline” or “slope”) and were called the Mayughyaghmiit (“those living in Mayughyaq”). Finally, the last residents of Nunak, who moved to Nuvuqaq in the early 1900s, retained their former village name, the Nunagmiit. This interweaving of various clan names and much greater focus on old communal houses, with their specific names, was probably the result of the influence of the Inupiat neighbors of the Nuvuqaghmiit on the Diomede Islands and Seward Peninsula. The Inupiaq people of Northwest Alaska had no unilineal clans, and the symbolic center of their bilateral kin units was the communal men’s winter house, called kazgi or kargi (equivalent to Naukanski qaygi; Burch 2006, 105–106; Ray 1983, 154–155; though there is no equivalent term for kazgi in CSY). However, the ties between the clans and the old

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Fig. 3.2: Married couple Vladimir Tiyato (1921–1984) and Zinaida Anaka (1921–1994) of New Chaplino, both from the Akulghaaghwiget clan. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, September 1977)

semisubterranean houses were also known among the southern Yupik tribes, for example, the Qiwaaghmiit: In Qiwaaq they used to have two underground houses close to the shore. Our people, the Kiyaghnaget, come from one of these houses. It’s us, also our relatives, also Piinlin, and my wife’s father Tengagergen. The old man Pequtaq also came from the Kiyaghnaget people. But there were other people who came from the other house, Sawqlleghmiit. It’s Angqatagen in Provideniya, his father Qiwaaghmii, his uncle Qasqaghmii, and some other. There are more of us, Kiyaghnaghmiit, because our house used to be much bigger (Ulgugwi 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 87). At the same time, the elders of the Sawqlleghmiit clan(?) reported that their ancestors used to live in a separate village called Kurupkeraq: That place was called Kurupkeraq, right at the Yuwaget cliffs (Cape Chukotsky). In our times they didn’t live there, I don’t know when it was. In our times there wasn’t anyone left anymore. Just our parents said that we used to live there, and used to go there to feed the underground houses [to feed the spirits of the ancestors who used to live in Kurupkeraq] (Vera Pivrana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 88). Hence, the clan name somehow switched from the original clan site to the communal underground house in the central tribal village. It then became the new clan symbol, the place of residence of the ancestors. In some cases, we were able to document this transition both ways: from an old “clan” underground house in the main village to a smaller clan settlement and back to

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the main village. The most revealing case was the double name of one of the clans of the Sighineghmiit, the Walwuraghmiit-Saanlegmiit. Walwuraq (“raven” in Chukchi) was the name of a historical section in Sighineq with several old underground houses still intact in the 1950s (Krupnik 1983, 71–72; chapter 4). Even in the 1980s, some members of the clan claimed their ancestral links to the old houses in Walwuraq: My grandfather Nganganga always went to Walwuraq (to feed the ancestors). And nowadays I go there, only to a slightly different place. I’m the only one who goes to the underground dwellings now, and I divide all the pieces into three parts. One goes to the old Walwuraghmiit, so they have food for the winter, and the second I leave for our dead son, and the third, for Kaynguwyi and Kigyuq (her deceased brother and a distant relative (Aleksandra Parina 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 306). On the other hand, the Walwuraghmiit were also connected to the old village of Saanlek, about a hundred kilometers westward from Sighineq. From there they moved to Imtuk around 1880 (chapter 2) and were called “Saanlegmiit,” according to the standard clannaming pattern. Ideally, every clan should have such an ancestral village (land) of its own. This pertains to all, except for the clan of the “master of the land,” which, it is held, “always lived in this place” (chapter 5). The “master of the land” clan could not and should not originate from another place because it was the initial formative locus of the tribe. As we see, the implementation of a social model was never identical to the model itself. Often the clan members lost the memory of their “original” village, or home territory. As a result, the clan structure among the largest Yupik tribes, like the Ungazighmiit, the Nuvuqaghmiit, or the Sivuqaghmiit, was reminiscent of a layered pastry, with every layer exposing a different historic link. In the case of the Nuvuqaghmiit, some clans did preserve the memory of their old places of residence, whereas others had lost it. They were seen as “native” to Nuvuqaq, which, according to the traditional model, was the prerogative of the “master of the land” clan. A similar stratification existed among the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island. Their tribe was essentially a reconfiguration of the remnants of several former clans and even isolated families of different origins that survived the famine of 1878–1880 (chapter 2). The new clan structure of the Sivuqaghmiit, known since the late 1800s, bears names of several old island villages, from which the survivors originated, like the Pugughileghmiit, the Merughtamiit, the Nasqaghmiit, and the Kiyalighaghmiit. There were also clans that traced their names to the topography of the village of Sivuqaq (Gambell), like the Sanighmelnguut, “those living perpendicular,” and the Ugaliit, “easterners.” Several clan names clearly come from the Asian coast, like the Aymaramket/Armaramket, Laakaghmiit, and Siqllugmiit, not to mention the Qiwaaghmiit and the Avatmiit (Hughes 1960, 251–252; Krupnik 1994, 55–59; Moore 1923, 340; St. Lawrence Island Manual 1986, 145–146). What looks like an unstructured assortment of various clan names was actually a testimony to different group movements to Gambell, across the island as well as from the Asian mainland.

Patrilineality and Male Dominance The fluctuating level of endogamy among Yupik tribes also offered room in the selection of clan affiliation. Among the largest southern Yupik groups, the Ungazighmiit, the Avatmiit,

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and, particularly, the Sivuqaghmiit, the rule was always patrilineal: a person inherited clan membership only through the father and never through the mother. Whenever we encountered rare instances of maternal clan affiliation during the “old days,” elders always explained it as the product of short-term ties of unmarried women, particularly with outsiders. In the latter case, there was often no knowledge of the child’s biological as well as “social” father. Patrilineal filiation among the southern Yupik went hand in hand with the uncontested male dominance in marriage and family life. Children belonged to their father’s clan, and, thus, they fell under the jurisdiction of their patrilineal relatives. The widely practiced adoption of children who had lost their fathers into other families of the father’s clan was a powerful way to enforce this principle, as seen from the following story: I am truly irritated by how we do this, kinship through the father. See, they took Qurungawet from her mother. Her mother was Iyiingaawen, Babulya [Russian “Granny”] was her nickname, Quwaaren’s daughter. At first she was married to Nutawyi, an Armaramka, Qurungawet’s father. But then she left and married Mumigun (from her own clan, the Sanighmelnguut). Then the relatives of Qurungawet’s father came, and they weren’t even immediate relatives, they were some sort of distant relatives, they came and took the young girl from Quwaaren himself. And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it (Vera Agnalkvasak 1976). Patrilineal filiation also predominated among the Nuvuqaghmiit, but not as a rigid social norm. We know of some instances in which people had alternating loyalties to their father’s as well as to their mother’s clans. The following story was quite illustrative: [In Naukan] they used to choose clan when they were young, at fourteen or fifteen years. The boys and girls would choose for themselves when they were old enough to understand which parent was better and which was worse. Myself, I respected my mother and could have been a Nunagmii through her. But my father was very kind and warm, and that would have hurt his feelings. So I chose the Uyaghaghmiit. I held my father in great esteem, and wouldn’t even permit myself to look at him. . . . In the families where they observed the taboos, where there was ignorance, the children weren’t even told who they were. Adults don’t like children who know everything when they’re two years old. So people were afraid to have their children be know-it-alls. And so they raised people who didn’t know what clan they were from. But there were old people in the village who did know who was who. For example, Etegen, Amiingaq, and others. No special announcements were made because the young people usually weren’t interested. That was considered improper for them. But some Elder could suddenly ask, “What do you want to be?” And if the person didn’t choose the clan for himself, then the Elders would do it for him (Alpen 1976). Of no small significance was the selection of residence location a young person would make after setting up the first family house of his own: Otegergen remained a Nunagmii because he didn’t settle with the other Mayughyaghmiit, but lived separately, on the other side of Naukan, the right

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side. Taaghhtaq, his father, moved there first. Taaghhtaq went there to live near Guggonga, his sister. She had married a Mamruaghpagmii and lived with them. Otegergen didn’t become Mayughyaghmii because of his strong devotion to his father’s memory (Alpen 1976). We asked this remarkably knowledgeable Elder whether a person who changed or chose a clan had to put his house close to the residences of other families from the clan he chose, or if he could remain in the old place. The answer was as follows: It wasn’t compulsory to settle with those [clan members] he had chosen. This is how it happened with Kiuggyēn. She’s pure Sitqunaghmii, but she lived with her husband among the Uyaghaghmiit. She went on living there after her husband died, no one chased her off. But if her son had chosen the Sitqunaghmiit through his mother, then they would have treated him as though he didn’t care about his father. The choice depended on the upbringing of the mother, what kind of relationship she had to her father and to his clan. If Kiuggyēn raised her son as a Sitqunaghmii, then the Uyaghaghmiit would have gotten rid of them, they’d have been forced to move to Sitqunaq. . . . But Kiuggyēn sympathized with the Uyaghaghmiit. They were poor, unworthy. She had come from a rich clan and married a poor Uyaghaghmii. Her son grew up in an atmosphere of respect for his father. But he never would have agreed to hunt with the Sitqunaghmiit, he didn’t care for them at all, he didn’t have them over or talk with them much (Alpen 1976). The information is contradictory. What Alpen (Allpen) termed “reverence for the father” or “respectful upbringing” by one’s mother did not change the issue: in Nuvuqaq children generally inherited the clan membership of their fathers. Alpen herself, while insisting on personal selection of clan, was unable to cite any example of maternal filiation. Still, there was, apparently, no rigid rule of patrilineality in the social code of the Nuvuqaghmiit. Filiation was not unilineal, but rather ambilineal, that is, membership in a social group could be inherited through one’s father’s line but also, potentially, through that of one’s mother. We may thus trace two different patterns of traditional descent groups among the Yupik: one based on patrilineal descent, patriclans and patrilineages, as among the CSY speakers (the southern Yupik groups) and another based on ambilineal descent, as among the Naukanski Yupik speakers.13 The notable difference in kinship terminologies of the two groups as recorded in the 1970s (Chlenov 1973; appendices 2 and 3) is yet more, albeit indirect, evidence to the former social diversity within the small Yupik nation.

Clan Name Clan members recognized their membership in the clan not only because of their kin ties but also because of a shared common clan name. Among the Asiatic and St. Lawrence Island Yupik, clan names were most frequently derived from the names of the “ancestral” villages or from the names of ancient underground houses from which the clans originated (see above). Still, there were plenty of names of other types, such as the Akulghaaghwiget (“body-armor carriers”) or the Sighunpaget (“big-horned people”), the Aghqullughmiit (“people of the seagull”), and the Laakaghmiit (“those from the meat cellars”).14 There was no clear pattern, except that

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in the recently formed tribes there were usually more clan names built from the former places of origin, as among the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island (Jolles 2002; Krupnik 1994).

Clan Stereotypes Another feature of the Yupik clan system was the set of stereotypical portrayals of the clans commonly used as nicknames and to tease. These were most typical among the Ungazighmiit. Like Nuvuqaq, Ungaziq was divided into two parts, northern and southern, whose inhabitants were called, respectively, Pagalighmiit (“north-side people”) and Unegkumiit (“sea-side” or “south-side people”). Each of the halves was a group of clan clusters with established residential sections within the tribe’s main village. The Pagalighmiit consisted of four clans: the Akulghaaghwiget (“body-armor carriers”), the Sighunpaget (“big-horned people”), the Ugaliit (“easterners”), and the Nengluvaget (“people from the underground houses,” Yupik nenglu, pl. nenglut), or from the old village of Nengluvaq close to Cape Dezhnev). The Unegkumiit included the clans of the Sanighmelnguut (“living perpendicular”) and the Armaramket (from the Chukchi word Ermeremket, “strong people”; see chapter 7). The Laakaghmiit clan (“people from the meat cellars”) stood by itself but closer to the southern side clans (Aivangu 1985, 52–53; Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 22; Menovshchikov 1962a, 30). Their loose affiliation with the dual structure of Ungaziq suggests somewhat late merger of this clan into the Ungazighmiit tribe. Relations among the clans were permeated with mutual competition and flavored by positive as well as negative stereotypes that elders duly recalled even in the 1970s. The Laakaghmiit thought the Sanighmelnguut to be “excessive and greedy, selfish, rich people.” The Sanighmelnguut spoke of themselves as being “very poor” and “orphans,” whereas they were traditionally the richest in the village. The Sighunpaget were considered greedy, and their men, it was said, were “quarrelsome, and get involved in women’s affairs.” The Armaramket were “capable and clever”; the Akulghaaghwiget, like all of the Pagalighmiit, “filthy, with stinking garbage pits, but very kind, [and] would share their last morsel with you.” The Laakaghmiit even had a special nickname, Sagnaperaghet (“beggars”). However, they considered themselves successful, good hunters: “the men are real breadwinners, and they don’t get involved in women’s affairs.” Similar stereotypes were applied to other Yupik tribes and even to other nations with whom the Yupik were in contact. Being a part of the tribe, the clan, of course, did not possess its own language or dialect. Yet because the clan was a form of locus, it naturally aspired to have all of its features. Yupik elders liked to stress that some clans used to pronounce certain words differently. Citing examples to this effect, as well as poking fun at members of other clans, was one of their favorite activities well into the 1970s, as was shown in Alpen’s stories about the Nunagmiit cited above.

The Social and Ritual Role of the Clans In the contact-traditional society, the main function of the clan was, of course, to maintain solidarity among its members via regulating marriage relations and preserving clan filiation. The military role of the clan, primarily in physically protecting its members, was already weakened by the late contact-traditional era but was still a factor to reckon with, particularly in the case of more numerous, powerful clans (chapter 4). The clans also played an essential role in spiritual and ceremonial life; but this also began to weaken in

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the early 1900s. Recollections were still retained in the 1960s and 1970s about former clan sections at the village cemeteries (Arutiunov and Sergeev 1975, 112; Sergeev 1962, 39) and clan-based ceremonies of “honoring the ancestors” (chapter 6): They buried people in Avan at the common village cemetery. People had places of their own, for example, we, the Aghqullughmiit, had our place. And everyone else goes over there. Whoever’s with Iyaiiqa is separate. Epekaak’s [relatives] were separate too (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 302). Our ritual honoring the ancestors (aghqesaghtuq) was usually in the fall. The Laakaghmiit would all go together . . . and all the others would go to their own places. . . . They piled stones in circles there at the lake. But everyone had a place for their rituals, the Laakaghmiit had their own place, the Sighunpaget had their own, the others, too (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 312). In Nuvuqaq, there were reportedly clan sections at the village cemetery where only clan members were buried, along with their wives from other clans, if they died after their husbands. If the wife died before the husband, she was buried in her own clan section. Although clan filiation was prescribed, clans had no fixed leadership statuses such as that of a clan head or chief. All the same, the most respected members, most often elderly, of the clan were somehow viewed in this social role: Among us, the Laakaghmiit, Uugetaq was considered the chief person, our Elder. We even had a word, sivanllek [literally, “old man,” “old woman”; Rubtsova 1971, 439]. Everyone did what he said. After he died his brother became the Elder, no, no, it wasn’t his brother, it was Mumiglleghhii who became Elder. Only the person who was oldest could be the Elder. Before Uugetaq, probably Nakaziq was the eldest. Later, after he died, it passed on to Uugetaq. All the Laakaghmiit always held council together, but everything was decided by the age. It wasn’t kept in one family. The Elder’s advice was always sought. It was only the men who decided all this (Ippi 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 370). In other clans, similar names of experienced hunters or respected elders who acted as recognized clan leaders were preserved, such as those of Ivaaqaq among the Akulghaaghwiget in Ungaziq in the 1920s and Nanevgaqiya among the Aghqullughmiit in Avan in the 1910s. Another clan function was the recruitment of hunting boat crews, the groups of male hunters, usually six to eight, who hunted together in a skin boat or wooden whaleboat (chapter 6). When recalling village hunting crews at the time of their childhood, Yupik elders always listed them by clan. Ideally boat crews were made up of clan members, although in reality they were assembled by lineages, not by clans. Certain subsidiary zones within the village, such as boat launching sites on the beach, and racks for storage of boats and equipment were considered “clan areas,” most typically in Ungaziq (Fig. 3.3) and Nuvuqaq (Tein 1977, map). Similarly, collective meat storage caches, though used by individual hunting crews, were attributed to the clans. Memory of this was waning in the 1970s; it is almost certainly gone today. We have vague, often conflicting information about the clan role in Yupik ceremonies and ritual practices. Even the oldest of our informants, born between 1900 and 1915, were

The Yupik Social System: A Model

61

children or youths when they participated in traditional clan ceremonies or festivals. One type of these ceremonies that was once most certainly regulated by the clans was the socalled winter festival (Krupnik 1979). In Ungaziq, where the clan system was still strong in the early 1900s, according to elders’ recollections, these festivals were usually started by the “master-of-the-land” clan, the Sanighmelnguut. The Laakaghmiit clan usually followed suit, then the Akulghaaghwiget clan; the Sighunpaget clan was reportedly the last to hold its ceremonies, at the very end of the season (Krupnik 1979; 2000, 286, 288; also Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1985, 209 for Gambell). Memory of other ritual functions once performed by the clan had already vanished by the 1970s. We found no evidence supporting the existence of “clan” shamans (Tein 1981 for Nuvuqaq) or of “catalogs” of clan-based personal names (Jolles 2002, 104; Jolles and Kaningok 1991 for St. Lawrence Island). In the latter case, one cannot rule out that on the island where the clans are still fully active (Jolles 1997; 2002, 254–255), modern clans have acquired new functions that were either not essential or were not performed in the past.15

The Breakdown of the Tribes and Clans In the idealized Yupik model, the clan, as a self-sustainable unit, assumed the burden of migration, founding of new villages, and incorporation into a new tribe. This was evident from elders’ stories, particularly as they applied to larger tribes, like the Ungazighmiit, the Sivuqaghmiit, and the Nuvuqaghmiit, whose clan systems were still viable in the early 1900s. The decay and even extinction of clans was apparently also a common phenomenon. We compared the lists of Yupik clans compiled by various authors,16 and from our genealogies and interviews, we regularly encountered the names of dwindling or even extinct clans, of which nothing but the name remained. Several Yupik clans evidently went extinct during the decades of the commercial whaling era or even earlier. By the 1970s, for clans like the Saghraghmiit and Alighpagmiit among the Nuvuqaghmiit, and the Pangagmiit and the Aglughhtughmiit among the Ungazighmiit, any names of people who belonged to them had vanished from elders’ memory. Other clans had shrunk to one or two tiny lineages, even families, such as the Sawqlleghmiit clan in Qiwaaq and the Ugaliit and the Nengluvaget clans in Ungaziq. The result, as stated, was the loss of clan endogamy and active interclan mixing: There are very few of us Sawqlleghmiit left. . . . There weren’t many of us even before. There were always more Kiyaghnaghmiit. They always gave our women to the Kiyaghnaghmiit. They’d marry into them and bear them children (Vera Pivrana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 88). This statement illustrates the crisis state of a shrinking tribe (the Qiwaaghmiit) and the weakening of its structure made of two small clans. The next step was the disruption of tribal endogamy. According to the Qiwaaghmiit genealogies, between 1860 and 1900, four marriages (out of eleven) were concluded within the tribe. In the early 1900s, of the fifteen known Qiwaaghmiit marriages on the Asian mainland only two were between tribe members, while in the others the spouses were Ungazighmiit, Avatmiit, Tasighmiit, and Nanguparaghmiit. Among the Sighineghmiit, 54 percent of people born between 1850 and 1880 married within the tribe; for those born between 1880 and 1900, the rate

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dropped to 40 percent (Krupnik 1991b, 9–10). Tribal endogamy persisted longer among the Avatmiit, although even in their chief clan, the Aghqullughmiit, of eight known marriages between 1880 and 1900, four were concluded within the clan, one with another Avatmii, and three with Ungazighmiit spouses. In other words, the dwindling locus has to sacrifice its endogamy: initially of the clan, and later, of the tribe. Endogamy among the Yupik was, apparently, never a rigid rule similar to the marriage taboos in classical exogamous societies, but rather an explicit regulation. If the tribe was large and the clans were populous, the rate of endogamous marriages could be as high as 90 percent at the tribal level and up to 50–60 percent among the numerically strong clans. Should the tribe and the clan membership dwindle, the share of endogamous marriages would naturally decline.

A Model for Tribal Reintegration The breakdown and reintegration of the clan and tribal structure might take different forms. A full-fledged clan might survive in a dwindling tribe next to other, decimated clans. It could then stimulate other clans to regroup along the new lines, as happened among the Avatmiit (chapter 5). A few small clans might survive as well, but, with their numbers down to a handful of families, they were relegated to merging and regrouping with other groups, as occurred among the Qiwaaghmiit. Finally, the old tribal structure could be irreparably damaged, so that even the memory of its former constituent units could be lost among the younger generations, as among the Sighineghmiit. Individual tribal stories illustrate the process of tribe and clan disintegration but also the mechanism of revival. Any prolonged stress, be it economic, social, or ecological, commonly triggered the splintering of the then-existing tribal aggregations into their component locuses. A few would vanish; others might join the nearby tribes that had retained their integrity. Yet others would have formed “migratory locuses” that would search for a new area in which to resettle. Various regrouping mechanisms similarly came into play. A shrinking tribal group might move, in order to merge with other locuses to start a new tribe, such as the Atqallghhaghmiit did in joining the Imtugmiit around 1880. The diversity of strategies offered to the Yupik many options for flexible regrouping.

The Locus as a Migratory Group A weakened locus did not necessarily migrate. That we have continually stressed its migratory nature reflects our desire to hold to the Yupik interpretations of their social institutions. The idea of the clan (or other locus) moving from its initial location into a new territory is rooted in the Yupik ways of thinking. Many other peoples have stories about the “ancient folks” who preceded the contemporary residents and who are often mythologized. They may depart for the “underground world” or transform into mythological giants or dwarves. With the Yupik things were much simpler. The people who preceded them always either “left” for a better hunting area, or they reportedly “fell asleep,” which literally means “died of starvation.” Although capable of migration, the locus was not solely a resettlement group. The goal of its movement was not the move per se but a search for a new and more stable place of

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Fig. 3.3: “Hunting ground of the Lakarmiit” (original caption by Aleksandr Forshtein). Boat storage area of the Laakaghmiit clan in Ungaziq. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1928–1929. MAE #И–115-63)

residence. If it ended up in relative isolation, then in the course of several generations a migrating locus would evolve from a clan to a tribal group. If it joined with other similar groups and integrated into a new community, then, again, after a certain period, a reorientation took place. One identity would then give way to another, frequently accompanied by a change of clan or tribal name.17 We should resist the impression that owing to its locus structure, traditional Yupik society was a sort of a moveable fabric, whose elements could easily flow from one place to the other. This was hardly true. Of course, Yupik history, as we know it from the contact-­ traditional era, was rife with movement. But the key components of the tribal composition remained stable and fairly resilient. In its most general form, the “Yupik land” in Asia could be likened to a plane with a certain number of suitable cells. Each cell was an ecological niche favorable for human occupation, usually a location where a community would thrive, due to the abundance of food resources. Yet the number of niches, particularly of large ones, was limited. It is not by coincidence that all the major Yupik tribal hubs, Sighineq, Avan, Qiwaaq, Ungaziq, Sivuqaq (Gambell), and probably also Nuvuqaq, have many chronological strata of residence, which can be recognized via groups of ancient dwellings of different types (Krupnik 1983; 2004; Mason 1998; 2009; Rudenko 1947). Like billiard balls, locuses might have moved about this expanse looking for suitable niches. But they could create stable aggregations in a few limited locations only, which within the realm of people’s memory were the very same old tribal centers, plus a few new ones, like Imtuk and Uwellkal, of the late contact-traditional era (chapter 4).18 The locus movement could have been a regular phenomenon, but it followed a particular pattern. Over a long time, it created the appearance of continuity, even stability, played out by this combination of mobility and permanence. Yet Yupik society did not stand still. Its technology advanced and new strategies were mastered for more efficient use of local resources. In this process, certain locations might have lost their advantage, whereas others opened up for new riches. The Cape Dezhnev

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cliffs area, the home area of the Nuvuqaghmiit, was extremely productive for people who mastered collective whale and walrus hunting in the ice-choked Bering Strait (Chlenov 1988a). But during the time when this technology for collective hunting was not fully developed people preferred other nearby niches, like the pebble spits, lagoons, and gentle hills to the north and south of the cliffs (Arutiunov 1975, 23–25; Mason 1998, 255–259; 2009, 105–107). The reverse was also true. In large ancient villages, population might dwindle to a level far below the niche’s potential or leave it altogether—as happened in Qiwaaq and Sighineq in Chukotka or in Pugughileq and Kukulek on St. Lawrence Island around 1900. The key drivers in the makeup of the “Eskimo Land” in Asia were the combination of the moving locuses and tribal aggregations (Table 3.1), and the recurring breakdowns and regroupings along locus lines. This, in essence, was the model we construed for the late contact-traditional Yupik society. It functioned on one condition only, namely, that people were free to move into an unoccupied area or to join other locuses to form new aggregations. Evidently, such a model required a certain level of peaceful relations among its constituent elements. The many facets of that peaceful, though by no means always affable, coexistence during the contact-traditional era are explored below. Whether the model we construed holds true for the preceding time will be tested in chapter 7.

Notes 1. Throughout this book, when referring to our informants’ narratives, we indicate the person’s name and the year the narrative was recorded (also, if applicable, when it was published in Russian, e.g., in Krupnik 2000). Personal information on individual narrators, their Yupik names, and the rules of Yupik name transliteration are presented in appendix 1. 2. Ramka, plural form ramket (from the Chukchi word remyt, which means “people,” “community,” “village”), is the most common Yupik word used to designate both “people” (community) and unilineal kin groups (clans). It is used in such contexts among the Asiatic and St. Lawrence Island Yupik speakers alike (see Jacobson 2008, 441; Jolles 2002, 14; Rubtsova 1971, 435). 3. Kin structures formed with the suffix -kut appended to the name of the head of the group were also common among the Inupiat of North Alaska, although, in the Inupiat case, these were bilateral kin groupings (Burch 2006, 101). 4. For the same school program, the elders also compiled a much longer list of sixty-nine (!) “patrilineages” recognized on the island in the 1980s (St. Lawrence Island Manual 1986, 145–146). Remarkably, the names in that list were those of the men who were one or two generations younger than people in the 1900 list. 5. Jolles (2002, 121) uses the term nengllugutet to designate those “branches” or distinctive family groups within a clan in Gambell (Sivuqaq). It clearly stems from the Yupik word nenglu, “underground house,” and thus means “people coming from the same underground house (nenglu).” We never encountered this word in our interviews with Yupik elders in Chukotka. 6. Stevenson (1997) has offered a much more refined interpretation of the origins of the Canadian Inuit social systems. 7. See the lists of similar Alaska groups in Burch 1980, 285–295; 1998; 2005, 38–39; FienupRiordan 1984, 91–93; Sheppard 2000; Shinkwin and Pete 1984, 97.

Table 3.1: Main features of the Yupik/Asiatic Eskimo locus institutions in the late contact-traditional era, 1890–1930 Group Tribe Ungazighmiit Nuvuqaghmiit Sighineghmiit Avatmiit Qiwaaghmiit Sivuqaghmiit Tribal Group Imtugmiit Atqallghhaghmiit Napaqutaghmiit Nunagmiit Clan Laakaghmiit Armaramket Sighunpaget Sanighmelnguut Nengluvaget Mamruaghpagmiit Aghqullughmiit Sawqlleghmiit Silaakshaghmiit Pugughileghmiit Local (Village) Community Imtuk Ugriileq Qiwaaq Siqlluk Migration Group Uwellkal Wrangell Island Neighborhood Pagalighmiit (Ungaziq) Unegkumiit (Ungaziq) Naavneghmiit (Imtuk) Aywaghmiit (Avan) Akileghmiit (Nuvuqaq) Uwatangaghmiit (Sivuqaq)

1

2

3

Indicators* 4 5 6

+ + + + + +

+ + + + + +

+ + + + + +

+ + + + + +

+ + (+) (+) (+) ?

+ + (+) (+) (+) +

+ + + + + +

+ + + + + +

+ + + + + ?

+ (+) + (+)

– – – –

? + – +

+ – + ?

– – + ?

– – + –

+ + + +

+ + + +

(+) (+) (+) (+)

– – ? – – (+) – – – ?

– – – – – – – – – –

+ (+) + – – + – – – +

– – – – – – – – – –

+ + + + – ? (+) – – (+)

+ + + – – (+) – – – +

+ + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + +

– – (+) – – ? – – – ?

+ + + +

– – (+) –

– – – –

+ + + –

– – (+) (+)

+ – + –

+ + + +

+ – + +

(+) – (+) (+)

+ +

+ –

(+) –

? –

– +

+ –

– –

– ?

– –

+ + + + + +

+ + – – + +

– – – – – –

– – – – – –

– – – – – –

+ + – – + +

+ + + + – +

+ + – – – +

– – – – – –

7

8

9

* Indicators are as follows: 1 = recognized group territory; 2 = clan division; 3 = “old” sites (settlements); 4 = neighborhood division; 5 = preferential endogamy; 6 = population strength ensuring minimal reproductive sustainability (above 100–120 people); 7 = recognized group self-designation; 8 = group identity; 9 = specific language/dialect or claim of thereof. Key: + = present; (+) = unclear/eroding; ? = unclear/no data; – = absent.

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8. There used to be at least one reported subdialect of St. Lawrence Island Yupik spoken by the former residents of the village of Kiyalighaq at Southeast Cape (Krauss 1975; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989). 9. Geographic isolation of the CSY and Naukanski speakers was an additional factor inhibiting communication. Since the 1930s, when CSY was declared the “official” Eskimo language in Russia, many Naukanski speakers learned to converse in CSY (but hardly vice versa). 10. Atqallghhaghmiit qeenrakun, Chaplino qaanrakun, “toboggan (sled) runners”; Atqallghhagh­miit kiksalget, Chaplino iksalget, “shoe grapnels”; Atqallghhaghmiit nuvalla, Chaplino wuwalla, “festival.” 11. We believe that Forshtein had more opportunities to identify Yupik clans than Shnakenburg. Forshtein spent two years as school principal in Ungaziq in 1928–1929 and visited all other Yupik communities in 1929. He also cited at least one well-known clan name, the Laakaghmiit, in his unpublished writings in the 1930s (Krupnik and Mikhailova 2006, 96–97). 12. The three remaining clans of the Nuvuqaghmiit, the Sitqunaghmiit, the Tugraghmiit, and the Uyaghaghmiit, were also known as “native.” Even though the Sitqunaghmiit were considered a “native” group to Naukan, they traced the origins of their ancestors from the “Masighmiit” (i.e., Mechigmen Bay; see chapter 7). 13. This assumption is hard to verify. Many details of the former social system of the Nuvuqaghmiit remained unclear in the 1970s, following almost two decades of dispersal from their original homeland (chapter 10). Today’s researchers would find this even harder to verify. 14. For complete (though conflicting) lists of the Nuvuqaq clan names see Chichlo 1981, 32; Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 21–22; Leonova 1997; 2008, 156; Menovshchikov 1962a, 31; Sergeev 1962, 36; Tein 1981, 218; 1984, 118. 15. A good example is the collection of gifts by the clan of the bridegroom as tribute to the clan of the bride reported in modern Gambell (Jolles and Kaningok 1991, 33). 16. See, for individual Yupik tribes and villages, Aivangu 1985; Leonova 1997; 2008; Menovshchikov 1962a; Sergeev 1962; Tein 1981; for St. Lawrence Island, St. Lawrence Island Manual 1986. 17. This may explain the dual name of the Sanighmelnguut/Aymaramket clan in Gambell (Sivuqaq). The latter form is a version of the same clan name among the Ungazighmiit, the Armaramket, whereas the former most probably comes from the clan’s later residence location in Gambell. 18. Mason (1998) used archaeological records to produce a similar vision on the location of major ancient population centers (“polities”) in the extended Bering Strait region that included Chukotka, St. Lawrence Island, Seward Peninsula, and North Alaska.

Chapter 4

Along the Shores of Yupik Land in Asia Territories and Borders

H

key institutions of late contact-traditional Yupik society, that is, the rules of the “language” of Yupik social life, we will now demonstrate its actual social “speech.” In this chapter, we will go on a “virtual journey” across the Yupik land in Asia, moving along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula from its western edge to the narrows of the Bering Strait (see Map 2.1). On that virtual journey, as if visiting each Yupik community and each tribal area of the early 1900s, we are to assess its life in its richness, as recalled and commented upon by the elders who were born and raised in that society. Although such traveling across the Yupik area was a common practice in the late contact-traditional era, the concept of “Yupik land,” yupigem nuna, was not an established element of the Yupik worldview. As the elders recalled, their vision of the “Yupik land” was one of a chain of individual tribal territories, each a separate, independent cell. Unlike in Northwest Alaska, where many group areas often stretched deep inland along the river valleys (Burch 1998), the tribal territories on the Asian shore were usually narrow strips of coastland that extended no further than a few kilometers into the interior. Here they joined with the pasturelands of the reindeer Chukchi (Krupnik 1977; 1993), without established boundaries. Traditionally, even the barren upper reaches of the fjords and the bays were not part of the Yupik understanding of “their land.” They belonged to no one and were not fully suitable to either the coastal hunters or the tundra herders, although both groups episodically claimed and exploited them. The first decades of the 20th century brought two significant changes to the network of Asiatic Yupik tribal territories that had been stable at least since 1850 (Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; chapter 2). Quite suddenly, the boundaries of the land occupied by the Yupik people in Asia expanded anew. They took in areas that either had been abandoned centuries before or had never been settled by them, like the arctic Wrangell Island and the shores of the Gulf of Anadyr, up to the mouth of the Anadyr River. Members of virtually all the southern Yupik tribes went on the move and settled in these areas. There was also continuous movement to neighboring St. Lawrence and Little Diomede islands, both part of the US territory. Simultaneously, the Yupik reoccupied some of the old villages within aving identified the

67

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their historical tribal lands that had been abandoned earlier. These new “extensions” of the Yupik land will be included also in our virtual journey. The moving fabric of the Yupik society of the late contact-traditional era offers numerous illustrations both to the norms that secured its order (“language”) and to the ways those norms and rules were implemented (“speech”) in real life.

The Fjord Zone Sighineq The westernmost Yupik tribe, the Sighineghmiit, entered the 20th century as a small, ­almost decimated community of barely 100 people, after the hard times of the commercial whaling era (chapter 2). In essence it had retained only the area around its former tribal hub, the village of Sighineq (Map 4.1). Until the end of the 1920s, it was a modest community of fifty to sixty people in eight to ten family houses. About the same number of Sighineghmiit lived 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) farther east, in the neighboring community of Imtuk outside the borders of the traditional tribal territory. The social “topography” of Sighineq in the early 1900s was a projection of two very distinctive systems of different origins and age. The more ancient layer belonged to the extinct kin (?) groups, most likely, the old clans of the Sighineghmiit tribe. They were called the Iilvaantaghmiit, the Silaakshaghmiit, the Walwuraghmiit, the Uskuughnaghmiit, Saanlek

r Rive

Ku

a rup k

oon

a Lag

pk Kuru

Kurgu

Singhaq

Cape Chingan Provideniya

0 0

NA

DY

Imtuk

R

5 Miles 5 Kilometers

Ha rbo r Em ma

Sighineq

Pr ov ide ni y

A

aB

n

Cape Yakun

La

F

uk

O

goo

U

Kenlighaq Im t

G

LF

ay

Yaquq

Ugriileq

Plover Bay

Angetequq

Atqallghhaq

Cape Stoletiya

Egheghaq

Cape Lesovsky Cape East Head

170°

M ap 4.1: Historical Yupik villages and camps to the west of Provideniya Bay

Avan

Aasaq

Along the Shores of Yupik Land in Asia

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Fig. 4.1: Sighineq: General view of the village from a trail to Imtuk. The names of the historical neighborhoods seen as clusters of houses and underground dwellings are written over the old photograph. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #И–115-4)

and the Saygughmiit, as first recorded by Dorian Sergeev in the 1950s (Sergeev 1958–1959; 1962, 36). The group names were derived from the names of ancient underground houses or even clusters of semisubterranean houses in various sections of the village (Fig. 4.1; Krupnik 1983, 71–74). One cluster, consisting of three dwellings, was located right above the beach. The largest house was called Iilvaantaq (Fig. 4.2), and as the elders recalled, some families in the early 1900s still considered themselves to be the descendants of its inhabitants (hence, Iilvaantaghmiit). Another dwelling was called Saygu, and its former residents (or their descendants) may have been named Saygughmiit (i.e., “people from/of Saygu”). Memory of their descendants was already lost by the time of our first interviews in 1971 and 1975. The second group of old underground houses located farther along the beach was called Walwuraq, from the Chukchi walweran, “carrion-crows’ dwelling” (Menovshchikov 1972, 91). Tradition has it that its residents, Walwuraghmiit, were the people who once left to live in Saanlek, in the western part of the tribal territory (chapter 3). The ruins of yet another huge dug-out called Uskuughnaq (Fig. 4.3) were located away from the shore. Finally, the fourth separate underground house site, of which the foundation had been preserved up to the 1950s, was called Silaakshaq. The inhabitants of two nearby family houses called themselves Silaakshaghmiit (Fig. 4.4; Krupnik 1983, 72–73). Two other families who also referred to themselves as Silaakshaghmiit lived in another section of the village. Some vague memories about the age-long kin ties and affiliations were still retraceable in elders’ stories about their childhood years in Sighineq at about 1910–1920: At my time [i.e., around 1915] we were the only Silaakshaghmiit, my father Pangawyi and his father Etugyi. But the underground dwelling that was near our home belonged to Tagrugyi. So it wasn’t ours. Probably Tagrugyi fed it [literally, fed the spirits of the ancestors who used to live there]. We didn’t feed it (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 44–45).

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Fig. 4.2: Sighineq: Ruins of the old Iilvaantaq underground house with the ceremonial whale jawbone pole symbolizing spiritual “masters of the village.” (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #И–115-61)

Fig. 4.3: Sighineq: Ruins of the old underground house Uskuughnaq in the center of the village residential area. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #И–115-60)

Once, very long ago, probably, our ancestors were Silaakshaghmiit, but then they moved to Uskuughnaq. But Tagrugyi, my father, clearly remembered that our ancestors were Silaakshaghmiit, and he told me about them. Etugyi’s ancestors were also Silaakshaghmiit. They were our relatives, but they were very distant relatives, we call them ilakwaaq [in Yupik]. I can’t even say exactly what they were to us. I also heard that the Silaakshaghmiit were ancient relatives of Veqvanga. Now they’re all reindeer Chukchi (Aleksandr Ratkhugwi 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 44).

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Fig. 4.4: Sighineq: The Silaakshaq neighborhood in the northern section of the village residential area. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #И–115-1)

Apparently, by the turn of the 20th century, the old clan structure had already vanished (or was very weakened) and was replaced by a new social topography. Our eldest informants in the 1970s, born around 1905–1915, did not confirm the five-clan system in Sighineq as recorded by Sergeev two decades prior (Sergeev 1962, 36). They claimed that during their early years, the names Uskuughnaq, Silaakshaq, and Iilvaantaq were applied to the sections or neighborhoods in the village where anyone could settle as one saw fit: There are no such people as the Iilvaantaghmiit, and there never were. I never heard anyone talk about anything like that. In my time there were only the Uskuughnaghmiit and the Silaakshaghmiit. The Uskuughnaghmiit were the only people who lived in Uskuughnaq. But there were constantly changes going on: some would move to Imtuk, others to Kenlighaq, and then new people would arrive. They’d live there for six or eight years and then move on (Anna Ankana 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 45). Everything up to the incline was called Uskuughnaq. Most of the people I can remember lived in Uskuughnaq. Our yaranga [skin tent] was there, when we lived there we were called Uskuughnaghmiit too. Tagrugyi also lived in Uskuughnaq. . . . The Uskuughnaghmiit aren’t related, it’s just the name for the people who live in that place. Well, Nganganga arrived and settled in Uskuughnaq, and became an Uskuughnaghmii. Numelen lived there too, and people usually said that he was both Iilvaantaghmii and Uskuughnaghmii [!]. But we’re not related to them at all (Stepan Kavakvyrgin 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 36). Some elders clearly perceived the transition from one social system to another and tried to convey it in the following way:

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My grandfather’s grandfather was a Silaakshaghmii, but later we became Uskuughnaghmiit. . . . We moved the yarangas to a new location and got a new name. You could do that, if you didn’t like [living at] some place, you could move to another. It probably didn’t used to be like that, when people lived in underground houses [Yupik nenglut]. Then people would live in the same place a long time and not change [their names]. But with the yarangas, you can live wherever you want. Now when my grandfather’s grandfather lived in an underground house he was a Silaakshaghmii. But his descendants lived in Uskuughnaq, and so they were called Uskuughnaghmiit (Aleksandr Ratkhugwi 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 44). The situation in Sighineq revealed the fragments of the former clan structure in a process of reconfiguration into the system of village territorial sections (“neighborhoods”). In addition, people were organized in patrilineal groups (lineages) linked by bonds of kinship, by vague memories attaching them to certain old underground houses in the village, and by shared ritual tradition. There were always four fires [we would light] when we honored the ancestors: ours, the oldest; Tagrugyi’s; Maki and Mergugyi’s children’s; and Tengantu’s children’s. But I don’t know why they were with us. They used to live in Imtuk. They were Qepluwyingkut and Iyangkut,1 not related to us at all. . . . Mergugyi fed that underground house on the shore, he came especially from Imtuk to honor his ancestors, and he would feed it. That underground house’s called Saygu. But I never heard Mergugyi called a Saygughmii, there weren’t any such people. I remember hearing it said that their ancestors were Singhaghmiit [sic!], but that was a long, long time ago (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 317). The Sighineghmiit also preserved the institution of the “master of the land” (Yupik ­nunaleggtaq; chapter 5), which was attached to one lineage linked to the old underground house Iilvaantaq. The head of the lineage and, correspondingly, the “master” of Sighineq was an elder named Yukeruk, born around 1850. After his death about 1915, his son Angqawyi became the “master” of Sighineq. Between 1890 and 1910, several young men and boys from other tribes were incorporated as peripheral relatives and in-laws in the lineage of Yukeruk through marriage and adoption. They were married to the female relatives or daughters of Yukeruk, and their offspring were later considered “true” Sighineghmiit. The adoption of boys and in-laws from other tribes into the main lineage of the tribe was contrary to the Yupik norm of patrilineal affiliation, yet another proof of its weakened status. It was an adaptive mechanism of sorts, an attempt to strengthen a viable institution by circumventing the rules of patrilineality and tribal endogamy.

Imtuk The situation in the neighboring community of Imtuk could not be more different. Here the original settlers were members of a small tribal group, the Imtugmiit, who spoke a dialect of Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) and most probably once originated from St. Lawrence Island (chapter 2). Only two small Imtugmiit lineages of four or five families (twenty to twenty-five people altogether) remained in 1900. Despite the small size of its

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core group, and perhaps even owing to it, Imtuk had been growing rapidly. Groups of migrants (“locuses”) arrived from both east, like the Atqallghhaghmiit, and west, including the Sighineghmiit from Saanlek, Kurgu, Yaquq, and Sighineq itself (chapter 2). By 1915, Imtuk expanded into a community of 120–130, which was quite substantial by local standards and twice as large as nearby Sighineq. Its population consisted of three tribal fragments: the Imtugmiit, the Atqallghhaghmiit, and the Sighineghmiit (in several kin groupings). Two different Yupik languages were spoken in the community, CSY and Sirenikski. None of the groups was dominant because the more numerous Sighineghmiit were split into smaller fragments and were not perceived as a unified group. Soon a succession of other groups of migrants arrived: an extended family from Napaqutaq; a big lineage from Avan; three related families of Armaramket and a family of Laakaghmiit from Ungaziq; and, finally, a family of Nangupagaghmiit. In 1925, Imtuk had 160 residents made up of members of three Yupik tribes and four tribal groups. It was the third-largest Yupik community in Asia, after Ungaziq and Nuvuqaq. The multitribal and multilingual residents of Imtuk rather quickly formed a distinctive community. The village territory was divided into four sections, each with its own name: Naavneq, “broken, sloping toward the shore” (Fig. 4.5); Sanighmelnguut, “perpendicular”; Imturaaq, “little Imtuk”; and Agiggselghaq, “observation point” (Krupnik 1983, 74). Judging from the location of the family houses, as recalled by elders, not a single constituent tribal or kin group formed a compact neighborhood. The family houses were moved freely around the village, often several times. Now Ngepawyi, he was the main person [the “master”] in Imtuk. During my time he first lived at the hill, in Imturaaq, and so he was an Imturaghmii. But later he moved closer to us in Naavneq, and became a Naavneghmii. . . . Lots of people changed place every year: in the summer they’d move down closer to the beach, and then they’d be called Agiggselghaghwiit, and in the winter they’d move away from the shore and become Imturaghmiit or Naavneghmiit. And people would

Fig. 4.5: Imtuk: The village section Naavneq (“sloping toward the shore”), with clusters of traditional winter houses and plank wooden cabins. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #И–115-3)

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also move their yarangas if someone in the family died or because there was too much snow at the old place (Utykhtykak 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 48–49). Due to the small size of individual tribal components in Imtuk, hardly any one of them could be endogamous. The genealogies of the Imtuk residents were remarkable in the preponderance of intertribal marriages, even among people born around 1870–1900. Nevertheless, patrilineal clan and lineage filiation was strongly preserved, and social obligations were passed on through male relatives. The clan or lineage practices for boat crew formation were also maintained, to the degree possible, of course, given the modest size of Imtuk clan and lineage groups (chapter 6). Imtuk was a mixed community of a new type that was brought into being by migrations, good conditions for bowhead whaling, and trade with American whalers. Every year residents of Imtuk would kill two or three bowhead whales, and they often joined forces with the whaling crews from Sighineq (Krupnik 2000, 158–160). This burgeoning village could have become a potential hub for the formation of a new Yupik tribe. If the process of tribal integration had progressed, it would have brought a gradual unification of previously independent migrant groups. They would have become formative clans of a new tribe, all the more so as the village population was close to 150 people, enough for a sustainable tribal community. Specific to Imtuk was the coexistence of two “speech communities” with their separate languages: Sirenikski (Yupik sighineghmiistun or uqaghllistun/uqeghhllistun) for various tribal components of the Sighineghmiit and Central Siberian Yupik (Yupik yupigestun) for all other groups. A tribe as an established social unit should be a homogenous linguistic group, and the unusual situation of two competing languages might have slowed down the process of integration in Imtuk. One of the languages had to lose out, and in the end, it was Sirenikski (Krupnik 1991b, 11–12, 16). By 1930, virtually the entire population of Imtuk spoke a specific dialect of CSY that was grammatically influenced by the Sirenikski language (Rubtsova 1971, 5).2 The process of tribal reintegration never culminated, as beginning in the 1920s, the residents of Imtuk started relocating to Sighineq. The latter was obviously a more convenient site for a new hub. It had a larger area for the placement of family houses and plenty of drinking water. The resettlement was spurred by the transfer in 1931 of the new Soviet school and the village council from Imtuk to Sighineq (Fig. 4.6). As families from Imtuk moved one after another, the migration changed the dynamics in the old tribal center. The process of group integration began anew as the multitribal former residents of Imtuk, and the members of the old Sighineghmiit tribe now made up one large community of 200. Whatever clan-like groups had been taking shape in Imtuk quickly vanished and a new mixed multitribal residential community started to take root in Sighineq (chapter 9).

Movement Westward: Singhaq, Asun, and Kenlighaq Three smaller migrations were related to the population move from Imtuk to Sighineq between 1920 and 1932. All represented the attempts of the Sighineghmiit to reoccupy sections of the old tribal territory west from Sighineq. It is unlikely that such moves of small groups of two or three families would have been motivated by the search for better hunting grounds. A camp with a few adult hunters was unable to harvest large marine mammals

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on a sustainable basis and thus would have turned to living on small seals, fishing, and bird hunting. Personal motives were more likely stimuli for such migrations. Leaving large villages and establishing small independent camps was a traditional Yupik (all-Eskimo) strategy in stressful situations. In the 1920s, under the influence of intertribal marriages, the Sirenikski language was gradually forced out in Sighineq by CSY, much in the same way as had happened earlier in Imtuk. In their effort to preserve their old tribal language, some Sighineghmiit sought to establish small, isolated linguistic communities. Around 1920, two related families from Sighineq established a camp close to the ruins of the village of Singhaq, abandoned in the 18th century. The settlement did not last long: one family soon returned to Sighineq; the other set out into the tundra and joined the reindeer Chukchi. Equally short-lived was another small Sighineghmiit campsite, Asun (Asungu), established at Lake Achon (Asun, in Yupik), some 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) west of Sighineq. The settlers spent a few years in Asun and later returned to Imtuk (chapter 6). The third and last migration took place in 1932, when residents of Imtuk began moving to Sighineq en masse. A group of six families (thirty to thirty-five people) established a new village 5 kilometers (3 miles) west of Sighineq, in nearby Kenlighaq Bay. This site was ideal for marine hunting as it offered a wonderful vista extending to the west, from which direction whales and walrus arrived in the spring. The location is also well suited to harvesting seals, birds, and fish. The very best hunters of Imtuk, its hunting elite, moved to Kenlighaq Bay.3 Evidently, they had no wish to reside in Sighineq as unbidden guests. Four out of seven men in Kenlighaq had been whaling captains in Imtuk and brought their boats with them. At the new site, they made up one crew whose hunting prowess was without equal in the Yupik land.4

Fig. 4.6: Sighineq: “American” plank house soon to host a new Russian school. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-54)

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The elders who grew up in Kenlighaq stressed the main reason for their parents’ move as their aversion to living in Sighineq. As in other Sighineghmiit camps in Asun and Singhaq, they probably also had hopes of preserving their native Sirenikski language.5 Yet even this effort was a failure. Thirty to thirty-five people residing in Kenlighaq were unable to start a viable community, and after a few years, they gave up. One of the incentives for moving back to Sighineq was the desire to participate in communal whale hunting with its eight Sighineq crews. Another new factor was the Russian school started in Sighineq (chapter 8) that children from Kenlighaq were to attend on a daily basis—no small order, especially in the wintertime.

“Old Plover” The coastal area to the east of the land of the Sighineghmiit and the Imtugmiit, beginning at Provideniya Bay, was the homeland of the Avatmiit tribe. Like the Sighineghmiit, they suffered substantial population loss during the whaling era (chapter 2). Much like the Sighineghmiit, they sought to regain strength and to restore their tribal structure; but their strategy was based more on the traditional Yupik social norms. Russian censuses from 1895 onward and elders’ memories from the 1970s refer to three villages within the tribal area: Avan, the historic tribal hub, with about 100 residents; the declining village of Egheghaq, in Plover Bay; and the transitory settlement of Ugriileq next to the trading post in Emma Harbor (Map 4.1). Each community struggled to regroup in its own way. The history of Egheghaq, or “Old Plover,” as it was called in Russian in the time of our fieldwork, was almost entirely forgotten. Even the few Avatmiit elders we interviewed could not recall the Plover Bay of the late 1800s, a site known to many passing schooners and explorers, including Edward Nelson in 1881 (Nelson 1983 [1899]) and the Harriman Expedition in 1899 (Figs. 4.7, 4.8, 4.9).6 Reportedly, Egheghaq was all but abandoned because of the epidemics in the very late 1800s or early 1900s (Bockstoce 1986, 137–141; Krause 1984, 95). Moreover, when American whaling schooners ceased putting in at Plover Bay around 1910, the remaining residents lost their regular trade contacts and were unable to maintain a viable community. Three families with able hunters joined their fellow tribesmen in Avan about 1912. Weaker families and the elderly moved deeper into Provideniya Bay, to the trading post at Emma Harbor, which was operating as a local storehouse and administrative center (chapter 1). This was a typical response replicated by many other Eskimo groups during the contact era (cf. Israel 1978). For the next twenty years, the abandoned site at Egheghaq was used as a summer camp by some families from Avan, most certainly the former residents of Egheghaq (Krupnik 2000, 71–72).

Avan Throughout the contact-traditional era, Avan remained a viable and flourishing community. Like Sighineq, it had preserved remnants of the old clan structure that coexisted with other social groupings of different origin. The village was divided into three sections separated by large unoccupied space. Their respective inhabitants were called the Aghqullughmiit (“sea-gull people”7), the Akulighmiit (“those who live in the middle”), and the Aywaghmiit (“those who live in the north”) (Fig. 4.10). The Aghqullughmiit, whose houses were closest to the shore, made up a true clan with the typical set of clan features: a distinct name, a perception of

Fig. 4.7: Egheghaq: Yupik residents of Plover Bay, July 1899. (Photo: Harriman Expedition, NMAI, P11068)

Fig. 4.8: Egheghaq: Yupik summer house (magnteghaswaaq, “small house”) made of canvas and walrus skins, with drying seal-skin floats, clothing, and strips of dried meat, summer 1899. (Photo: Harriman Expedition, NMAI, L1068)

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Fig. 4.9: Egheghaq: Yupik winter house (mangteghapik) in Plover Bay, summer 1899. (Photo: Harriman Expedition, NMAI, P11075)

Fig. 4.10: Avan: View of the village in spring 1929 (?). Two clusters of houses represent two village “neighborhoods”: the Aghqullughmiit, to the left, and the Akulighmiit, in the middle. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-7)

their unity and kin ties, and strong patrilineal filiation. The six or seven families (about thirty to thirty-five people around 1920) making up the clan were organized in three lineages, one of which was the “master of the land” in Avan; another claimed the same status in the then-abandoned Egheghaq. The houses and tents of the Aghqullughmiit stood in a compact group (clan neighborhood), and other Avatmiit were not permitted to settle next to them.

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Other segments of the Avan community comprised lineages and individual families that did not have strong genealogical ties. These groupings were just village “neighborhoods” of sorts. The most numerous and varied in composition were the Aywaghmiit (the “northern people”), who lived farthest away from the sea. They numbered about fifty, and their neighborhood was growing, as families from other Yupik villages who moved to Avan set their houses among the Aywaghmiit. Yupik elders of the 1970s considered all the former residents of Avan to be members of the Avatmiit tribe. But the breakdown of the tribal structure was readily apparent as it retained but one original clan, the Aghqullughmiit, which existed side by side with two mixed social groupings made of the fragments that had roots in other villages, even other tribes. Moreover, the Aghqullughmiit, despite being viewed as the “masters” in Avan, did not link themselves to any of the abandoned old semisubterranean houses in the village. One such house was “fed” by a family from the “middle people,” the Akulighmiit. Nor did the mixed group of Aywaghmiit, the “northern people,” claim any historical ties to the old underground houses of Avan. Despite its colorful makeup, Avan was every bit a traditional community in comparison with Imtuk, or even Sighineq (Fig. 4.11). Its disrupted social system was clearly under restoration, for which the Avatmiit relied upon the remaining tribe’s population core, its specific tribal dialect, and one full-fledged clan, the Aghqullughmiit. Between 1900 and 1925, the Avatmiit integrated several families or lone men from the nearby Yupik tribes, individual sons-in-law of Chukchi or mixed origins, and a large lineage of the Nangupagaghmiit herders. Intermarrying in the Avatmiit milieu, the descendants of these people acquired strong Avatmiit identity along with the characteristic Avan subdialect.

Fig. 4.11: Avan: Drinking tea inside a Yupik house. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929[?]. MAE #И–115-149)

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Later they carried this identity and their distinctive “Avan speech” into other Yupik communities, where they were viewed as Avatmiit, regardless of their tribal origin.

Ugriileq: The Village at the Trading Post Another historical satellite of Avan, the village of Ugriileq, was located deep in Provideniya Bay, in its inner Emma Harbor. This village gradually became the center of gravity for the entire southern fjord zone and ultimately subsumed the old tribal hub. In 1848, when the British expedition on HMS Plover wintered at Emma Harbor (chapter 7), it was a ­medium-size settlement of maritime hunters that the British recorded by its Chukchi name Wugrel, or Gugrelen. As the American whalers entered the area after 1850, the population of Ugriileq apparently moved to Avan or Plover Bay (Egheghaq). German naturalists, the Krause brothers, found Emma Harbor uninhabited in September 1881, but did encounter fresh traces of dwellings (Krause 1984, 97). A month prior, American visitors from the USS Corwin found no permanent residents either, but came across two reindeer herding families, whom they described as “real Chukchis” (Hooper 1884, 26, 74; Muir 1917, 206–210). At that time, Emma Harbor was evidently abandoned by the Yupik and served as an intermediate zone where, in the summer months, the Yupik from Avan and Egheghaq would meet with the Chukchi-speaking reindeer herders. The former came to fish and hunt seals and were engaged in trade with the crews of the vessels that visited the harbor, while the latter brought their reindeer to graze and avoided the Europeans to the extent possible. The reappearance of a Yupik village in Emma Harbor around 1910 was triggered by two events: the abandonment of Egheghaq and establishment of a permanent Russian trading post, coal depot, and storehouses in the harbor. The latter provided new opportunities and a reliable supply for those families who preferred life near the trading post to traditional sea-mammal hunting. By 1920, about fifty people lived in Ugriileq, including a few Europeans married to local women (chapter 1). The majority were the Avatmiit from Egheghaq and Avan, primarily elderly couples and widows with children and the meager number of male hunters. The able-bodied male population of Ugriileq consisted primarily of new arrivals: Tasighmiit, Qiwaaghmiit, even Chukchi married into Yupik families. There were also three families of former Nangupagaghmiit herders, who moved to Ugriileq and had again thrust into the Yupik milieu. A few European men, the Estonian-born trader Julius Tomsen and the Russianspeaking storehouse guards Vasilii Bychkov, Iosif Pavlov, Stepan Popov, and Stepan Startsev, all had Avatmiit wives. With the exception of Tomsen, the Russian men were also connected to the Yupik community at Avan. In spring, they joined the Avan hunting crews as paddlers. In return, their Yupik families received a part of the booty in the form of meat, blubber, and walrus hides.

Wrangell Island, the Chukotkan Scoresbysund The mixed community at Ugriileq soon found its place in history (Fig. 4.12). In 1926, the Soviet authorities for the first time used a small group of Yupik as pawns in an international territorial conflict involving desolated Wrangell Island in the northern Chukchi Sea. In 1921, a group of four Canadian and American trappers and one Inupiaq woman from

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Fig. 4.12: Ugriileq: “A-a-one” ­(Uhwaawen, 1897–1936) and his family in front of their summer house in Emma Harbor, July 1921. (Photo by Alfred M. Bailey, DMNS BA21–401e)

Alaska was put ashore by the renowned polar explorer Wiljalmur Stefansson to assert the sovereignty of Canada and Great Britain on this uninhabited land. In the winter of 1923, all but the Inuit woman perished. In the same year, a much larger colony of one American and thirteen Alaska Eskimo was placed on the island. Now the American flag was raised (Barr 1977, 11–13; Hunt 1975, 278–281). The Soviet authorities acted swiftly to remove the colonists and to put an end to the unwanted territorial dispute. They dispatched a Russian military vessel that hoisted the Soviet flag and removed the American settlers. The issue could be resolved only by building a permanent Russian settlement on the island to assert the Soviet presence, preferably a mixed Russian-Eskimo colony. Unlike the earlier individual initiatives, the Soviet colonization was well prepared. The state trading trust Dalgostorg was put in charge and received a budget of 500,000 rubles allocated for settling the island (Barr 1977, 11–13; Revkomy 1973, 147–148). In August 1926, a special expedition on the icebreaker Stavropol under the leadership of Georgii Ushakov was launched to establish a new colony (Barr 1977, 13; Mineev 1946, 49–50; Ushakov 1972). It was critical to find prospective Native colonists willing to move to the distant land. The first anchorage of the Stavropol, with Ushakov at the helm, happened to be in Emma Harbor. When a middle-aged man named Yaruq, the most able hunter and the owner of

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the only Native-owned whaleboat in Ugriileq, consented to move to Wrangell Island, his decision assured Ushakov of the sufficient number of Yupik followers (Ushakov 1972, 22–23). Yaruq, originally from Avan, later became the captain of the only Yupik hunting crew formed on Wrangell Island. The composition of the colonists was a projection of the social structure of the mixed community at Ugriileq. Yaruq’s was the only genuine Avatmii family. Two other men were his sons-in-law, the young hunter Tayan (who was to become the leader of the Wrangell Yupik colonists in the 1930s) and the Russian trading post worker Stepan Startsev. Another Russian worker, Iosif Pavlov (Yuwasi, in Yupik), was married to Tayan’s sister. They were joined by three families of the Nangupagaghmiit and a family from Qiwaaq that had lived in Ugriileq for a decade. En route to Wrangell Island the expedition made another stop north of Cape Chaplin and took on three Ungazighmiit families from two separate clans. That brought the total number of Yupik colonists to fifty-five in eleven families (Figs. 4.13, 4.14).8 The subsequent Yupik community on Wrangell Island grew from this heterogeneous mix.9 Its creation was the Soviet version of the colonial expansion undertaken a year prior by the Danish authorities in East Greenland, in the Scoresbysund area, similarly to put an end to an international territorial claim (Mikkelsen 1944; Robert-Lamblin 1986; 1994). In both cases, the motivations behind establishing new settlements were purely political, and in both instances, the Eskimo were persuaded to relocate for a period of a few years but their return was never considered. The Wrangell Island colony gave rise to the first Russian Yupik community directly subordinated to the Soviet governor on the island. Life on the high Arctic island involved conditions that were different from those of the Yupik area in Chukotka. Yet the Yupik experience as maritime hunters and their familiarity with the market system quickly fused the heterogeneous colonists into a distinct local group, with the Avan dialect as its common speech, people’s genealogical roots notwithstanding.

The Mystery of the Qiwaaghmiit To the east of the Avatmiit was the land of the smallest of the Yupik tribes of the contact-­ traditional era, the Qiwaaghmiit. By 1900, it was practically a “ghost tribe,” of which hardly anything was known. Its old tribal hub, Qiwaaq, was abandoned, and its residents were scattered among the neighboring communities (chapter 2). Nonetheless, the Qiwaaghmiit continued to perceive themselves as a separate group and eventually were able to revive their old village. It was again listed in a local Russian survey of 1913 with a population of twenty-three in five houses, after an almost thirty-year lapse (Revizskie skazki 1913, 584). The reestablished Qiwaaq of the early 1900s, as we know it from elders’ accounts, displayed the same mixture of two social structures as did Sighineq and Avan. The one was built around residential neighborhoods and the other was attached to the old underground houses, with an apparent gap in the oral tradition, as seen from the following story: My father told me that Qiwaaq used to be a large village. The yarangas (tents) were down below, at the shore, but then everything flooded, and people moved uphill. Only a small bit remained near the water. It was called Tekeghaq, the furthest point down. There used to be a place called Qaasqaq, next to Tekeghaq, but it’s gone now. We have a lot of different places in Qiwaaq: Qemiighhaq in the middle, Qiwaaq over that way, and then, farther off, closer to the lake,

Fig. 4.13: Wrangell Island: Yupik women and children resettled in 1926. (Unknown photographer, 1934; gift of Faina I. Timokhina, 1983)

Fig. 4.14: Wrangell Island: The hub of the small Russian-Yupik colony established in 1926. Most of the Yupik families were spread over the island in small family camps. (Unknown photographer, 1934; gift of Faina I. Timokhina, 1983)

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Napsungaq. . . . They used to live next to the water in the summertime, and in the winter, they’d move up to Qemiighhaq or Qiwaaq. Only the people who weren’t from here lived in Napsungaq, they were the Nangupagaghmiit who’d come here in the summer to hunt (Vera Pivrana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 86). The names of these sections reflect the social geography of the Qiwaaq village of the 1900s: Qemiighhaq in Yupik means “small hill”; Napsungaq is “rainy” or “damp,” that is to say, swampy, and so on. In addition to this pure territorial structure, the Qiwaaghmiit retained the memory of two former clans, the Kiyaghnaghmiit and the Sawqlleghmiit, with the typical patrilineal filiation. The clans were linked to two communal ancient underground houses in Qiwaaq, evidently from the pre-1880 era (altogether the remains of six old underground houses existed in the village in the 1970s; Krupnik 1983, 78). By the early 1900s, the two clans were made up of twenty to thirty people each. The Kiyaghnaghmiit clan was considered “older,” and one of its lineages was known as the “master” of the village. Despite their shrinking numbers, the 100-strong Qiwaaghmiit still operated as a genuine Yupik tribe in miniature—with their recognized tribal area, two old clans associated with ancient underground houses, a few abandoned old sites, and the institution of the “master of the land.”

Qiwaaq and Tasiq The story of the Qiwaaghmiit provides yet another illustration of Yupik tribal restoration via gradual integration of two neighboring communities. Like Sighineq and Imtuk, or Avan and Ugriileq, Qiwaaq had its own antagonist. This was the village of Tasiq, commonly known by its Chukchi name Chechen and located 20 kilometers (13 miles) to the east, at the entrance to Tkachen Bay. Russian visitors to the area between 1895 and 1912 (Gondatti in 1895, Bogdanovich in 1900, Bogoras in 1901, Kalinnikov in 1909), who made no mention of Qiwaaq, all noted Chechen/Tasiq as a large site with a population of 100–120. Its residents spoke the Chukchi language, which is why many observers called them “Chukchi-Eskimo métis” (Bogoras 1975, 29; Gondatti 1898, 31). Chechen had the remains of several old underground houses and traces of dozens of skin-covered tents, many still visible in the 1970s. But the village’s heyday was short lived. Around 1910, some event precipitated the decline of Chechen. That year also marked the beginning of the recovery of Qiwaaq, as families from Chechen started moving to the old site. Some of them were obviously the former Qiwaaghmiit anxious to return to their home village. They were soon followed by several Chukchi-speaking Tasighmiit families. A portion of the Tasighmiit chose not to resettle to Qiwaaq, instead moving some 700 kilometers (450 miles) to the west, to Kresta Bay (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 248–249). The relocation of many of the Chukchi-speaking Tasighmiit to Qiwaaq after 1915 transferred the Chukchi-Yupik mixing and bilingualism characteristic of Tasiq back to the heart of the Qiwaaghmiit territory. In the 1920s, Qiwaaq transformed into a sort of melting pot, where the diverse forms of identification could be found within one lineage, even a single family. Typical was the example of a certain Pekuutaq born around 1870 and listed by Bogoras in 1901 in Chechen. Pekuutaq was of Yupik descent, from Qiwaaq, married to a Yupik woman. Evidently he was tied to one of the Qiwaaghmiit clans (it is not remembered to which one). Having lived many years in Chechen, he was perceived by one and all as a

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“Tasighmii.” He had eight grown children and a great many grandchildren, and his numerous offspring made up a significant portion of the mixed Qiwaaghmiit/Tasighmiit community of the mid-1900s and of its descendants today in New Chaplino. Some of them consider themselves Yupik, but the majority identify themselves as Chukchi; yet all recall the Yupik origin of their ancestor. Besides the Tasighmiit, Qiwaaq also saw the influx of several families of the neighboring Ungazighmiit. By the late 1920s, the population of Qiwaaq consisted of four different segments: the Yupik-speaking Qiwaaghmiit (five families, thirty people); the newly relocated Ungazighmiit (four families, twenty-five people); Pekuutaq’s lineage (three families, twenty people); and three other Tasighmiit families (twenty people). With the exception of the Ungazighmiit, all of these people were equally bilingual, using Yupik and Chukchi, although the Yupik language was dominant in the village. Intermarriages facilitated the consolidation of this group into the new community of Qiwaaghmiit/Tasighmiit as though filling the emptied slot once held by an old Yupik tribe that had all but vanished thirty to fifty years earlier. Still, the internal division in the new community and even rivalry between the Yupik Qiwaaghmiit and the Chukchi-speaking Tasighmiit remained quite strong. As far as Tasiq/Chechen is concerned, it gradually became a minute hamlet of a few families, an appendage of Qiwaaq. There remained but one small lineage (fifteen to twenty people) considered the “master” of the village. Contemporary Tasighmiit, besides Pekuutaq’s offspring, who all speak Chukchi and consider themselves to be of Chukchi origin, are descendants of that group.

The Transformation of the Nangupagaghmiit The internal portion of the fjord zone, from Provideniya Bay to the Senyavin Strait, was occupied by another mixed Chukchi-Yupik group known as the Nangupagaghmiit (chapter 2). They supposedly had arrived from St. Lawrence, probably from the old village of Nangupagaq near Gambell, where there is a clan known by the same name. The Chukotka Nangupagaghmiit were small-scale reindeer herders. They spoke Yupik to some extent, but among themselves they conversed in Chukchi and had distinctly Chukchi names. They had few reindeer, and in the summer, they would usually move to the seashore, where they would fish and hunt seals. The Nangupagaghmiit provide an illustration of the transformations of yet another migrant group, the “wandering” locus. After apparently relocating from St. Lawrence Island, they first became one of the subdivisions of the coastal Tasighmiit in Tasiq/Chechen. It is difficult to say which factors influenced their transition to reindeer herding and prompted them to move from the coast. What is obvious is that the change in their way of life accelerated their assimilation by the Chukchi, the transition to the Chukchi language, and an intermediate Chukchi-Yupik identity. The scanty pasturelands of the fjord zone could by no means support a large reindeer-herding population. For this reason, the Nangupagaghmiit did not become ­ “genuine Chukchi” and instead transformed into an intermediate group linked with the coastal Yupik. They lived in small camps of several families each along Provideniya and Tkachen bays and the mainland shore of Senyavin Strait. Each camp was tied to a

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certain coastal village that often had a special site allocated to the summer residence of the Nangupagaghmiit, such as Napsungaq in Qiwaaq and the place called Yopenven in Tasiq/Chechen. By the early 1900s, some of the Nangupagaghmiit started moving back to the shore and, again, joined the coastal Yupik communities in Imtuk and Ugriileq, and later those on Wrangell Island. Perhaps some families retained memory of their Yupik roots and gravitated toward their Yupik neighbors. Their reverse assimilation into the Yupik communities was surprisingly rapid. I didn’t see Amuya [the father of Taghyu, Etugyi, and Kmo (Kemu), who left for Wrangell Island] very much. I remember his sons well. He was a Nangupagaghmii. . . . They spoke pure Eskimo, and they looked every bit Eskimo, too. But among themselves they talked like Chukchis. It seems they had been herders in the past, but in my time they lived like Eskimos (Petr Napaun 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 454). The Nangupagaghmiit who continued to keep reindeer went on living in the interior camps around Provideniya and Tkachen bays until the construction of new villages in the 1950s, when official policy forced the herders to settle (chapter 9). The majority joined the Chukchi, and their descendants now live in the Chukchi community of Yanrakynnot. A few families ended up in today’s Yupik communities of New Chaplino and Sireniki, where their children and grandchildren are considered “pure Chukchi.” Yet the families of the Nangupagaghmiit who ended up among the Yupik on Wrangell Island, in Provideniya, and in Sireniki became genuine Yupik. Many turns in the transformation of the Nangupagaghmiit within just a few generations illustrate peculiar Yupik transitions and the flexibility of people’s ethnic identities during the contact-traditional era.

Cape Chaplin Two long, pebbly spits separate the sea from the fresh water of Lake Naayvaq. The spits join, forming a flat protruding cape that the Russians called Cape Chaplin (after a young Russian officer on Vitus Bering’s first voyage of 1728). The now abandoned area at Cape Chaplin was formerly the site of the largest Yupik community of Ungaziq. At its peak around 1900, it was a prosperous town of some 500, the largest of all the aboriginal settlements in Northeast Siberia. The glory of Ungaziq, or “Chaplino,” as it came to be called in Russian (for Cape Chaplin), endured until 1958 when the village was closed and its residents were relocated to a new site in Tkachen Bay that came to be called New Chaplino (chapter 10). The abandoned site at the tip of the cape has since come to be known as “Old Chaplino.”

The Universe of Ungaziq Ungaziq owed its growth and prosperity to the rise of commercial whaling in the Western Arctic (chapter 1). The regular arrival of whaling vessels; the opportunity to sell products of local hunting, above all, baleen; and the uninterrupted supply of guns, ammunition, and manufactured goods made it possible for the largest number of people to gather in

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one place during the contact-traditional era. Although looking every bit a Native village (Figs. 4.15, 4.16), with its rows of walrus-skin covered houses and wooden plank cabins, Ungaziq experienced a genuine economic boom. Returning south after summer whaling in the Arctic, American whalers would trade old whaleboats, whaling guns, sails, and Winchester rifles for the local walrus tusks and baleen. In the eyes of all the visitors, the undisputed leader of this prosperous community was a trader named Quwaaren/Kuwaren (also known as Kuwar, Kohar, Goharren, and Quorry; Bockstoce 1986, 195; Jackson 1895, 589; Jones 1927, 111–113). He owned three wooden storehouses in Ungaziq filled with American goods and was called the “richest man” on the Asian side (Figs. 4.17, 4.18). In some years, he accumulated for trade with the Americans baleen worth $75,000. “Kuwar (Quwaaren) has everything,” wrote Waldemar Bogoras, who stayed in his house in 1901, “even a phonograph, which his daughter uses to record Aiwan, Chukchi, and other songs” (Bogoras 1901, 34a). There were more means for hunting in Ungaziq than there were able-bodied hunters and crews. “There are 23 whale boats here, of which 5 lie unused, and 21 skin boats, of which only 8 have been stretched with hides, the rest have not” (Bogoras 1901, 80). But the abundance of imported goods did not change the foundations of people’s life and economy. As before, all the able men put out to sea to feed their families. The women butchered seals, worked hides, prepared food on seal-oil lamps, and maintained the skin tents. Native food and clothing, ancient hairstyles, and facial tattooing remained in use, as seen in many historical photographs from the era.10

The Social Topography of Ungaziq Ungaziq’s spatial structure was in many ways dictated by its topography. Its residents traditionally positioned their houses in long parallel rows on the series of beach ridges that marked the old coastlines (Krupnik 1983, 81–83). The village comprised two parts, “northern” and “southern,” each made up of several clans (chapter 3). The Akulghaaghwiget, Sighunpaget, Ugaliit, and Nengluvaget clans populated the northern side. The southern shore was settled by the Sanighmelnguut and the Armaramket clans, as well as the Laakaghmiit clan, whose members kept somewhat to themselves (Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 22; also Aivangu 1985, 52–53; Menovshchikov 1962a, 30). The size of the Ungazighmiit clans around 1900 can be estimated by using the family list of Ungaziq residents made by Bogoras in 1901 (chapter 6; Krupnik 2000, 458–475) and the genealogies we compiled in the 1970s. Most numerous was the Laakaghmiit clan, with eighteen families, or more than 130 people. Second largest in Ungaziq was another “southern” clan, the Armaramket, the “strong people.” They numbered no fewer than eighty to ninety in Ungaziq and perhaps as many in Gambell (Sivuqaq) on St. Lawrence Island. To the contrary, the third clan of the southern side, the Sanighmelnguut, was in decline. Although they had eleven houses (about fifty to sixty people), the Sanighmelnguut families were small and often included distant relatives as workers or lodgers. Aware of their waning numbers, the Sanighmelnguut sought to strengthen their dwindling ranks through adoption, like the weakened clans and lineages in Sighineq and Avan. Nonetheless, the Sanighmelnguut preserved their status as the original settlers and, correspondingly, the “masters” of Ungaziq. They were also the uncontested leaders. All of the known

Fig. 4.15: Ungaziq: View of the village from the sea. (Photo by Bernhard Kilian, spring 1913. NBWM 2008.21.545)

Fig. 4.16: Ungaziq: Yupik woman in traditional garment on the village street. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, June 1901. AMNH Library #2563)

Fig. 4.17: Ungaziq: “Eskimo trader Kuvar” (original caption), Quwaaren (ca. 1840–ca. 1910), the richest man on the Siberian shore in the 1880s and 1890s. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, spring 1901. AMNH Library #1351)

Fig. 4.18: Ungaziq: One (of several) storehouses owned by Quwaaren. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, spring 1901. AMNH Library #1363)

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“strong men” of Ungaziq, including the wealthiest of all, Quwaaren, were members of the Sanighmelnguut clan. The clans that lived on the northern side were smaller. The Akulghaaghwiget, the largest, had about sixty people. It is recalled that at least a portion of the Akulghaaghwiget arrived from the north, from Arakamchechen Island (Aivangu 1985, 53; Menovshchikov 1962a, 30). The other “northern” clans were even smaller: the Nengluvaget had three families, or fifteen people; the Ugaliit two families, or ten people; and the Sighunpaget four families, or twenty-five people. About a dozen families of the Sighunpaget clan (seventy people) lived in Napaqutaq on Itygran Island, to the north of Cape Chaplin (see below). The relative strength of the clans in Ungaziq as reflected in Bogoras’ census is corroborated by the lists of hunting crews from a slightly later period that we reconstructed from elders’ stories. Each crew was made up of six to eight men; there used to be roughly one crew per twenty-five to thirty people of all ages: At that time [about 1915] we were boys, I remember looking at the ocean in the spring. There were 20 or more whaleboats. The sails were white. Crews from Siqlluk, Napaqutaq, and Pagileq would come to Ungaziq for the opening of the spring hunt. I remember this time very well. The crews were like this: we, the Laakaghmiit, had five—Uugetaq’s, he left for Qiwaaq later; Naataqaa’s; Sighu’s; Ilutaq’s; and Mumiglleghhii’s, his descendants had all gone to Nutapelmen. The Armaramket had four crews: Engaggayin’s; Silga’s; Ila’s, all of them went to Uwellkal; and Amughaq’s, they all went to Imtuk. The Sanighmelnguut also had four: Uyghapak’s; Pangawyi’s; Akumelghii’s; and Uughqaghtaq’s, he later took his whaleboat and went to Uwellkal. The Akulghaaghwiget had four crews too: Ivaaqaq’s; Mameegha’s; Ayaanga’s; and Wuwayu’s. With them there were five other crews [on the northern side], the Siqllugmiit’s and others: Yaama’s and Ateghlaki’s [Sighunpaget from Napaqutaq]; Apaataq’s [Ugaliit from Siqlluk]; Pangatagen’s [Armaramket from Pagileq]; and Yagwa’s [Sighunpaghmii]. There were three more crews, but they left Ungaziq earlier: Iraqi’s, a Laakaghmii, he left for Imtuk; Amagu’s, he was Laakaghmii too, he went to St. Lawrence Island; and Llaakaq’s, he was a Sanighmii, I don’t know who was with him, they left for Uwellkal (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 210–212). The hunting crews in Ungaziq continued to be formed or at least identified expressly by clan. It was difficult for small clans to muster their own clan crews, as they simply did not have enough grown men. Not wishing to join other clans, some of them periodically moved out of Ungaziq and set up small camps off the main community.

Napaqutaq When Bogoras visited Ungaziq in 1901 there was only one other Yupik settlement north of Cape Chaplin all the way to Cape Dezhnev, the village of Napaqutaq on Itygran Island. Its residents, the Napaqutaghmiit, belonged to one clan, the Sighunpaget, a portion of

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which also resided in Ungaziq. They recalled that their ancestors once lived in Mechigmen Bay (chapter 2), so that this clan was not considered either of Ungaziq or of Napaqutaq origin. The Sighunpaget/Napaqutaghmiit on Itygran Island (eight to ten families, about sixty to eighty people in 1900) lived in relative isolation. They spoke the same dialect as the rest of the Ungazighmiit, but they tended to marry within their small group, at least during the time for which we have detailed genealogies. That single-clan community had three hunting crews and a senior family considered local “master of the land.”11 Earlier, we designated such isolated self-sustained locuses as “tribal groups” (chapter 3). Ultimately the island Sighunpaget (the “Napaqutaghmiit”) moved to Ungaziq and merged with the Ungazighmiit after 1950.

Expansion to the Islands In the twenty-five years following Bogoras’ visit in 1901, the composition of the Ungazighmiit area at Cape Chaplin underwent a rapid transition. These years brought a temporary decline to the tribal hub at Ungaziq, a dispersion of its inhabitants, and the founding of several new villages around Cape Chaplin. Groups of migrating Ungazighmiit also pushed beyond the boundaries of their tribal land and settled among the neighboring Yupik groups: the Qiwaaghmiit, the Avatmiit, the Imtugmiit, and the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island. Continuing their expansion, they occupied the shore of the Gulf of Anadyr (see below) and took part in the settling of Wrangell Island in 1926. The first wave of exodus from Ungaziq started between 1900 and 1910. It was tied to the decline in American whaling and the drop in the number of trading ships that put in at Ungaziq each year. As though anticipating the impending crisis, several families turned their gaze northward, to the Itygran and Arakamchechen islands, a part of the old tribal land to be occupied anew. First, some Sighunpaget families from Ungaziq moved back to Napaqutaq and almost doubled its population. Next, the Ungazighmiit revived two old villages that had been abandoned in the 1800s: Siqlluk (four families in 1909), on the northern shore of Itygran Island, and Pagileq (three families), on the southwestern tip of Arakamchechen Island (see Map 2.2). Siqlluk was settled by the family of Apaataq from the small Ugaliit clan, so that Apaataq and his descendants became “masters of the land.” In Pagileq, the new “master of the land,” Sivuqaq from the Akulghaaghwiget clan, was also the head of the family that first settled there. The second Ungazighmiit village on Arakamchechen Island was established 20 kilometers (13 miles) northeast of Pagileq around 1915. It was known by the Chukchi name Meyngeran (Mayngeguq, in Yupik), which would seem to suggest that this land was no longer considered Yupik. The village was founded by an extended family of the Laakaghmiit clan headed by Ataangali: Ataangali was the first to come to Mayngeguq from Chaplino. In Chaplino the winter hunting had been bad. There was not enough fresh meat. There was starvation. Ringed seal hunting was better in Mayngeguq in the winter. People lived there permanently; only in the spring Ataangali’s sons would come to Chaplino to hunt walrus. They would receive their share of the hunt and return to Mayngeguq (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 107).

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Several other Laakaghmiit families soon joined Ataangali, including his brother Sighu, the father of Ivan Ashkamakin. The village had twenty-five to thirty residents around 1920 and one of the most experienced hunting crews in the area, with eight able hunters. However, all of these small villages ultimately proved to be unsustainable. Pagileq was abandoned around 1922; its few inhabitants moved to Siqlluk. Mayngeguq lasted a bit longer, but in the mid-1920s, after several lean years, its residents also dispersed. Most returned to Ungaziq, and a few families moved to Siqlluk. About that time, the Napaqutaq population also began to fall as its inhabitants gradually departed for Ungaziq and Siqlluk (Figs. 4.19, 4.20). Napaqutaq was finally deserted in 1932. The last Yupik village in the

Fig. 4.19: Siqlluk: View of the village from the frozen beach of Itygran Island. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, winter of 1929 [?]. MAE #И–115-9)

Fig. 4.20: Yatylin/Yatelen (1905–1979). Born in Napaqutaq on Itygran Island, he lived the next twenty years in Siqlluk, before moving to Ungaziq around 1950. He was the last “old boat captain” from ­Ungaziq during our fieldwork in New Chaplino in the 1970s. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, 1977, New Chaplino)

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area, Siqlluk, survived until 1950. Its closure and forced relocation to Ungaziq (chapter 9) put an end to the existence of the Sighunpaget/Napaqutaghmiit as a separate tribal group.

Further Settlement of the Cape Today it is difficult to identify the initial reasons that prompted the Ungazighmiit to reoccupy the Senyavin Strait islands between 1905 and 1910. Soon after, a series of natural disasters struck the Yupik area at Cape Chaplin, including the catastrophic storms and floods around 1915 that flooded the southern side of Ungaziq. These triggered another wave of dispersal from the tribal hub. In the course of several years, the shore receded by several hundred meters, taking the homes of many inhabitants of Ungaziq with it. Once, I remember it clearly, I was quite small. We were fleeing from Old Chaplino. It was autumn, and the waves were high. All the yarangas were flooded, and the meat storage caches. I was so small that someone picked me up, placed me on their shoulders, and ran (Kaigilkun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 27). My father and others his age would tell that earlier the southern side [of Cape Chaplin] was much wider. On the southern side the grass went all the way to Uqighyaghaq. The grass disappeared a long time ago, but I saw it. I was probably five or six years old. I remember as a child playing on the shore, you could still see the grass, and our meat storage caches, the old Laakaghmiit caches, they all disappeared later. I still remember well the poles of napaqaq [bowhead whale jawbone]. They stood on the shore. And now there isn’t anything there at all, about 200–250 meters of the southern side is gone, it seems to me. And where the tip of the spit is, there used to be a large area there, where the Sanighmelnguut lived, and where their meat storage caches were. Now everything’s entirely gone (Ivan Ashkamakin 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 24–25). These natural disasters, combined with the hardship brought by the reorientation of trade ties, were still remembered by the elders of the 1970s, who were children at the time. Virtually all of their narratives began with a reference to starvation as the main driving force behind the resettlement: We moved to Teflleq because of famine. When the famine struck, everyone began to leave [Ungaziq]. Utataawen put the boards [from the wooden house floor] on his back and walked to Teflleq, where he put up his yaranga. When his yaranga was up, we all moved there: grandmother, Yagta, and me. My father moved the same time we did. He put his yaranga up separately. . . . That site is rich in ringed seals. When the ice comes seal hunting starts on the shore near Ungiyeramket. They kill the pups and drag them across the spit onto the frozen lake. And we, the women and children, pull them home across the ice single file with lines (Gapana 1981). By 1920, the migrating Ungazighmiit established five new villages on Cape Chaplin: Uuggsaghat (twenty to twenty-five people, five tents) and Uqighyaghaq (forty to forty-five people) on the southern spit; Teflleq and Ungiyeramket (60–100 residents, ten to fifteen

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families each) on the northern side; and Engaghhpak (four families, twenty residents) farther northward. Three villages, Ungiyeramket, Uqighyaghaq, and Uuggsaghat, were made of members of the Laakaghmiit clan whose residential area in Ungaziq was destroyed by storms. With the exception of Engaghhpak, all of these sites had been inhabited in the 1800s and, later, abandoned when their residents moved to Ungaziq. People merely reoccupied the places where their ancestors had once lived and which they had regularly used as family camps. Apparently life in these new communities was neither sustainable nor safe. Their size fluctuated, as the families constantly moved from one site to another. The residents of Uuggsaghat ended up resettling to Qiwaaq around 1925. Families from Ungiyeramket moved to Mayngeguq or left for St. Lawrence Island. Three families from Engaghhpak boarded Georgii Ushakov’s ship going to Wrangell Island in 1926. Several Laakaghmiit families from Ungiyeramket and Mayngeguq moved out to Kresta Bay (see below). By 1928, most of the new villages on Cape Chaplin were again left abandoned, as people returned to Ungaziq or moved to other lands.

Teflleq Of all the new sites reoccupied by the Ungazighmiit on Cape Chaplin, Teflleq had the best chance to become a lasting community. The “masters” of Teflleq were the Akulghaaghwiget clan, which made up nearly half of the site’s population. Ultimately Teflleq gained a population of around 100, and it even competed with Ungaziq for a short time. Its growth was certainly spurred by the opening of a Russian school and missionary station in 1915 (chapter 1). Fewer than 200 people remained in Ungaziq, and it seemed that its days were drawing to a close. Somehow, around 1925, the crisis passed over. Little by little, the established hunting cycle was restored. The small villages dwindled down, and their residents returned to their home site at the tip of the cape. After twenty years, Ungaziq, the old tribal hub, once again began to grow. Later we returned to Chaplino [around 1928]. We moved of our own accord, we didn’t have to. There was nobody left in Teflleq, it was completely deserted. They had taken down the big school [building] and moved it to Ungaziq, and set it up there. I was already a big girl at the time, I remember myself well (Kavekhak 1987; Fig. 4.21).

The “New Land” The Way West: New Impetus The dispersal from Ungaziq around 1910–1915, caused by ecological and economic disruptions, triggered the last major Yupik migration of the late contact-traditional era. The “New Land” to be explored and populated was around Kresta Bay, along the northwestern shore of the Gulf of Anadyr. The Yupik “Way West” extended all the way to the mouth of the Anadyr River, some 800–1,000 kilometers (500–600 miles) from Cape Chaplin. This spontaneous move of some 300 people from all of the Yupik communities, but primarily

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Fig. 4.21: Ungaziq: School building, originally erected in Teflleq for the old Russian missionary school. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, winter 1929. MAE #И–115-100)

from Ungaziq and its satellites, took place in several waves, mostly before the Soviet administration exerted any visible pressure on Yupik life. In a classical Yupik pattern, membership in a clan, lineage, or skin boat crew influenced the composition of a group of migrants, a “traveling locus.” Another pattern was for several weak families to stick together on the basis of partnership or distant kinship to make a viable group. What caused the people to settle in new regions 800–1,000 kilometers away from their homeland? Nearby was the sparsely inhabited St. Lawrence Island, which could offer a familiar setting and the support of fellow tribesmen who spoke the same language. Also, some Asiatic Yupik clans, like the Armaramket and the Sighunpaget, had a living memory of their former residence to the north. Yet, we do not know of a single effort by the Ungazighmiit to settle anywhere to the north beyond the Senyavin Strait area. And only a handful of families moved to St. Lawrence Island at this time. Instead, the main route of the southern Yupik pushed west, to the mouth of the Anadyr River. The cause for that direction was in the new economic realities established after the collapse of commercial whaling in the Western Arctic. The demise of trade and the economic system associated with it began in 1907, when the Parisian clothing designer Paul Poiret introduced a new design for women’s dresses. For the first time in the history of European fashion, women’s legs were exposed up to the knee. The effect was indeed revolutionary: it took one year to put an end to the centuries-old era of long skirts and bodices of which whale baleen was an irreplaceable component. The impact of the new fashion was immediately felt thousands of kilometers from Europe as commercial whaling in the Arctic lost its markets and ceased (Bockstoce 1986, 335). But the new apparel required new trim: furs. The beginning of the 20th century witnessed an unprecedented growth in the price for the furs of relatively cheap and abundant fur animals, such as red fox and Arctic fox. In just a few years, the Yupik people of

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Chukotka, as well as the Inuit of North Alaska and the Canadian Arctic had to master the new economy and switch to commercial fur trapping (Alunik et al. 2003; Fainberg 1971; Usher 1970). When the whaling vessels ceased putting in around 1910 and the majority of trading schooners were immobilized by the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Yupik of the southern Chukchi Peninsula found themselves dependent on the small trading post of Julius Tomsen in Emma Harbor. This situation was particularly harmful to the prosperous and entrepreneurial Ungazighmiit. Against their will, they were forced to seek other markets where the demand for their goods was more stable. Around 1910, such markets were available in two locations in Chukotka: in Uelen, to the north, and in the Russian administrative hub of Anadyr (then called Novo-Mariinsk) at the mouth of the Anadyr River, to the west. The much shorter route to Uelen passed through several Chukchi coastal communities, where competition on the part of the local residents was intense. The large villages of Uelen and Nuvuqaq, in particular, were powerful Native monopolies that controlled trade routes to Nome on the American Seward Peninsula. For the Ungazighmiit, there was little chance in turning to Uelen as a market for their pelts and other goods, even less so to Nome. This left the town of Anadyr, the growing Russian administrative center of a few hundred residents and hardly any indigenous aboriginal population. In the early 1900s, this once backwater trade and administrative post experienced a boom due to a short-lived gold rush and the growth of the fishing and mining industry (Dikov 1989, 138–142). By 1917, it had offices of several Russian and foreign companies and a great number of small private traders. This expanding and, at the time, open economic center drew the attention of the Ungazighmiit, who were seeking ways to restore their prosperity. They quickly established a chain of small footholds and camps along their route from Ungaziq that led all the way to the area of today’s city of Anadyr.

First Voyages In the 1970s, Yupik elders still recalled the circumstances of migration their parents and grandparents undertook some fifty years prior. They cited two causes for the move: better conditions for fur trapping and opportunities for trade with reindeer Chukchi in the Gulf of Anadyr area: My father’s name was Tengatagen. According to him, we moved to Uwellkal in 1927. That’s where I grew up. My father said that life was hard in Chaplino, there weren’t enough reindeer hides to make clothing. On the side where Uwellkal is there were a lot of herders, and plenty of reindeer. And there were so many fur animals, foxes and Arctic foxes. The hunting was good, that’s why we moved there. . . . We’d go to Anadyr to trade the hides of bearded seals, walruses, ringed seals, and bearded seal lines for reindeer hides (Vasilii Nanok 1971). Sunbrown [the English nickname for Uughqaghtaq, still remembered in 1970s] and two other families set out for Site 18 [a modern hunting area near Uwellkal] for the winter of 1919 to hunt. They went to Anadyr to exchange fur pelts for goods. The hunters often set out for Anadyr. Here, at Site 18, two or three families would settle for the winter, there were a lot of fur animals. They had

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wintered there and seen that it was a good site. Later they went to Chaplino, and after that they settled here, Sunbrown and the others (Dmitrii Atelkun 1976). It was not only the Yupik who were attracted to the Gulf of Anadyr in those years. Several kilometers to the north of the future Yupik hub in Uwellkal (Wellqela, in CSY), a small Chukchi village was established around 1920. Here former reindeer herders and several families of maritime Chukchi joined together. This site was called Anyuwellkal or, later, “Second Uwellkal”; it had twenty-nine residents in 1923 (Materialy po statistike 1925, xxviii).

Milestones on the Way West For the Ungazighmiit, the “Way West” began through the chain of familiar Yupik communities—Qiwaaq, Avan, Imtuk, and Sighineq—where many had relatives and trading partners. After 1910, several families from Ungaziq had begun to settle along that route. But west from Sighineq was the “Chukchi land,” with coastal sites and herders’ camps where people had few contacts. Past Cape Bering, with its last major coastal Chukchi community of Enmelen, the shore was sparsely populated. Besides a few small camps, it was visited by groups of reindeer herders only. They would come to the shore in the summer to hunt and to trade and in the winter would move their herds back into the interior. Besides sparse Chukchi camps, remains of old, abandoned sites with ruins of underground houses dotted the coast. The old sites similar to those in the “Yupik land” did not go unnoticed as they served as evidence of the territory’s suitability for habitation (Krupnik and Chlenov 2009). Even prior to 1910, the Ungazighmiit used to make regular trading trips to the mouth of the Anadyr River, perhaps as early as the 1880s. Trading parties, often with their

Fig. 4.22: Ungaziq: Men repair large skin boat (ayuqllighhtaq) used for trade trips to Anadyr. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, summer 1901. AMNH Library #2578)

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families, would go there in large skin boats after the end of spring hunting season in late June (Fig. 4.22). The journey was long and arduous. They would remain in Anadyr until the end of the summer so that they could return home by fall. En route, they would stay at intermediate stopping places. Two capes at the eastern and western entrances to the wide Kresta Bay made natural stopovers. Here the Yupik boats would set out into the open sea, crossing the rough bay, a trip of some 50 kilometers (30 miles). It was on these two capes that two main villages subsequently arose: Uwellkal on the western shore and Nutapelmen

66°

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Anguwelkal Uwellkal

Nutapelmen

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C iit tm a Av Sunraygun

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M ap 4.2: Yupik villages and camps established in the Kresta Bay area, 1920–1940

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on the eastern. The mouths of rivers or prominent capes dividing the coast into natural segments served as other intermediate stopping places (Map 4.2). Among those first and most frequently named as pioneering this journey was Uughqaghtaq from the Sanighmelnguut clan in Ungaziq, remembered by his English nickname Sunbrown, “tan.” After the death of his clansman Quwaaren, he became the richest man and the most active trader in Ungaziq. Sunbrown was childless though he had three wives. He could not rely upon his biological children or relatives by marriage, and his genealogical lineage had few adult men. Instead, he surrounded himself with adopted children, the majority girls, whom he raised and gave in marriage to men from weak lineages or who were orphans, making them his relatives and clients. It was Sunbrown who first wintered in Uwellkal in 1918 with two other families (Fig. 4.23). These early voyages did not immediately result in the formation of new settlements, but they gradually transformed into a customary element of life for the southern Yupik. Sunbrown and his fellow travelers made stops along the way and shared stories about the richness of the new land and the ease of fur hunting. In this way, information about Uwellkal became common knowledge.

The Chronology of the “New Land” Strictly speaking, not Sunbrown but the young unmarried hunter Akatagen from Napaqutaq was the first to permanently settle in the “New Land.”12 Around 1917, he set out a camp with his five younger brothers and sisters at a site called Kansinraygu (in

Fig. 4.23: Ungaziq: Sunbrown (Sam Brown? Uughqaghtaq) and his father in Ungaziq. (Photo by Bernhard Kilian, summer 1913. NBWM 2008.21.428)

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Chukchi) at the mouth of the Anadyr River. Two Saanlegmiit families from Imtuk embarked upon the same journey and soon joined Akatagen’s camp. Their joint residence was short lived. The Saanlegmiit moved to the town of Anadyr, and Akatagen and his siblings relocated to another site called Russkaya Koshka (Sunraygun, in Chukchi). Around 1926, four Avatmiit families joined Akatagen’s second camp. Members of several Yupik tribes were involved in the peopling of the “New Land” from the very onset. Teshqi and Wakat were true Saanlegmiit; I have seen them back in Imtuk when I was a little girl. They spoke like the other Saanlegmiit in Imtuk, like Tanti, my Mom’s second husband. They moved to Anadyr when we were still living in Imtuk; I don’t know why they left. . . . Teshqi’s daughter Temaa later married Anashkanga, brother of Akatagen. He was Sighunpak, Ungazighmii. Their family lived farther south, farther down from Mayngengettama, closer to Anadyr. They came earlier than the other Ungazighmiit moved here [to Uwellkal]. Temaa lived with Anashkanga at their site; she died there. This entire coast was settled by the Eskimos; there were no Chukchi around. My elder sister Aringtungaawen was married to Akatagen. They lived all by themselves at that site (Ekaterina Kutkhaun 1976, in Chlenov and Krupnik 2012, 77). We just married, I was very young at that time, when we went to Anadyr. There were four families of ours from Avan—Angqanga with his wife and kids; Segesquq, his brother and family; Tukusa and I, we had no kids yet; and Nataghmii and his wife. Angqanga had a whaleboat; all of us went in that whaleboat. That site where we lived was called Sunraygun, it’s a long spit near the Anadyr River. When we moved there, there was just one house standing, Akatagen, Ungazighmii, and his family. We lived together, in four yarangas [tents]. A year or two later, my husband and I came back to Avan and the others stayed behind. I have never seen them since, those old men, Angqanga, Segesquq, and Nataghmii died there. Only some of their kids returned later to Ugriileq after the war [World War II] (Arinaun 1977, in Chlenov and Krupnik 2012, 78; Fig. 4.24). The Ungazighmiit settled at the site of today’s town of Uwellkal a few years later, in 1922 or 1923. They used to go to Anadyr by sled and in whaleboats. Aliiqan apparently wanted to settle first, but he had no children, and couldn’t do it alone. Now his brother, my grandfather Agwaliq, had a lot of children. They were already full-grown at the time, my father and his sister were already married. It was they who were the first to settle here. . . . But in general someone had been living here, there are storage caches and nenglut [underground dwellings]. They say the family died of starvation, who it was, I can’t say. But when my grandfather and his brother arrived, the site was completely deserted (Vera Agnalkvasak 1976, in Chlenov and Krupnik 2012, 78). Twenty-three people spent the first winter at a newly established site of four family skin tents (Materialy po statistike 1925, xxviii). Aliiqan, the pioneer from the Sanighmelnguut

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Fig. 4.24: Arinaun/Aringaawen (1900– 1985) from Avan. In the 1920s, she lived with her family for a few years in a small camp in the Yupik “New Land” in the Gulf of Anadyr. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, September 1977, New Chaplino)

clan, became the “master” of the new village. At about the same time, another group of Ungazighmiit from the Armaramket clan settled at Cape Povorotny about 50 kilometers (30 miles) farther south at the site known as Mayngengettama in Chukchi. The head of this second village of three or four tents was Atagen. Yet another group arrived at Uwellkal from Ungaziq in the summer of 1925: Sunbrown with his many affiliates and Silga, his brother-in-law from the Armaramket clan. Winter fox trapping took much more of the settlers’ time than it had in their native land. It also required that the trappers disperse, and each had to have his personal trapping lines and grounds. The migrants had to reorient their former way of residence by breaking into small camps of one or two houses or winter tents. After arriving in Uwellkal, Silga and Sunbrown gave several of the young women who had come with them as wives to the young men of Aliiqan’s camp but did not join them. They chose their own separate sites farther to the south instead. Sunbrown and his extended group of twenty people settled at Quyngegergen (Quyngiiq, in Yupik, “domesticated reindeer”), about 20 kilometers (13 miles) from Uwellkal. Silga moved another 20–25 kilometers (13–16 miles) south to Repatengu (Patkulluq, in Yupik), 10 kilometers (6 miles) short of the camp of his Armaramket relatives at Cape Povorotny.

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The narrative that follows offers us a sense of life in such tiny settlements: In the winter of 1937 I left Provideniya by dogsled for a Komsomol [Communist Youth League] conference in Anadyr. We passed through Quyngegergen, where Uughqaghtaq lived. We went through Uwellkal, where all the Ungazighmiit were. And not far from Anadyr our yarangas, those of the Avan people, were standing. Everyone was still alive then. The first yaranga belonged to Nataghmii. We spent the night and set out for Angqanga’s, he lived fifteen kilometers down the coast to the south. We spent the night at Angqanga’s and then went on, towards Segesquq’s. He was right there on Russkaya Koshka, another some ten kilometers further south. They’d live in separate tents in the winter, and in the summer would probably gather together in one place. . . . I was there when they’d hunt Arctic fox on their own, each yaranga all by itself. There were a great many Arctic foxes there (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 242). During the 1920s, the ties between the “New Land” and the main Yupik area around Ungaziq were lively and regular. Men from Uwellkal would make special trips to Ungaziq and Imtuk and collect the widowed female relatives, girls, and orphaned children from their clans. In 1926–1928, several more Armaramket settlers arrived from Ungaziq. In 1923, about fifty Yupik lived in the “New Land”; in 1926 their number was already at 103, and in 1929 it was around 140 (Bogoras 1934b, 106; Komissia 1926; Materialy po statistike 1925, xxviii). In the 1930s, when the migration came to a halt, there were close to 200 (Krupnik 1983, 86–87; Orlova 1941, 209; Shnakenburg 1939, 12). The majority of men who moved west to establish small villages and camps of their own were active hunters and traders. Their move was driven by their initiative and entrepreneurial spirit. They demonstrated a surprising combination of new and old. As in Ungaziq, the “master of the land” in Uwellkal became the Sanighmelnguut clan, Aliiqan’s family, although the bulk of the village population eventually consisted of Armaramket. This is yet further evidence of the leading role traders from the clan of Quwaaren and Sunbrown played in the settling of the “New Land.”

Nutapelmen: The Choice of the Laakaghmiit The Yupik “Way West” did not end with the foundation of Uwellkal and the surrounding camps. The finale was the move of the Laakaghmiit around 1928–1930. Like two other clans from the southern side at Ungaziq, the Sanighmelnguut and the Armaramket, they were hit hard by the devastating storms of 1915. Dispersing from Ungaziq, they at first sought to establish small villages and camps around Cape Chaplin (see above) but later also became caught up in the wave of movement westward. Yet they preferred not to join with the main migration in which the Sanighmelnguut and the Armaramket predominated. Instead, they selected the small Chukchi village of Nutapelmen opposite Uwellkal as their new site. The first group, made up of several young hunters from Mayngeguq, arrived in 1928 or in 1929. Other relatives followed them in the next two to three years. A village of quite respectable size arose in Nutapelmen (population 168 in 1938), in which some forty to fifty Laakaghmiit lived. They maintained constant ties with Ungaziq, Uwellkal, and other new Yupik outposts farther west, where they sought marriage partners. Unlike in Uwellkal,

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several maritime Chukchi families had long been living in the same area. Nutapelmen became the sole known Yupik community in which the “master of the land” was a Chukchi, Tenganweriiven. He was also the “keeper” of the nearby walrus haul-out site at Cape Me’echken. Although the Laakaghmiit could not consider Nutapelmen their “own” land, they quickly made up for it by becoming leaders in the village institutions of the new era: the village council, the collective farm, the store, the local school, and so on.

Uwellkal: The End of Free Trapping The “collectivization” of the coastal communities introduced by the Soviet authorities around 1930 (chapter 8) brought an end to the way of life established in the “New Land.” Ultimately only Uwellkal and Nutapelmen remained. Uwellkal eventually absorbed the small sites all the way to Anadyr, including Sunbrown’s camp at Quyngegergen, and the camps of Silga, Atagen, and Aqatagen. Only a tiny group of Avatmiit at Russkaya Koshka and an even smaller camp of Saanlegmiit near the town of Anadyr remained until 1945. Nutapelmen was closed about the same time. Its Yupik residents moved to Uwellkal or to the neighboring Chukchi communities. For the Asiatic Yupik, their “New Land” around Kresta Bay became a lasting monument to the era of commercial trapping. But the golden age of Arctic fur trapping was short lived. In Alaska and northern Canada, its end was triggered by the sharp drop in prices for Arctic fox fur and the collapse of the northern fur market due to the Great Depression of 1929–1933 (Chance 1990; Fainberg 1971; Usher 1970; VanStone 1984). In Chukotka, the new Soviet authorities espoused the ideology of cooperative labor. This prescribed people’s move to large organized communities where life was to be set in order and regulated by new social institutions. The town of Uwellkal, where almost all of the settlers from the “New Land” finally gathered around 1935–1938, became such a large organized community of 200. Here the old system of social relations based on clan solidarity and cooperative marine hunting was quickly reinstated. Crews of five to seven hunters were again formed on the basis of clan affiliation and kin ties. As a rule, they had the previous owners of whaleboats or their sons acting as captains: When I was a bit older [in the mid-1930s], I started hunting with them, we had our own whaleboat and a crew of our relatives. At the time in Uwellkal there were five or six whaleboats, belonging to my father Tengatagen, Silga, and Tantikin [son of Silga], Mekelli [son of Agwaliq], and others (Vasilii Nanok 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 246). Unlike the inhabitants of the remote Wrangell Island, most of the residents of Uwellkal and the neighboring villages preserved their strong affiliation with the Ungazighmiit (or other respective tribes) and maintained their clan identity, tied to their former homelands. For Uwellkal to become a center of a new tribe, 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the main Yupik area, a break with the parent groups would have been essential. New settlements would have to take root for some length of time. Also, the building of a new tribe would require integration of groups (locuses) from other tribes, like the families of Avatmiit or Saanlegmiit at the town of Anadyr. These families did not move to Uwellkal.

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Lacking these two factors, migration to the “New Land” eventually turned into a mere territorial expansion by the Ungazighmiit. By the year 1940, Uwellkal hardly differed from other communities within the main Yupik area. At the time of our work in the 1970s, members from other former tribes returned to their home areas, died out, or moved to Anadyr. In Uwellkal, the residents still preserved some fragments of the Ungaziq clan structure that organized the migration or, rather, the vague memory of that former structure. History rendered the short era of Yupik commercial trapping an anomaly. It has been erased together with the memories of the “Way West,” as the elders of Uwellkal, the children and grandchildren of the migrants, gradually passed away.13

The Dezhnev Headland Unlike the southern portion of the Yupik land, which was one continuous zone where members of several Yupik tribes interacted, the northern area around Cape Dezhnev was an enclave within a similar chain of maritime Chukchi communities. A 200-some-kilometer (120-mile) stretch of the coastline separates Cape Dezhnev from Ungaziq, no insignificant distance at the time. The Nuvuqaghmiit, the only Yupik tribe in the northern area, lived in isolation from its southern Yupik counterparts. The entire network of economic, trade, and social ties of the Nuvuqaghmiit was oriented toward contacts across the Bering Strait, over to the Diomede Islands and Seward Peninsula, Alaska.

The Ecology of Cape Dezhnev Cape Dezhnev, the northeasternmost geographic extension of the Asian continent, is a large rocky promontory that projects out toward the Bering Strait and is washed on three sides by the ocean. From the sea, the area looks like a rocky island, a series of steep cliffs attached by a narrow isthmus to the marshy lowland tundra of the mainland. Ecologically Cape Dezhnev resembles the Diomede and King islands in the Bering Strait rather than the adjoining portion of the Chukchi Peninsula (Chlenov 1988a, 65–66). It has none of the usual fjords, beaches, and pebble spits of the southern Yupik area. The only place on the cape with a substantial beach site where one could safely land skin boats is where Nuvuqaq (Naukan) was located. Yet even here the village was on a sharp ledge elevated 15– 20 meters (50–65 feet) above the shore (Fig. 4.25). Two other former Nuvuqaghmiit sites, Nunak and Mamruaghpak (chapter 2), were built on steep cliffs. This, again, was reminiscent of the villages on Diomede and King islands, and it distinguished the Nuvuqaghmiit from their Asian neighbors, Yupik and Chukchi alike (Figs. 4.26, 4.27).

The Social Geography of Cape Dezhnev The expanses of the Bering Strait, the Diomede Islands, and the large village of Wales (Kiighi or Kingingin) at Cape Prince of Wales on the opposing Alaska shore are quite visible from Cape Dezhnev. Nuvuqaq was a window constantly open to Alaska and to its people, who spoke dialects of the Inupiaq language and also the Yup’ik language in the Norton Sound area south of Nome. The Nuvuqaghmiit’s relations with the residents of the Diomede Islands were especially close, despite the fact that their languages were different. Genealogies and old folktales revealed established marital ties with the islanders,

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Fig. 4.25: Nuvuqaq: View of the village from the nearby mountain. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-11)

whereas in the early 1900s not a single Nuvuqaghmii was married to a southern Yupik. There are strong memories of the Nuvuqaghmiit’s regular trips over the Diomede Islands to the Seward Peninsula, to Nome, and even to Unalakleet (Ungaliq, in Yupik) (Kingston 2000; Schweitzer and Golovko 1995; 1997). The contact zone of the Nuvuqaghmiit on the Asian mainland included the coastal Chukchi villages and camps stretching to the south and along the arctic shore of the Chukchi Peninsula. It is unlikely that there was any special feeling of commonality uniting the Nuvuqaghmiit and the southern Yupik groups. For the latter, Cape Dezhnev was a poorly known area (and vice versa). When the term Eskimo was introduced as the official designation for the Yupik by the Russian administration, both groups of the Asiatic Yupik, northern and southern, applied it only for themselves, using the old tribal names for the other. Unlike the dynamic situation in the southern Yupik area, no major migration took place in the Cape Dezhnev area, after the last villages of Mamruaghpak and Nunak had ceased to exist around 1880–1900 (chapter 2). The population of Nuvuqaq remained around 330–350 people between 1900 and 1940. This was also the size of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe. It included a few incorporated families with roots in the nearby Chukchi communities and several women from the Diomede Islands who had married into the Nuvuqaghmiit. There was hardly any visible reintegration, clan amalgamation, or restructuring such as was typical of many southern Yupik communities of the time.

Nuvuqaq The residents of Cape Dezhnev derived great benefit from the convenient location of their main hub, Nuvuqaq. Here, in the narrows of the Bering Strait, migrating walrus and bowhead whales appear twice yearly during their seasonal movements. The Diomede Islands divide the strait into three uneven segments. Local hunters say that the main mass

Fig. 4.26: Nuvuqaq: Yupik houses with the foundations made of rock slabs and boulders. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И-115-32)

Fig. 4.27: Nuvuqaq: Men work on repairing the stone foundation of a winter house. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-35)

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of migrating walrus usually follows the channels around two Diomede islands. As for bowhead whales, hunters believe that in the fall they pass along the Asian shore, close to Nuvuqaq, and in the spring they follow mainly along the American coast, between Little Diomede and Cape Prince of Wales. Nuvuqaq was a prominent whaling and walrus-hunting community of the contact era (Krupnik 1987a, 23–25). Baleen and walrus ivory, as well as reindeer hides, pelts, and souvenirs, provided the residents with adequate resources for trade with visiting traders and whalers. By the early 1900s, manufactured clothing and other goods became common, thanks to the passing ships, trading posts in neighboring Uelen and Kengisqun (Dezhnev), and the Nuvuqaghmiit’s regular visits to Nome (Fig. 4.28). By the early 1900s, the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe settled in one village had eight clans with distinct residential areas (neighborhoods) within the village territory (chapter 3).14 The relative sizes of the clans may be determined via the genealogies and the earliest available list of residential families in 1937 (Chukotskaya zemekspeditsiia 1938). As in Ungaziq, a good projection of an individual clan size was the number of its hunting crews. According to elders’ recollections, the community had at least twelve boat crews in the 1920s (Krupnik 2000, 221) and possibly as many as fifteen to seventeen crews, with approximately 100 male hunters. The largest clan, the Mayughyaghmiit, had four full crews; this corresponds to eighty to ninety people in the clan. The Sitqunaghmiit and the Mamruaghpagmiit clans, the second largest, had three crews each and were, perhaps, some sixty people strong. The smaller clans, the Uyaghaghmiit and the Imtugmiit, formed two incomplete crews each (about thirty to forty people). The Tugraghmiit, with six to eight hunters (twenty to ­twenty-five people), had one crew. Finally, the smallest of all, the Kepenngughmiit, was unable to form a crew of its own, and after the death of its last boat captain in 1934, their hunters dispersed among other clan crews.15

Fig. 4.28: Nuvuqaq: “Eskimo from East Cape arriving at Nome, Alaska.” Nuvuqaghmiit on a trading trip to Nome. Printed postcard from the early 1900s. (Original courtesy Stephen Loring)

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The status of only one clan, the Nunagmiit, remains unclear. Apparently, that clan preserved its separate identity. There are memories of its special relations with the Big Diomede Islanders and of frequent marriages with them. Most telling was the speech of the Nunagmiit, as they, like the Tasighmiit and the Qiwaaghmiit in the southern area, used both Yupik and Chukchi languages. After the abandonment of their native village of Nunak around 1890 (chapter 3), the last Nunagmiit settled in Nuvuqaq on its southern side. The last person who lived in Nunak, Yuupeni, who died in Naukan in 1929, was first married to the woman Ughyaq from Big Diomede Island. A whaleboat arrived from Imaaqlliq for the summer so people could practice dancing, and Ughyaq was on it. He took her for himself, although he could have found someone among his own kin. After Ughyaq died Yuupeni took a second wife, Ilange, from Nunak, this time. She and Yuupeni would go back and forth, and lived both in Naukan and in Nunak (Alpen 1976). The decline of commercial whaling after 1910 was not as dramatic an event for the residents of Nuvuqaq as it was in Ungaziq. For two more decades, the Nuvuqaghmiit could rely on the passing American trading schooners and on the American trading posts on the American Seward Peninsula across the Bering Strait, above all, the city of Nome. In addition, several small trading posts were also available in neighboring Uelen and other Chukchi villages on the Asian mainland. English-based pidgin was reportedly the lingua franca in the community in the 1920s, and American and Japanese money was in circulation (Schweitzer and Golovko 2007, 50). Although fox trapping was impossible on the craggy inclines of Cape Dezhnev, the Nuvuqaghmiit easily adopted the role of trade middlemen, relying on their commercial and kin ties and partnerships with the Inupiaq people of the Diomede Islands and the American side of the Bering Strait. A certain lack of control over their movements compared to the situation in Uelen, where the nascent Russian administration and many local traders were based, was another advantage that worked for the Nuvuqaghmiit. It was much easier for the trade schooners to anchor offshore of Nuvuqaq than to set out for Uelen and be subject to inspection by the Russian or, later, Soviet administrators. Only the solidification of the Soviet presence in Uelen around 1927 put an end to this short-term isolation and finally bound Nuvuqaq/Naukan with the fate of the rest of its Chukotka neighbors.

The Island “Extensions”: St. Lawrence and Diomede Islands Besides peopling the “New Land” in the Gulf of Anadyr and the distant Wrangell Island, the Asiatic Yupik made inroads in two other directions across or close to the international boundary between Russia and the United States. In the southern Yupik area, they played a crucial role in the restoration of the Yupik community on St. Lawrence Island, decimated in 1878–1880 (chapter 2). In the northern area, the Nuvuqaghmiit expanded and literally reoccupied Big Diomede Island. Both advances offer evidence of the resilience of the Yupik social system and of its ability to recoup after devastating population losses, migration, or even a societal collapse.

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St. Lawrence Island: Collapse and Recovery Of all the Yupik-speaking groups in the Bering Strait area, the residents of St. Lawrence Island suffered the most dramatic population losses in 1878–1880 (chapter 2). Remarkably, they preserved the foundations of their social system made of patrilineal clans traditionally or historically affiliated with scores of local island sites. The first reported list of island clans in 1913 included five names: Uwaliit (Waliit), Pugughileghmiit, Meregtemiit (Murruktumit), Nangupagaghmiit (Nungoopugah’kumit), and Armaramket (Avhrumah’rumkit) (Moore 1912; 1923; Moore’s original spellings in parenthesis). Based upon the elders’ memories and genealogies that commonly include five to six generations of ancestors (Walunga and Gambell Elders 1991), the clan-based system functioned on the island at least since the early 1800s. Moore (1923) reported that the Uwaliit (Waliit) were the original “owners” of the village of Gambell (Sivuqaq); the Armaramket were from “Indian Point” (i.e., from Ungaziq); and three other clans originated from the abandoned island villages of Pugughileq, Meregta, and Nangupagaq. Later studies identified ten to twelve clans among the islanders, half of them of local origins and another half made up of Yupik migrants from Chukotka (de Reuse 1994, 308–310; Hughes 1960; Krupnik 1994, 57–58; Walunga and Gambell Elders 1991). The pre-1880 island population social system reportedly made up of several “tribes” (or “societies”) consolidated around major hubs at Sivuqaq (Gambell—Northwest Cape), Kukulek (North Cape), Qangeghsaq and Kiwatangaq on the Punuk Islands, Kiyalighaq at Southeast Cape, Sikneq on the southern shore, and Pugughileq at Southwest Cape (Burch 1988; 2005; Burgess 1974) was completely wiped out by 1900. The only viable large village, Sivuqaq (modern Gambell), with 260–280 residents, became the center for regrouping and consolidation. It also served as the magnet for groups of families from the Asian mainland. The tiny community of Pugughileq at Southwest Cape (twenty-five to thirty-five people) comprised members of the Pugughileghmiit clan only. Its members eventually merged into the new social system built by the recovery at Sivuqaq (Gambell) between 1885 and 1920. The reconsolidation of the Sivuqaghmiit and the role of various clans in this process can be traced from the island population lists for the US Censuses of 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930, as well as from the genealogies and family histories recorded in 1991–2002.16 The survival rate in some of the villages devastated in 1878–1880 was actually somewhat higher than the US Coast Guard officers and visiting scientists estimated in 1880 and 1881. In addition, the clan-based organization of both the islanders and the Yupik migrants from Chukotka offered a familiar mechanism for social reconsolidation along the traditional locus-based structures. During the slow recovery of the early 1900s, the islanders maintained their leading social role in the community (Fig. 4.29). The Pugughileghmiit clan made up of the former residents of Pugughileq, at Southwest Cape, was the second strongest in Gambell and the largest social unit on the island, despite the heavy losses at Pugughileq in 1878–1880 (Hooper 1884, 22–23; Muir 1917, 85–86; Nelson 1881, June 24; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 53–55). At least ten to twelve families, about sixty to seventy people of the total Gambell population of 286 in 1900, belonged to this clan. In addition, five to seven families (twenty-five to thirty-five people) resided at Pugughileq (Doty 1900, 187, 245; Gambell

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Fig. 4.29: Sivuqaq (Gambell): Three “strong men” of the village: Iirgu (1891–1915), Sunaaghruk (1886– 1959), and Amagu (ca. 1870–1930), a Laakaghmii from Ungaziq. The men are sitting next to big boulders used for heavy-lifting contests. (Photo by Riley D. Moore, summer 1912. NAA, Papers of Henry Bascom Collins, Box 112, UI 27–95)

1898, 141). The Pugughileghmiit formed three hunting crews out of nine active in Gambell in 1909; an additional crew operated at Pugughileq (Krupnik et al. 2002, 344–346). The original inhabitants of Sivuqaq (Gambell), of whom the single clan, the Uwaliit, remained (cf. Moore 1923, 339), were represented by four families in 1900 (Krupnik et al. 2002). A few families that originated from the extinct villages, such as Nasqaq (hence their clan name, Nasqaghmiit), Nengiighaq (Nengiighaghmiit), Nangupagaq (Nangupagaghmiit), and Meregta (Meregtemiit), also survived the disaster of 1878–1880. The elders easily identified their members in the village lists of 1900 and 1910. They formed two composite boat crews in 1909, headed by captains from the Nengiighaghmiit and Nangupagaghmiit clans, respectively (Krupnik et al. 2002, 344–346). Today’s elders remember by name a few survivors from the decimated villages of Kiyalighaq and Kukulek (Crowell and Oozevaseuk 2006; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 9) on the northern and eastern sections of the island, which were reportedly completely depopulated. In summer 1881, sailors from the USS Corwin crew encountered a handful of residents at Southeast Cape (Hooper 1884, 100; Muir 1917, 107), who later also moved to Gambell. The origins of other survivors were revealed in the names of the two tiny clans of Kiyalighaghmiit (“people from Kiyalighaq”) and Kiwatangaghmiit (“those from the eastern side”), made up of small lineages or even individual families. One section of the Pugughileghmiit clan reportedly preserved its distinctive name, Pungughmiit, which means “people from the Punuk [Islands]” (cf. Hughes 1960, 252). In total, at least nine clan or clan-like names—the Pugughileghmiit, Uwaliit, Nasqaghmiit, Nengiighaghmiit, Meregtemiit, Nangupagaghmiit, Maramakut, Kiwatangaghmiit, and Kiyalighaghmiit17—represented the descendants of the pre-1880 island

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population. Their offspring constituted about two-thirds of the identified families in Gambell in 1900, 58 percent in 1920, and 60 percent around 1940. The Yupik migrants from the Asian mainland evidently arrived in several waves. The bulk of them came to the island either shortly after the starvation of 1878–1880 or even before the disaster. The majority of the post-1880 newcomers belonged to the powerful Armaramket/Sanighmelnguut clan from Ungaziq. One of the post-1880 waves brought the Qiwaaghmiit clan from Qiwaaq, with at least six families (forty to fifty people) living in Sivuqaq (Gambell) in 1900. A few families came from the tiny village of Ingleghnaq in Tkachen Bay and from Itygran Island. Their clan names, the Ingleghnaghmiit (one family in 1900) and the Siqllugmiit (two families), indicated their former residence. In total, the pre- and post-famine Yupik migrants from Asia constituted 40 percent of the Gambell population in 1900 (twenty-five identified families, about 130–140 people). They had four hunting crews in 1909 (Krupnik et al. 2002, 345–346). The last migration took place between 1910 and 1923. It brought a few families that formed tiny island clans of the Laakaghmiit and the Avatmiit. The former was a fragment of the same clan of the Ungazighmiit; the latter belonged to one family from Avan. Six modern clans on St. Lawrence Island, the Armaramket, Laakaghmiit, Qiwaaghmiit, Avatmiit, Siqllugmiit, and Ingleghnaghmiit, trace their origins to the mainland. Of these, the former two names are of the respective Asian clans; two bear the names of the mainland Yupik tribes (Qiwaaghmiit and Avatmiit), and two clan names are made up of place names of their origin (Siqlluk and Ingleghnaq). The post-1880 consolidation of the survivors and the newcomers from various communities was neither spontaneous nor easy. Life in Sivuqaq (Gambell) around 1900 was tense and often violent, as reported by the Presbyterian missionaries and personnel of the US reindeer station (Campbell 1903, 85–86; Doty 1900, 188–189, 237, 247, 256; Lerrigo 1901, 107; 1902, 94, 103, 120). Fights, alcoholic brawls, and various forms of harassment were common, especially in the summertime, during the annual visits from across the strait. Some evidence (Campbell 1903, 92–93; Doty 1900, 189, 248) and local memoirs (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1985, 21) pointed to the aggressive behavior of the “Siberians,” who intimidated the post-famine Gambell community. The source of their belligerence was perhaps their greater kin solidarity, as stated by one of the settlers from Ungaziq in 1901: We are here fourteen families. The strongest of us all is Tu’sak. . . . If anything happens, we will rise together as one man. And the other people are afraid of us. Because Una’sik, our native place, is a big land, and Cibu’kak [Gambell] on the island is but small (Bogoras 1925, 218). The fourteen families “headed by Tu’sak [Tuusaq]” matched the exact composition of the Armaramket clan in Gambell, according to the 1900 census. Protection and kin solidarity was thus exclusively clan based, and it was expanded neither to other non-Armaramket families from Ungaziq nor to other immigrants from the Asian coast. Nonetheless, the islanders held to several key positions in the village power structure. The two highest social statuses in the Gambell/Sivuqaq community, those of the “founding” and the numerically strongest clans, were kept by indigenous groups, the Uwaliit and Pugughileghmiit clans, respectively. The two men commonly viewed by all visitors

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as “the chief men in the village” around 1900, Asunga/Assoonga and Suluk/Shoolook (e.g., Lerrigo 1901, 99), were also of island origin. As clans and lineages eventually grew in strength between 1880 and 1930 through natural increase or immigration, they were able to muster more family units, kin-based hunting crews, and ceremonial groups, as illustrated by the Armaramket clan in Gambell: It is said that in the beginning there was just one boat [of ours]. . . . When people started to get their own boats they followed the same tradition. . . . Angaatenganwan’s boat would be the first to have ceremonies, because back there was just one boat, Blassi was the captain. When the crew of that boat grew too large, Telenga was the first to build his own boat. Then Kowarren built one too (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1985, 211). The St. Lawrence recovery was rarely based on direct integration, that is, on the merger of small social units into larger groups. We have no evidence of any artificial large sections, like those of the “mainlanders” and the “islanders,” or of the people from the “east,” “north,” and/or “west coast.” The Yupik patrilineal locus system helped restore the pre1880 social diversity reduced by starvation by adding six new clans of Asian migrants. It was a perfect foundation to rebuild a new locus “aggregation,” that is, new tribe. The population of St. Lawrence Island continued to decline until its nadir of 261 in 1903 (Campbell 1903, 70; Ellanna 1983, 70). A steady growth started after 1904 and accelerated around 1920 (Byard 1980, 31, 52–53). Gambell residents reoccupied several seasonal sites and a new permanent camp was established on the island’s northern shore in 1911–1912, near the extinct village of Kukulek. It became the precursor of the new community of Savoonga/Sivungaq (Fig. 4.30). Another permanent site, Kangi (Kangii), appeared between Savoonga and Gambell.18 Progress in local reindeer herding introduced

Fig. 4.30: Savoonga: Unidentified Yupik men and youth, summer 1921. Many are dressed in purchased clothing and boots, in marked contrast to their kin in Gambell and on the Chukotkan side. (Photo by Alfred M. Bailey, DMNS BA21–419e)

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by the US government after 1895 was an important factor in the island’s revival. It also helped return the abandoned northern and eastern shores to Yupik use. The decline in migration from the mainland after 1910 was another sign that the mainland Yupik ceased viewing St. Lawrence Island as “free.” The four residential sites of 1910–1940, Gambell/Sivuqaq, Savoonga/Sivungaq, Kangii, and Pugughileq, plus scores of seasonal family camps, contributed effectively to the rebuilding of the island social network now made up of one “composite” tribe, the Sivuqaghmiit. By 1940, the island had a vigorously expanding population of 500. Its residents were divided more or less evenly between the two large communities of Gambell and Savoonga, each made up of ten to twelve patrilineal clans or smaller subclan sections. In 1990, the population was about 1,100 (548 in Gambell and 514 in Savoonga), plus an additional 150 St. Lawrence Island Yupik residing in Nome, Anchorage, and elsewhere Alaska. In about 100 years, the St. Lawrence Yupik society demonstrated its remarkable vitality and almost returned to its pre-1880 level.

Naukan Expansion: Big Diomede Island The late contact-traditional era witnessed yet another group of Asiatic Yupik on the move across Bering Strait, first to Big Diomede Island, which belonged to Russia, and, later, to the American Little Diomede. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Diomede Islands were more closely related to Asia than to America (Jenness 1928, 75). It was from the Asian shore that its residents acquired iron, beads, pipes, tobacco, and other items exchanged via the Northeast Siberian trade network. After American whalers entered the Bering Strait in 1850 and, particularly, after the establishment of the city of Nome in 1898, the focus of Native interactions shifted decisively to the American shore. Following this eastward drive, several Little Diomede families settled on the Seward Peninsula. In a peculiar domino effect, people from Big Diomede moved to Little Diomede, whereas some residents from Cape Dezhnev settled on Big Diomede (Heinrich 1963, 382–383). Many factors accounted for this population drift between 1890 and 1940, including new commercial opportunities on the Seward Peninsula and the tightening of the trade regime on the Russian side after 1924 (chapter 1). By 1930, as most of the original Big Diomeders moved to Little Diomede, the door to Nuvuqaghmiit expansion into this formerly Inupiaq-speaking area was wide open. In 1895, ninety people resided on Big Diomede in two villages, Imaaqlliq and Kunga (Patkanov 1912, 892), and about eighty people lived on Little Diomede (Ray 1983, 209). None of the island villages could remain a viable community and all were dependent upon recruiting new members to increase the number of able hunters and hunting crews. Settlement on the American island was a stronger magnet. The Kungamiut (“the people of Kunga”) were the first to abandon their native village on Big Diomede. Their move to Little Diomede took place between 1905 and 1915. By 1920, the former Kungamiut, together with the earlier settlers from Big Diomede, made up about a third of the Little Diomede population (Krupnik 1994, 62–64). The US Census of 1920 registered 101 people on Little Diomede in twenty-three families. According to genealogies, recent migrants “from Russia” (i.e., former Big Diomeders, the Nuvuqaghmiit, and the Chukchi from the nearby villages)

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headed at least nine local families. The rest were made up of indigenous Little Diomeders (ten families) and people from King Island and the Alaska Seward Peninsula (four families). The final blow to the last Inupiaq village on Big Diomede, Imaaqlliq on its southern shore (Figs. 4.31, 4.32), was the opening of a Lutheran school on Little Diomede in 1915. The school attracted children from the Russian island (Eide 1952, 113) and tempted more families to move. The first Soviet survey in winter 1923 found forty-two people (eight families) on Big Diomede (Materialy po statistike 1925, xxviii), a loss of forty to fifty in less than thirty years. Soon after, the new Soviet administration and border-guard stations were established in Uelen, in Dezhnev, and, later, in Nuvuqaq (chapter 1). Russian authorities quickly banned foreign traders and visitors from entry without permits and visas. In 1924, a Soviet district officer visited Big Diomede and prohibited any “unregistered” trade between the islanders and passing American schooners. He promised to send a Soviet ship with better Russian supplies, which never arrived (Knopfmiller 1940). The Big Diomeders’ response to the growing Soviet pressure was flight to the American island. In 1926, three families with six active hunters left the village on Big Diomede. The exodus continued until 1932, when the population on the Soviet island was reduced to twelve, while the Little Diomede community grew to 130 (Krupnik 1994). Only two families remained on Big Diomede, with one active hunter named Aghayeegheq, known as the central figure of the small community. Little Diomeders we have spoken to assert that he was the keeper of the last “communal house” (kazgi) in Imaaqlliq and was also the “master of the land” (Krupnik 1994, 70). Besides Aghayeegheq’s family with seven children from two wives, the population was made up of a childless elderly couple and a few elderly men. Aghayeegheq, the sole active hunter, became the first chairman of the Diomede Island village council for a population of fifteen. He tried to restore his community using his family and his four teenage daughters as its core. By 1938, the population of Big Diomede had risen to twenty-five to thirty. The daughters of Aghayeegheq and their young husbands from Nuvuqaq formed three new families. Two other Naukan families resettled to the island to live under Aghayeegheq’s leadership and to hunt in a single island boat crew under his command. Had Aghayeegheq had more time he might have single-handedly consolidated a tiny Big Diomede community now made up mostly of the Nuvuqaghmiit. However, he committed suicide in 1939, and with him died the islanders’ last chance to become a viable social group. In 1940, the Soviet authorities dissolved the local village council on Big Diomede and subordinated it to the Nuvuqaq (Naukan) council and collective farm. All social roles of significance—shop salesperson, schoolteacher, boat captain—were now held by the Nuvuqaghmiit migrants. The small village on Big Diomede existed for a few more years, its life coming increasingly under the control of the Soviet border-guard post established on the northern side of the island. In 1948, the village was officially closed and all its residents, including the last Inupiaq-speaking descendants of Aghayeegheq, were relocated to Nuvuqaq (chapter 9). From this time on, the sole inhabitants of the island were the Russian border guards, who occasionatally patrolled the ruins of Native houses and the cemetery above the abandoned village.

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Conclusion: The “Speech” and “Language” of Yupik Social Life Our “virtual journey” across the Yupik land illustrates that people’s relations coincided with the social model, but in no way followed it. The fabric of Yupik social life was hardly an orderly arrangement of tribes, tribal groups, and clans as outlined in chapter 3. By the end of the contact-traditional era, some tribes retained the foundations of their old structure (like the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit), whereas among others only the fragments of the former system survived. In yet other cases, such as among the Sighineghmiit and the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island, the old clan system disintegrated and was in the process of regrouping out of a new mixture of local and newly arrived groups (locuses). Nonetheless, by the year 1900, the Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) were, perhaps, in a better position than many of their Inupiaq and Yup’ik-speaking neighbors in Alaska. Among the residents of the Seward Peninsula, the Norton Sound area, and Northwest Alaska, the old system of regional tribal communities (“societies”) vanished due to mass population losses through starvation, epidemics, and outmigration (Burch 1975, 26–30; 1980, 285–295; 1994; Sheppard 2000). Many early contact communities became extinct; others lost the majority of their members; and yet others were scattered over a huge area between the Bering Strait and the Mackenzie River Delta. Under these circumstances, the restoration of the old social framework was all but impossible. The Yupik people in Asia demonstrated a series of successful strategies of reintegration, as well as the conditions under which the old system had a chance to survive and even revitalize. The key factor was the presence of at least some groups that had preserved their original social order based on tribal endogamy and clan network. Among the Asiatic Yupik, such were the two largest tribes, the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit that exhibited traditional patterns of tribal and clan solidarity and organization. Yet, even in more disrupted groups, individual clans often played similar consolidating roles, like the Aghqullughmiit among the Avatmiit or the Pugughileghmiit among the Sivuqaghmiit. These resilient fragments of the old clan system served as a nucleus for reconsolidation, forcing other groups to organize according to the same principle. Despite the many transitions of the late contact-traditional era, the Yupik people remarkably preserved the foundations of their old locus model, as well as the rules of patrilineal kin filiation and the tradition of kin-based boat crews of six to eight male hunters (chapter 6). The incorporation of people and families from other tribes into new clans and lineages was another factor that helped strengthen the system. It helped rebuild weakened social units and keep the tribal and clan network functioning, as in Sighineq, in Qiwaaq, and on St. Lawrence and Diomede islands. The increased mobility of the late ­c­ontact-traditional era created many “wandering locuses” that broke off from their former social network and sought to reconnect with other aggregations. In each known case, the system assured the settlers’ integration in a new host community based on the same principle. Remarkably, that process was not accompanied by any visible growth of the Yupik population in Asia, which remained relatively stable during the late contact-traditional era (1890–1930) and fluctuated around 1,700–1,800 people, including the inhabitants of St. Lawrence Island. Those living on the Chukchi Peninsula alone numbered 1,300–1,400

Fig. 4.31: Imaaqlliq: View of the village on Big Diomede Island. Old houses built of big boulders are mixed with wooden plank houses introduced by American traders. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-82)

Fig. 4.32: Imaaqlliq: Entrance of an old underground house flanked with big slabs and pieces of whale bone. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-56)

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(Krupnik 1983, 86–88; Table 4.1).19 These numbers did not change significantly until a rapid surge of the Yupik population on St. Lawrence Island after 1940. Nevertheless, the full restoration of the old Yupik tribal system was hardly possible. By the end of the contact-traditional time around 1940, the formerly continuous “Yupik land” in Asia was split into four enclaves: southern, from Sighineq to Cape Chaplin; western, Uwellkal and the nearby camps in the Gulf of Anadyr; northern, Nuvuqaq and Big Diomede; and arctic, Wrangell Island. They were severed from one another, often by hundreds of ­kilometers. Although the areas continued to maintain connections with one another, each of the enclaves with its specific set of old tribal components was set to become a hearth for new groupings of the later Soviet era (chapter 9). In addition, each of the four segments of the “Yupik land” in Asia (and their extensions on St. Lawrence and Diomede islands) in 1930 included members from many former tribes. In Imtuk, Sighineq, Nuvuqaq, Avan, Sivuqaq/Gambell, Imaaqlliq, Uwellkal, Nutapelmen, Ugriileq, Qiwaaq, and on Wrangell Island there were also people who spoke different dialects and languages, and, in many cases, even considered themselves either Yupik or Chukchi. A new pattern of residential community emerged, that of a village built of isolated lineages and/or of individual Yupik families living side by side with, or as a part of, a mixed colony with the Europeans as a socially dominant group, such as in Ugriileq and on Wrangell Island. The expansion of such mixed residential communities became the dominant transition in the subsequent decades.

Notes 1. Here our informant is referring to the lineage names of the two latter groups using the personal names of their male leaders of the previous generation. 2. The distinctive feature of the Imtuk dialect is the absence of grammatical dual, which is present in CSY but absent both in Sirenikski and in the modern CSY dialect spoken in Sireniki (Sighineq). The latter obviously originated from the Imtuk speech of the early 20th century. 3. Among them were Numelen, the head of the small group from Asun; Ngepawyi, the last “master” of Imtuk; Nanana, the leader of the Kurgugmiit; Nganganga, the head of the Saanlegmiit clan; and others. 4. In 1934, that crew managed to kill a large bowhead whale single-handedly. The elders recalled how the people of Kenlighaq dragged the carcass to the surf and started butchering the whale before their Sighineghmiit neighbors offered their help (Krupnik 2000, 110–111). 5. It may be no accident that the last fluent speakers of the Sirenikski language, Valentina Wyia (Weyi) (1917–1996) and Ragtina (Ragtenga) (1914–1991), spent their childhood years in Asun and Singhaq, respectively. 6. See descriptions and historical photographs of the Yupik village in Plover Bay in Bogdanovich 1901, 21; Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988, 45; Hughes 1984b, 251; Krause 1984, 96; Muir 1917, 32, 211; Nelson 1983 [1899], 268–269. 7. First reported by Sergeev (1962, 36). Insofar as this word has the place-name suffix -miit, a more precise translation would be “people from the place where the seagulls live.”

45 (7)

Siqlluk

51 (11)

111 (17)

Wrangell Island

Uwellkal

135 (23)

45 (6)

22 (4)

343 (55)

28 (5)

59 (9)

15 (3)

220 (33)

3 (1)

71 (12)

66 (12)

15 (2)

–

–

107 (17)

94 (14)

1929

ca. 200

45

27 (4)

351 (57)

64 (9)

26 (3)

abandoned

298 (41)

…

80 (14)

56 (10)

43 (6)

17 (4)

39 (4)

51 (8)

108 (16)

1932

ca. 180

70 (12)

16 (2)

343 (65)

43 (11)

abandoned

–

279 (58)

11 (3)

85 (14)

47 (8)

63/100

21 (7)

abandoned

abandoned

192 (36)

1938

…

…

…

327

…

–

–

296

…

79

closed

151/928

…

–

–

232

1943

155 (69)

…

…

300

…

–

–

251

…

85

–

137/1,116

…

–

–

176

1946

(ca.160)

(ca. 40)

closed

293 (69)

closed

–

–

225 (55)

…

89 (19)

–

279/ca. 4,000

…

–

–

201 (44)

1952

Notes: Figures in parentheses are number of houses/households. Figures for 1943, 1946, and 1952 are totals for the village council. Numbers for Ugriileq separated by slashes indicate Yupik population/total population. Numbers for Uwellkal include nearby camps in the Gulf of Anadyr (Annuallkal, Kuynegergen; Sunraygun/Russkaya Koshka, Nutapelmen). Key: … = no data; – = no population; Sources: For 1926: Poselennye itogi 1928, 20–25; for 1929: Bogoras 1934b, 105–106 (A. Forshtein’s data); for 1932: Orlova 1936, 34; for 1938: Spiski naselennykh mest 1938, 3–7; Shnakenburg 1939, 12; for 1943: Svedeniia o chislennosti 1946, 30–32; for 1946: Svodnaia tablitsa 1947, 34; for 1952: Dinamika razvitiia n.d., 1.

27 (5)

Imaaqlliq (Big Diomede)

348 (56)

44 (7)

Napaqutaq

Nuvuqaq (Naukan)

48 (10)

32 (4)

Tasiq (Chechen)

Teflleq

66 (11)

Qiwaaq (Kivak)

254 (35)

77 (14)

Avan

Ungaziq (Chaplino)

32 (5)

Ugriileq (Ureliki)

–

Plover

124 (23)

Imtuk

–

49 (10)

Sighineq (Sireniki)

Kenlighaq

1926

Communities

Table 4.1: Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) Population by Major Communities, 1926–1952

Along the Shores of Yupik Land in Asia

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8. We reconstructed the full list of the Yupik families that moved to the island in 1926 using the island residents’ list of 1971 (provided by Tatyana Mastyugina in 1975); memoirs of some Avatmiit elders (Krupnik 2000); genealogies and oral information obtained from the former island inhabitants residing in the mainland communities of Schmidt, Vankarem, and Nutapelmen (Chlenov, 1986 fieldnotes); and references to individual Yupik persons in Russian publications of the early years of the colony (Gorbatov 1938; Mineev 1935; 1946; Ushakov 1972; Vlasova 1936). 9. Two Yupik men from Wrangell Island, Tayan, half-Chukchi, and Vasilii Nangaawen, a Nangupagaghmii, were the “best known” Eskimos in the former Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1970s, respectively. In the 1940s, the authorities increased the island’s Native population via an organized move of several Chukchi herding families from the Arctic coast of Chukotka (Gurvich 1977). In 1972, they transformed the island into a nature preserve, which eventually caused the relocation of all of its Native inhabitants to the mainland in 1997. The last Yupik woman on the island, reportedly, died in 2003. 10. Aldrich 1889, 49, 46; Bogoras 1975, 267; Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988, 226; Vanderlip 1903, front, 303. Over forty photos of individual residents of Ungaziq and over 120 pictures of village life scenes taken by Waldemar Bogoras’ party in 1901 are on file at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Another collection of some sixty photos from Ungaziq taken by Aleksandr Forshtein in 1928–1929 is on file at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg, Russia (Krupnik and Mikhailova 2006). 11. The senior man of that family was called by Bogoras in 1901 “Chief Tanina” (Tanenga). He was also known to the American missionaries in Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, due to his frequent visits to the island (Lerrigo 1901). 12. Several Yupik elders shared their stories about the peopling of the “New Land,” among them Kim Akilkak (1916–ca. 1990), Arinaun (1900–1985), Dmitrii Atelkun (1919–1984), Ekaterina Kutkhaun (1914–1992), Nikolai Leita (1910–1975), Vasilii Nanok (1925–1995), Vera Nikiforova Aghnallqwasaq (1928–1983), Zina Ragtina (1924–1985), Anna Rynana (1924–1992), and Vera Ukigaghun (1934–1988). None are alive today; we are deeply grateful for their insight and collaboration. 13. The last person who actually made the 600-mile migration from Ungaziq, Anna Rynana (Renganga) (born 1924), passed away in Uwellkal in 1992. She arrived as a little girl in 1925 or 1926 in the boat of her grandfather Silga. 14. For the reconstructed “social topography” of Nuvuqaq at the end of the ­contact-traditional era, we refer the reader to the schematic map of the village produced by the former Nuvuqaq resident Tasyan Tein (1977; Krauss 2004b). The map features several local place names, old underground dwellings, clan boat launching sites, and individual family houses, with the names of their heads as in the 1940s. Another valuable source is the full list of local place names in and around Nuvuqaq compiled by Michael Krauss (2004b) from the existing written sources and information provided by the Nuvuqaghmii Elder Elizaveta A. Dobrieva. 15. We were unable to find any people in the 1930s, either in genealogies or in written sources, whom the elders of the 1970s could definitely associate with the small extinct clans, such

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as Alighpagmiit, Kekoghmiit, and Saghraghmiit, that are cited in folklore texts or in the clan lists compiled by other authors (Leonova 2008, 156; Menovshchikov 1962a; 1975). 16. Krupnik 1994; Krupnik et al. 2002. Several St. Lawrence Island Yupik experts kindly shared their knowledge in 1991–2002, among them Willis Walunga (Kepelgu), Nancy Walunga (Aghnaghaghniq) Conrad Oozeva (Akulki), Clarence Iirgu (Miinglu), Ralph Apatiki (Anaggun), Estelle Oozevoseuk (Penaapak), Nick Wongkitillin (Uqengeliighaq), John Waghiyi, Sr. (Qayaaq), and others. 17. Several lists of St. Lawrence island clan names, with the number of clans varying from five to nineteen, were compiled between 1925 and 1990 (Krupnik 1994, Table 2). The list assembled by Mr. Willis Walunga from Gambell (Walunga and Gambell Elders 1991) represents the islanders’ vision of their social composition. In this book, we follow Walunga’s transliteration for the names of St. Lawrence Island clans. The list may bypass some clans that became extinct during or after the famine of 1878, leaving no descendants among the present-day island population. 18. In winter 1909–1910, the total island population of 293 resided in two permanent villages, Sivuqaq (population 218) and Pugughileq (twenty-one residents), plus a number of seasonal and herding camps—Powkiitti (?, twenty-one residents), Maqenpak (four), Kangii (six), Nasqaq (five), Tapghuq (eight), and Kukulek (ten) (US Thirteenth Census 1910). 19. This number included about fifty to eighty Inupiaq-speaking residents of Big Diomede Island, who eventually moved to the American Little Diomede Island, except for one family.

Chapter 5

Community Affairs The Village Village Topography

W

hen selecting the site for a village, the Yupik commonly had a certain ecological template in mind. This is apparent if one travels by boat, scanning the shore with the eyes of a marine hunter. Wherever there is a rocky cape and behind it a lagoon or a freshwater lake separated from the sea by a pebbly spit, an old village site is almost certain to be found (Krupnik 1977, 4–5). Most commonly, it would be located at the shore cliff above the spit. From the houses above the spit, people could gaze directly over a sizeable portion of open sea. A strip of the beach in front of the village provided landing for skin boats, ready approach from the water’s edge to the houses, and a convenient boat storage area on the shore not far from the surf line. Of course, the village would be located near a source of freshwater such as a river, stream, or lake. All of these physical factors determined the internal ecological planning of the village and of the associated economic, ritual, and other areas. In the summer months, moveable summer tents would stand on the pebbly shore of the spit (Fig. 5.1). In winter, people would move to more solid skin-covered winter houses (Yupik mangteghapik, Chukchi yaranga) higher up. On the beach, there would be an area for landing and unloading skin and wooden boats and for butchering sea mammals killed by hunters. Higher on the shore, rafters made of poles or whale jawbones were placed to store boats, dry meat, and animal hides (Fig. 5.2). The rocky screes above the village served as burial sites for the dead. At the foot of the graveyard, some distance away from the houses, were special sites used for the annual ceremonies honoring ancestors (chapter 6). Despite individual variation, one may discern such a common set of spatial components in almost every Yupik village of the contact-traditional era we explored. Only the villages of the Nuvuqaghmiit on Cape Dezhnev diverged from this special pattern, in particular Nunak and Mamruaghpak, which were built on steep rocky cliffs. Here, as well as on the two Diomede Islands, a different ecological and cultural model governed the selection of the village sites (Chlenov 1988a). Yet, this model did not eliminate the need for a certain leveled area suitable for constructing dwellings (as in Nuvuqaq) with

121

Fig. 5.1: Yupik summer tents (tupiit) erected on the beach at Sighineq, spring 1929. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-5)

Fig. 5.2: Boat storage racks with skin boats and American whaleboats in the high beach area at Sighineq, spring 1929. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-59)

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a view of the open sea, a section for boat racks (Figs. 5.3, 5.4), a source of freshwater, and a site for burials.1 The absence of a pebbly beach area may have made life more difficult but the village spatial structure had many of the same components.

The Village Community The inhabitants of the village formed a residential community. This was a group of people united by a common residence, shared activities, norms of cooperation, and ritual life. At the same time, the community was a reproductive population made up of several ­lower-level components, such as clans and lineages. Whenever the community was too small to have any internal segments, it served as a preferential endogamous unit in and of itself. As one might expect, there is no specific term in the Yupik language denoting the village community. In essence, this is just another type of locus delineated by anthropologists out of the continuum of the Yupik terms with the locative suffix -miit (-miut among the Alaska Yup’ik and in the Inupiaq/Inuktitut dialects). Yet there is a Yupik word for “village.” This word, nunaaq (in CSY, “village, camp, town,” Jacobson 2008, 316; nunaragaq in NY, Dobrieva et al. 2004, 136), comes from the word nuna, or “land.” Thus, people coming from one village are usually called nunalgun (CSY, pl. nunalgutet; Rubtsova 1971, 377),2 which, however, rarely if ever was used to designate a socially bound group of people, that is, a village community. Rather, the inhabitants of each village were commonly referred to by their specific village name (plus the locative suffix -miit)—Imtugmiit, Avatmiit, Siqllugmiit, and so forth. They naturally perceived such common names as a symbol of their unity in juxtaposition to other, similar residential groupings. Tribes, as indicated before, consisted of a set of village communities living within the confines of tribal territory. Each village, nonetheless, was an individual world unto itself.

Types of Villages There were two basic, functional types of Yupik villages during the contact-traditional era and probably well back into the precontact time. The first was the central tribal settlement, which bore the name of the tribe (actually, vice versa), such as Sighineq, Avan, Qiwaaq, Ungaziq, Nuvuqaq, and Imaaqlliq on Big Diomede Island. They were all located on open seacoast and had rather large populations of at least 100–120 permanent residents and often more. The main village was not merely the symbol of the tribe. It also contained a complete set of the components of the tribal clan structure and was a site where tribal and clan festivals, gatherings, and rites were held. Parallel to the central village, the tribe may have had secondary settlements or temporary hunting camps. Such settlements, even if they grew to a relatively large size, did not necessarily fully reflect the clan structure of the tribe. Here we may cite the single-clan villages Ungiyeramket and Uqighyaghaq of the Laakaghmiit clan or nearby Teflleq, where members of some, though not all, clans of the Ungazighmiit tribe resided (chapter 4). Finally, in terms of function, we should also include with the “small villages” temporary camps that socially and economically were components of their parent tribes. At the level of “social language” (grammar), only the tribal centers were included in the Yupik tribal model. The model does not seem to provide for other large stable communities, and people viewed smaller settlements or seasonal camps as natural outcomes of the tribe’s activity.

Fig. 5.3: Boat storage racks in Nuvuqaq were erected on a high slope above the beach. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-10)

Fig. 5.4: The same boat racks shown in Fig. 5.3 still stand at the site of Nuvuqaq, abandoned in 1958. (Photo by Sergei Bogoslovsky, summer 1981)

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The Traditional Settlement Model In the traditional Yupik worldview seen from many narratives, the tribal territory was commonly divided into sections allocated to individual clans for their seasonal use or for the creation of small villages. Ekaterina Rubtsova recorded a detailed story in 1940 from a man, called Nalughyaq (ca. 1888–1942), of the Nengluvaget clan in Ungaziq: At that time, a long time ago, people didn’t live here [in Ungaziq]. They’d all go off to their temporary areas. There were five men, brothers, who would usually go to Tanalluq. Five other men, also brothers, generally went to Amyak. There they would hunt in kayaks, kill ringed seals, harpooning them, killing bearded seals. . . . Once they’d gotten a lot, they’d take them to Kengeghraq. People from Amyak and Tanalluq, when they were done transporting them, set out for here, to Chaplino. . . . And they’d live well the whole winter long.3 A narrative by another Yupik Elder, Ivan Ashkamakin, presented a similar picture: Everyone used to have their own place to go. We, Laakaghmiit, would go to Arakamchechen [Island] and Siqlluk, and the Akulghaaghwiget and some others had their area in Romulet Bay. The Sanighmelnguut would go to the hot springs, and others went to Penkigney Bay. The Nengluvaget went to Napaqutaq, and those others, the Piiglankut [Piigla and Uqe, i.e., the Ugaliit clan], were in Siqlluk. The Sighunpaget were also in Siqlluk, that’s why they have so many bones in Siqlluk and in Napaqutaq. I don’t know where the Armaramket went. By my time they were still going, but not so strictly. . . . During my time basically only us, the Laakaghmiit, and the Akulghaaghwiget would go to Romulet Bay and to the small island nearby, Qiighqaghaq (Ivan Ashkamakin 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 444). Such small clan-based villages and camps were perceived as the necessary components of the general tribal model and were, in fact, a common occurrence in Yupik history. The central village was like a “pulsating” core for the tribe. In times of hardship, such as famine, poor hunting, overcrowding, or social tensions, small splinter groups would break away to occupy other sections of the tribal territory. Despite the short-lived nature of many splinter villages, the movement in and of itself offered a mechanism for renewal; it also strengthened the viability of the tribal structure. The model made up of a central village with its associated small settlements and seasonal camps had an additional ecological interpretation. The traditional Yupik economy was oriented toward two types of resources: large and seasonally migrating sea mammals, whales and walrus, and the more regularly available small seals, as well as birds and fish (Krupnik 1977, 14–15; 1993, 36–37). Hunting for large mammals by groups of several men united in boat crews (chapter 6) provided basic food supplies for the community. The cooperation of several hunting crews, a well-tuned system of social support and interaction, was necessary for successful communal whale and walrus hunting. This was feasible in a large village only. The smaller villages and seasonal camps, on the other hand, were oriented toward individual hunting. Here, a few successful hunters were often able to provide for

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the entire community. Yet, even if several experienced hunters gathered at a small camp, their possibilities were limited: On the whaleboat in Mayngeguq we’d kill walrus, bearded seal, and ringed seal, but we never once killed a whale. We had a whaling darting gun and an American brass gun, and two or three bombs. But we were afraid to go out after them—a single whaleboat couldn’t chase a whale. You’d have to have two or three crews minimum, because the gray whale will often sink a whaleboat. So in Mayngeguq we didn’t even go after whales (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 156). The sole known instance of a whale being chased and killed by one crew single-handedly took place in Kenlighaq in 1934. Their hunt may be explained by the extraordinary professional pride of several top-notch hunters from Imtuk who settled in Kenlighaq (chapter 4). In general, however, for successful hunting of walrus, four to five men making up one boat crew would suffice; two boat crews of eight to ten men would make a stable living for a community of thirty to forty. If there were more, it meant the village had a chance to grow and transform into an independent hunting center as was the case in Imtuk (see below). A medium-size village might also follow the economic cycle of a larger neighboring community and even provide a vital contribution to its economic activities. Crews from Qiwaaq and Tasiq, and from Avan and Ugriileq, were known to hunt together during the spring and fall seasons. Hunters from Napaqutaq used to join the spring hunt in Ungaziq in the same way: We used to bring one whaleboat from Napaqutaq to Ungaziq, my father’s whaleboat. They pulled it by dogsleds, perhaps ten dog teams tied together and two big sleds. . . . They took many hunters, like eight or nine, even ten. Only men used to go; they always left elders, women, and kids behind. When our men came to Ungaziq for the spring hunt, they stayed with their friends and relatives, but they hunted together in my father’s whaleboat. And after the hunt was over, they used to bring the meat back to Napaqutaq by boat or by dog teams (Vladimir Tagitutkak 1981, in Krupnik 2000, 98).

The Model Develops: The Villages of the 20th Century The community formed at Imtuk followed a different trajectory. Here, the village grew from thirty to forty to eighty people in the late 1800s, so that it was capable of mustering several whaling crews (chapter 2). Then it began attracting new settlers, and its population once again doubled, from 80 to 160, between 1910 and 1930 (chapter 4). The new community in Imtuk featured a combination of traditional and new institutions. A prosperous whaling village, it had several kin-based hunting crews and its social life was built around collaboration among constituent tribal segments and large patrilineages. On the other hand, other elements of the traditional social order, like tribal and clan endogamy, and clan-based residence, were rapidly disappearing. All this made Imtuk’s social system flexible and capable of quickly incorporating members of other tribes. Imtuk represented a new form of residential community capable of sustaining itself successfully through the

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next wave of acculturation. It matters little that Imtuk was abandoned in 1932 as its model was transferred to the neighboring Sighineq (Sireniki) to which people moved (chapter 4). Ugriileq in Emma Harbor, deep inside Provideniya Bay, offered another pattern of a nontraditional residential community, a direct product of the contact era, which was similar to that of many other Native villages that arose across the Arctic around European missions and trading posts (Israel 1978; Taylor 1974). The Yupik population of Ugriileq comprised many fragmented families with a large number of widows, elderly men, foster children, adopted orphans, and kinless sons-in-law incorporated into their stepfamilies (chapter 4). Such a population could hardly form a stable economic and social unit: it owed its existence to the Russian trading post and storehouses. Ugriileq not only lacked a clan organization; also, apparently, no such organization could emerge here. It is no accident that Ugriileq became the hub for the Yupik relocation to Wrangell Island in 1926, one that eventually produced the first European-controlled Yupik community of the modern era.

The Neighborhood Dual Division of Villages Dual division of all residential sites was, perhaps, intrinsic to the Yupik spatial mind. In Nuvuqaq, a deep ravine separated the village area in two “sides,” northern and southern (Fig. 5.5). Yet this division was purely spatial: the halves did not have their own names, and their residents identified themselves only with respect to one another: the Akileghmiit, “living on this side,” and Agkughmiit, “living on the other side.” In Ungaziq, the houses stood in long parallel rows on the old beach ridges left by the ancient shorelines. The rows and thus the clusters of huts and skin-covered tents along the northern shore formed one large group. It was divided by a vast empty space from the houses along the southern side of the cape (Fig. 5.6). The residents of the two village sections had individual names, Pagalighmiit (from pagani, “up there, up in the North”) and Unegkumiit (from uneggken, “from the shore side, from the sea side”): There were only two halves [to Ungaziq]. There was a space in between where no one lived. In the warm months competitions would be held there, foot races and wrestling, it was like a special athletic grounds (Kaigilkun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 26). Waldemar Bogoras confirmed the same topography during his visit in 1901: The spit is in the form of a low ridge sloping on both sides. The continuation of the ridge forms the chief street of the village, separating the houses into two groups. This street is considered to be the way by which the dead and the spirits go to the village, and nobody dares to select a house site on it, so that it remains unoccupied all the time (Bogoras 1975, 535). The dual division created a series of classical symbolic oppositions. The northern side was associated with above; the southern, with below. There were more profane oppositions as

Fig. 5.5: The division of the village of Nuvuqaq (Naukan) in two “halves” (northern and southern “sides”), separated by a deep ravine, is obvious when viewed from the sea. (Photo: Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И–115-10)

Fig. 5.6: The village of Ungaziq in spring 1901. The community is divided in two “halves” represented by separate house clusters, with a large space in between. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, AMNH Library #4115)

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well: the Pagalighmiit were considered “slovenly and common,” and the Unegkumiit, “arrogant boasters.” Of course, each of the halves had its set of clans (chapter 3).4 Traces of similar dual division existed in other old villages. Most often, natural elements split the village area in meaningful segments: the bed of a stream, the turn of the shoreline, a ravine, or a hill. In Ungiyeramket, the valley of the stream divided the territory of the village into two neighborhoods, Ungiyeramket proper, on the northern hill, and Gergullaq on its southern counterpart. In Napaqutaq, all the residents initially lived on the southern side of the Napaqutaq hill. Then some of them moved their houses northward, to a hillock called Sighuk, thus creating a similar dual division of Napaqutaghmiit and Sighugmiit. The village of Sivuqaq (Gambell) on St. Lawrence Island was also divided in two “halves” called Akingaghmiit (“people of the southern side”) and Uwatangaghmiit (“people of the ‘farther’ or northern side”). The two halves were originally separated by a large open area called Qellineq used for sport games, for tribal ceremonies, and as a main meeting place for visitors from Chukotka (Fig. 5.7; Krupnik 2004, 212). It would be no exaggeration to conclude that the classical model of the Yupik village was dual in nature.

Clan and Residential Neighborhoods In our description of the Yupik communities of the late-contact traditional era (chapter 4), we often referred to smaller territorial units that constituted a sort of internal “neighborhoods.” Often the houses of clan members stood together in a compact group making up a clan neighborhood. More common in the late contact-traditional era were neighborhoods with no kinship structure, even though they had locus-type names with the characteristic suffix -miit. Such neighborhoods existed even in small communities where members of only one clan resided or where a few families belonging to different clans did not live

Fig. 5.7: Central place (Qellineq) in Sivuqaq (Gambell) used for sport competitions and daily meetings. The school building was erected at this place in 1895, which was once empty ground between two major village “neighborhoods,” the Uwatangaghmiit and the Akingaghmiit. (Photo by Riley D. Moore, 1912. NAA, Ms 4696, 01480500)

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together at one location. The village neighborhoods served as a spatial regulator that determined the social and economic network of the community. The elders we talked to in the 1970s recalled this body of former names for clans, clan neighborhoods, dual halves, and purely territorial sections of old villages without any differentiation. For the community members, these entities were a familiar element of “social speech” and required no explanation. The anthropologist must devote considerable effort to derive an understanding of the “language” of social life in terms of established anthropological categories (Table 3.1). The example of the clans of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (chapter 3) illustrates how various clan names and, correspondingly, the clan-based neighborhoods appeared in Nuvuqaq, depending upon the time of their residents’ migrations from the nearby villages. In Nuvuqaq as well as in Ungaziq, the village neighborhoods retained a predominantly clan character until the end of the contact-traditional era. In other Yupik tribes where traditional social structure was more severely disrupted, residential neighborhoods had mostly replaced the former clan areas by the early 1900s. With slight variations, this happened in Qiwaaq, Sighineq, and Imtuk, and also in Sivuqaq (Gambell) on St. Lawrence Island. Qiwaaq, for instance, had several neighborhoods that elders of the 1970s often compared with “streets.” The members of the old clans, the Sawqlleghmiit and the Kiyaghnaghmiit, lived on these “streets” interspersed with the Ungazighmiit and the Tasighmiit, who settled among them. In so doing they were clearly aware of the difference between the neighborhood and old clan residential areas within the same village territory: Qemiighaq, that was something completely different, that was just a name. We had three names like that: Qemiighaq, Qiwaaq, Napsungaq. . . . The Qemiighaghmiit aren’t relatives at all. Qemiighaq, that’s like we have here, Matlyu, Karman, places like that [local place names near New Chaplino]. Kiyaghnaq, now that’s another story. We’re considered to be from the same nenglu [old subterranean house], the Kiyaghnaghmiit folks, they’re all our relatives (Ulgugwi 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 88). Qemiighaghmiit or Napsungaghmiit, that a person can change as many times as he wants in his life. He just moves from one place to the other and that’s it. Now Sawqlleghmiit and Kiyaghnaghmiit, that’s with you for life, that doesn’t have anything to do with where you move (Umryrgin 1976). Avan, the main village of the Avatmiit, had something in between. The territory of the village was divided into three sections (chapter 4). The sole remaining “genuine” clan, the Aghqullughmiit, occupied the section nearest the sea. Its members strictly protected their clan neighborhood and, reportedly, did not permit other tribesmen or members of other tribes to settle in their area. The two remaining portions of Avan were, to the contrary, territorial neighborhoods, which is apparent from their names and the composition of their residents. The inhabitants of the middle section were called Akulighmiit, which means “middle dwellers,” or Pengeghqaghmiit, “living on the little hill.” The residents of the section farthest from the sea, the Aywaghmiit (“northern people”) or Pagalighmiit (“those of the northern side”) or Kiiwalighmiit (those from the northeastern, i.e., “distant” side),

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formed the largest and the most heterogeneous neighborhood. This was a mixture of local Avatmiit families and migrants from other Yupik tribes. This neighborhood was also the first to be abandoned in the 1920s when many of its residents moved on to Ugriileq, Imtuk, Wrangell Island, and to the Gulf of Anadyr (chapter 4). With the exception of the Aghqullughmiit clan area, changing one’s residential site within the two other neighborhoods in Avan and, correspondingly, one’s neighborhood affiliation was a free matter: When Tukusa and Aka arrived from Napaqutaq, they first moved into the far end, and so there were considered Aywaghmiit. Later Nepagergen took their sister as his wife, and they moved closer to him and became Pengeghqaghmiit. In Avan we used to have the same names they now have for streets in New Chaplino (Arinaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 66). Nevertheless, the “neighborhood” occupied by the Aghqullughmiit clan remained the core element around which the social order of the Avan community was structured. It is not by chance that Avan neighborhoods, like the clans in other villages, operated their own hunting crews. The community at Avan displayed a model of potential recuperation through residential sections (neighborhoods). Eventually, those neighborhoods could have morphed into quasi-clans by consolidating their residents into viable kin groups, ones that would have offered an acceptable path to integration to the Avatmiit families from other small villages and to newcomers from other tribes. We may argue that the residential neighborhood, like other forms of locus, was an element of the old system and not necessarily the product of the contact era. As the lowest territorial units of traditional community, the neighborhoods served to restore its social structure in case of disruption, population loss, or outmigration.

“Master of the Land” Status institutions were a rarity among the Yupik people. On the Asian side of the Bering Strait and across the North American Arctic, we find none of the great chiefs, military leaders, tribal councils, priests, tribal aristocracy, and other institutions common among other indigenous societies along the Northwest Coast or elsewhere in the North Pacific area. Among the Yupik, statuses were not institutionalized and were not inherited. One became a social leader or a significant person because of one’s actions and age, and not by virtue of membership in a certain social group. Nonetheless, two prescribed leader statuses were known to this society, one being “master of the land,” nunaleggtaq (in CSY, Rubtsova 1971, 377; nunalek in NY, Dobrieva et al. 2004, 136), literally, “possessing the land.” The other was “master of the skin boat,” the leader of a skin boat crew (angyalek, literally “owner of the skin boat”; NY, anyalek). We will address the role of the angyalek together with other lineage institutions in chapter 6. The nunaleggtaq, a designated leader, was an element of the village, that is, of community structure.

The Nunaleggtaq Clan In the large villages, the status of “master of the land” usually belonged to an entire clan. A clan was called nunaleggtaq if it contended to be (and was considered as) the founder or the

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most ancient group in the community. In Nuvuqaq this was the Imtugmiit clan, in Ungaziq the Sanighmelnguut, in Qiwaaq the Kiyaghnaghmiit, and in Avan the Aghqullughmiit. The functions of the nunaleggtaq clan were, however, rather modest, and by no means authoritarian. The “masters of the land” did not possess any real power that allowed them to compel their fellow community members to perform any actions. Rather, it was a type of symbolic sanctioning. Members of the same tribe and people from other villages would normally appeal to the “masters of the land” for permission to move into the village and/ or to settle in one specific section or place. Yet both the request and the permission were apparently symbolic acts, for we never heard from elders of any instance of newcomers receiving a refusal or being expelled. The nunaleggtaq (“master of the land”) clan was the first to open the annual cycle of economic and ritual events within the community. In so doing, it was symbolically the driver of the community’s calendar. The crews from the nunaleggtaq clan were the first to launch their skin boats, initiating the spring hunting season. The other crews could do this on the same day but only after the nunaleggtaq clan had performed the necessary rituals. The nunaleggtaq clan also began the community’s cycle of winter “personal” festivals (chapter 6). We have no indication of any formal tribute paid to the nunaleggtaq clan and its members or of any pressure applied by the nunaleggtaq clan to other groups.

The Nunaleggtaq as Individual Leader In smaller villages, the status of nunaleggtaq was frequently associated with a certain lineage or even an individual. Yupik elders eagerly recalled such individual “masters of the land” from the early 1900s, such as Nanevgaqiya and his son Atatuga in Avan, Yukeruk and his descendants in Sighineq, Gimangqawaawen in Qiwaaq, Ngepawyi in Imtuk, Tanenga in Napaqutaq, and others. In all of these communities, the status of “master of the land” was kept within one lineage and the head of that lineage became a personified nunaleggtaq. The status of nunaleggtaq was like an honorary title and symbolically embodied the idea of tribal and community unity. The nunaleggtaq also served as a sort of ecological regulator of community life. According to elders’ stories, individual nunaleggtaqs used to forecast the weather or determined when in the fall it was permissible to begin picking dry grass used as insulation for interior sleeping chambers (aagra, pl. aagrat) in winter houses (Krupnik 2000, 38, 50, 62, 71). As much as we are tempted to view the nunaleggtaq as guardian of the traditional norms of land use, we have no evidence that he had real power to forbid any ecologically harmful or unreasonable deeds, let alone punish anyone for failing to follow his bidding. Sanctions in Yupik society commonly originated in the other world, that is, in the supernatural realm, and could in no way emanate from the nunaleggtaq. There was a “master of the land” in each village or settlement, no matter how small. Naturally, only men could be nunaleggtaq in this patrilineal social system. The people perceived the “master of the land” as a symbol of the community, and if he had a strong personality, then he became the true leader. In any case, he stood the best chance of assuming this role. In the idealized view of the “old life,” individual nunaleggtaqs often appear as community leaders: They’d come to us in Chaplino [Ungaziq] for the great festival in the summer, in June or July. . . . One or two skin boats would come from every village. There’d

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also be a big skin boat from Avan, their head person was Nanevgaqiya, but he came only very rarely. And in Qiwaaq, the head person was Gimangqawaawen, Ulgugyi’s father, he was the best hunter they had. He came often. The main person also came from Imtuk, that was Ngepawyi, Galgata’s father. The head person in Sireniki, Angqawyi [son of Yukeruk], would also come. He would direct the landing of the skin boats in the crashing surf. . . . When the surf was high it was always the main elder men who were in charge (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 231). In newly established communities, the “master of the land” was always the founder of the village, usually the captain of the boat that had brought the first settlers. The land “belonged” to him personally, and upon his death, this status was transferred to one of his patrilineal heirs: usually, the eldest son, but also a brother or a male cousin. In Uwellkal, the first nunaleggtaq was Aliiqan from the Sanighmelnguut clan; after his death, his relatives retained this status despite the presence of more senior men in other clans: Aliiqan was the nunaleggtaq, he was listened to. Up till the Soviets came he was completely in charge. But to forbid people, for example, from marrying or something, that he couldn’t do. If he said not to set off on a hunt, people wouldn’t go. And the nunaleggtaq was supposed to remain in his own clan. There was only him for the whole village. Not every clan had its own nunaleggtaq. Here the Sanighmelnguut were the nunaleggtaqs. . . . After Aliiqan’s death it was Mekelli [his nephew]; he was then the eldest in the family. During the war, when many died of the flu, it was my husband Qiiputkaq [younger brother of Mekelli]. And now Gennadii Anana is like a nunaleggtaq, so we call him Aliiqan in our language, for he bears the spirit of Aliiqan (Ekaterina Kutkhaun 1976).

The Ritual Role of the Nunaleggtaq The nunaleggtaq also personified the living tie with the land, with the ancient inhabitants, and with deceased ancestors. The spirits of the dead filled the entire space of the Yupik land, and so that life would continue without disruption, the living had to “feed” the dead, even with symbolic offerings. For this reason one of the main functions of the nunaleggtaq was to look after, that is, to regularly “feed” old underground houses and vertical whale jawbone poles that symbolized the spirits of the ancient “masters of the village.” This custom was undoubtedly ancient and was prevalent among all the Northeast Asian maritime people, the Yupik, Chukchi, and Koryak alike (Bogoras 1975, 391, 412; Vdovin 1961; 1971, 276; 1977, 139). Early Russian visitor Lieutenant Aleksei Lazarev observed it firsthand in the summer of 1821 in the Chukchi village of Nunyama (Nunyamo). Having spent time with the sailors, the “village elder,” as Lazarev called him, applied bits of the chewing tobacco the Russians had provided as a gift to the ancient poles and to the whale jaws standing on the outskirts of the village: “To our question about what this meant, [he] answered that they were sacrifices. . . . They say that they offer part of every hunt this way. There are sacrificial altars like these in every settlement, as we later saw them everywhere” (Lazarev 1822, 76). Most likely, the person who performed the feeding was the “master of the land” of Nunyama.

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By the 20th century, the old ritual structures made of whale jaws and skulls had fallen to ruin almost everywhere. The rite of feeding the ancestors was usually conducted at the old abandoned underground houses. In Uwellkal, for example, new settlers did not encounter any of the former residents but did find the ruins of numerous underground houses. The newly arrived Ungazighmiit and their head Aliiqan viewed these ruins as symbols of their ancestors. Aliiqan didn’t meet any Wallqaraghmiit [people from the underground houses] here when he came. They had died of starvation. It was never said that he asked anyone here for permission to settle. But those people were remembered well, their names and how they lived. The elders remembered, but we don’t remember. Aliiqan fed these dugouts (Ekaterina Kutkhaun 1976).5

The Umiilek It would be a mistake to consider the nunaleggtaq as a strong figure in Yupik society. To use a contemporary analogy, he was rather something along the lines of the European royals, but in no way the prime minister. Real prominent figures and community leaders became such because of their personal merits. Yupik lore is rich in narratives about strong but harsh and unjust community leaders, who often taunted their neighbors and mistreated orphans, the heroes of many folk stories (chapter 7). Such strong leaders are called in the lore by the word umiilek (pl. umiilget) meaning “strong man,” “wealthy man” (in CSY; ­umialek in NY).6 The term almost certainly originated from the word umialik, “owner of the skin boat,” in the Alaska Inupiaq language. It would be natural to suppose that the elders retained many names of such strong people and outstanding personalities who left their mark on their recent history. Yet none of our efforts to identify individual umiileks of the late 1800s or even early 1900s met with success. Neither Quwaaren nor Sunbrown nor other Yupik leaders of the late ­contact-traditional era were ever named umiilek. Besides its application to old-era lore characters, this word was used only in reference to representatives of Russian officials, such as Georgii Ushakov on Wrangell Island (Ushakov 1972), or to Native leaders of the Soviet period, like village council chairmen, collective farm (kolkhoz) chairs, and so on. One may assume that in the late contact-traditional society the umiileks were not true social figures or role leaders, but more lore characters, who probably personified institutions and forms of social behavior from an earlier era (chapter 7).

Exchange and Contacts The Yupik village with its territorial features, social institutions, and well-tuned rhythm of life seemed to be a sustainable world. Its structure echoes that of the Yupik universe. Nearby was the sea, the dwelling place of Megem-aghna, the Sea-Woman, the sovereign of the “lower world” and of the sea mammals, the staples of Yupik life. Above were the sky and the vaguer celestial beings, the people of the “upper world,” who impart ethics and social standards to the human world. In the middle of this vertical axis was the village,

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nunaaq, which integrally joins and completes the whole composition. In the mythological worldview, there is nothing beyond the limits of the nunaaq. It is another matter in reality. In the horizontal plane were not different worlds or mythological spaces but actual neighboring villages, that is, other communities. Each individual village differed from the others in its specific location, its set of local resources, and the peculiar skills of its residents. Some were exceptionally good sites for hunting whales or walrus; others were better suited for catching seals or fishing or had large bird colonies nearby. The very diversity of Yupik villages explained the need for trade ties and regulated contacts between them. For all the independence and autonomy of the locus-based social system, it was impossible to have neighbors living close by and not be in touch with them.

“Gone with the Ice” Elders often recalled how their fathers or grandfathers disappeared into the sea, drifting away on moving ice floes during a winter hunt. Often this ended in tragedy: hunters perished, and their families and relatives starved and suffered. If the outcome was a happy one, the hunters were often lucky to make their way onto solid ground in a familiar place, where they had relatives or trade partners. It was a different story when hunters were carried into a completely unknown area, where their tribe was unknown, where their language was unintelligible, and where they had no acquaintances. Old narratives were rife with spine-chilling tales of how in days of yore, those who chanced upon strange villages were killed, often in a tortuous way (Bogoras 1975, 656–657; Burch 1975, 24–25; 2005, 29–30; Ray 1983, 15). This tradition holds that there was no room for a stranger in a close group of kinsmen. The stranger’s lot was indeed a bitter one. If he was not killed he had to hide, living the life of a hunted loner, gradually losing his human appearance (Gurvich 1975), or he was turned into a slave or serf (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985). We could not record any true story with real names of hunters who drifted away on ice and were mistreated by members of other groups. In contradiction to the xenophobic tradition of the lore, neighbors near and far invariably came to the aid of those who had suffered misfortune. Quite characteristic was the story of several Ungazighmiit hunters carried off to sea in the winter of 1929 (Ashkamakin 2004). With great hardship, they were able to make their way back to the mainland, somewhere between Cape Chukotsky and Qiwaaq, after spending two weeks on the ocean ice: When we came out onto the shore, many fell down and couldn’t walk any further, especially the elderly. . . . Those of us who were younger set out for Qiwaaq. The people of Qiwaaq had long seen us coming from the shore and set out to meet us on dogsled. Qillghhun [a fellow tribesman of the unfortunates] was the first to arrive and brought us a bag of nunivak, a sour plant. It was a very good thing he did, because our mouths had dried out and we probably would have been unable to eat meat. We arrived in Qiwaaq, and all of us were put up for the night in their yarangas. . . . And in the morning we woke up and our legs had swollen. We probably stayed in bed for two weeks in Qiwaaq, and then they took us home on dogsleds (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 139–140).

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Qiwaaq, as we recall, was the place of the Qiwaaghmiit, a neighboring tribe. The relations between these two groups had been close, as people spoke the same language and knew each other well. Yet others who had suffered misfortune were similarly received well and offered help (Fig. 5.8): People carried off on ice floes were usually awaited until summer. Because the Sivuqaghmiit [the residents of St. Lawrence Island] often rescue us. And look after us. If the winter passed and the summer came and they didn’t bring them to us through the open water, it means they died. Because the ice had melted completely—where else could they be? Then the women were free to marry again (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 144–145). A whaleboat from Chaplino was once carried out to sea in the winter, Muumetaaq was the captain. They were carried farther even than St. Lawrence Island. They couldn’t eat because they had gotten salt in their mouth . . . Later they were found by hunters from St. Lawrence Island, who towed them back with them. There they cared for them, fed them, and brought them back to Chaplino. Two whaleboats accompanied them, and their American teacher came along too. . . . When they came, our people held a huge celebration in Chaplino because they had been saved. Then they went home (Vladimir Tiyato 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 143).

Wars and Raids Contacts of course were not limited solely to trade exchange or mutual assistance in the case of accidents. Moreover, they were not always peaceful. War, the inevitable companion of traditional society, was well known to the Yupik and their neighbors, both in Chukotka and in Alaska (Bogoras 1901, 47a; 1975 [1909], 656–657; Burch 1988; 2005; FienupRiordan 1994; Nefyodkin 2003; Vdovin 1965). True, by the 1970s, we encountered almost no living memories of intertribal wars or raids around Bering Strait, because these wars evidently ceased by the early to mid-19th century (chapter 7). Nor were later anthropologists working with Yupik elders in Chukotka more successful (Golovko and Schweitzer 2001). Though we have no evidence of open hostilities during the late contact-traditional era, the rowdy and bullying behavior of the Ungazighmiit on their annual visits to Sivuqaq (Gambell) was well documented in the reports of American missionaries in 1898–1903 (Campbell 1903; Doty 1900; Lerrigo 1901; 1902). Motifs related to the former wars and raids were, nonetheless, very prominent in the oral tradition about the “distant past” (ungipaghaatet), particularly among the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 324–327). Also, the “Siberian” raids, that is, those undertaken by Asian warriors, are well remembered on St. Lawrence Island and on the Alaska side (Golovko and Schweitzer 2001; Krupnik 2004; field notes, 1991; Sheppard 2009; Silook 1976; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989). To get to the true record of Yupik wars and warfare, one has to look into the sources from the early 1800s, even the 1700s, which will be discussed in chapter 7.

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Fig. 5.8: Ulgugwi/Ulgugyi (1912–1983), “the American,” and his wife Tekeghaghmii (1912–1980), both from Qiwaaq. As a young boy on a hunting crew, Ulgugwi was drifted away to Gambell, St. Lawrence Island around 1926. For a few months, he attended local school and preserved some knowledge of colloquial English for the rest of his life. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, 1977, New Chaplino)

Intertribal and Interethnic Marriages Regardless of the history of warfare in the distant past, hostilities in traditional society bore precious little resemblance to modern conflicts. Feuding tribes and communities did not sever the trade, cultural, and personal ties that had existed from the earliest times (Burch 2005). It was essential to know one’s neighbors and to exchange information about ice conditions, marine mammal migrations, and so on, as well as about social and everyday affairs. It would seem that the closed nature and self-sufficiency of each village community, tribe, and clan would leave little room for intertribal or intervillage, let alone ethnically mixed, marriages to become an active channel for contacts. Yet this was true only on the level of social grammar. For the numerous Ungazighmiit, intertribal marriages were sooner the exception. However, the weaker tribes to the west—the Sighineghmiit, the Avatmiit, and the Qiwaaghmiit—regularly sought marriage partners from among the neighboring communities. There were many wives from the Diomede Islands in Nuvuqaq and in the neighboring Chukchi village of Ualeq/Uelen. Intertribal marriages, definitely an old phenomenon, created a network of relations that were actively used. Interethnic marriages with the Chukchi, on the other hand, were a rare occurrence, at least in the early 1900s. In the past, according to dim recollections and oral stories, the Ungazighmiit sometimes gave their women as wives to the Chukchi reindeer herders. Memories of such women quickly disappeared, and they did not so much strengthen actual ties as serve as a sort of tax or tribute to the nomads, upon whose assistance the coastal

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hunters in many ways depended. It is no surprise that both the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit sought to offer orphans and widows who had no relatives or women from other tribes captured in raids. For the Ungazighmiit of the earlier era, these were mainly women prisoners from St. Lawrence Island, and for the Nuvuqaghmiit, those from the Diomede Islands and the Alaska coast beyond. Much more frequent were marriages to the Chukchi among the smaller Yupik tribes neighboring the large Chukchi communities and reindeer camps. Around 1920, guests from St. Lawrence Island visiting the Chukchi village of Nunligran met a Yupik woman named Tuluq from Avan. Tuluq, the only person in Nunligran who spoke their language, immediately became the go-between. When they told her that a whale had been killed in Imtuk and that there was an abundance of meat there, Chukchi from Nunligran decided to set out for Imtuk in their skin boats, under the leadership of Tuluq (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 125–127). In addition to Yupik women who were married into Chukchi camps, individual Chukchi men joined Yupik communities, bridging the inland herders and the coastal hunters. The names of some of these men—Wangtugergen in Sighineq, Qisimpu in Ugriileq, Nunegnilan in Nuvuqaq—surface elsewhere in this book. Patrilineality, as stated (chapter 3), was the general rule for filiation among the Yupik, as children commonly inherited their father’s ethnic, tribal, and clan membership. Correspondingly, the descendants of Yupik women married off into the tundra or coastal Chukchi communities considered themselves Chukchi.7 The children of Chukchi men without relatives who had joined Yupik communities often, but not always, became Yupik by language and identity, like the offspring of the above-mentioned Wangtugergen in Sighineq and Tayan, the son of Qisimpu, in Ugriileq and on Wrangell Island. Yet the basic rule remained the same: the descendants of mixed Native marriages did not have dual identity and usually were members of their father’s group. The situation with Yupik-European mixed offspring was different. The number of racially mixed children grew rapidly in the last third of the 19th century, when American whaling schooners deluged the Bering Strait. The testimonies of the era on the relations between sailors and Native women are frequently, and evidently with justification, portrayed in gloomy tones. Under the influence of the whalers, prostitution arose in Native communities frequented by whaling ships (Bockstoce 1986, 194; Bogoras 1901, 53a; Kalinnikov 1912, 173; Schweitzer 1989, 24–25). We have not, however, found personal names of mixed people in genealogies earlier than the late 19th century, though some people of supposedly mixed origin could be spotted on photographs from the 1880s and 1890s (Fig. 5.9). Similarly, we know of no instances of stable relations or marriages of European men to Native women prior to the 1900s (chapter 1), let alone the reverse. The rare mixed offspring of the contact-traditional era did not become a special channel for Yupik-European interaction. The Russians did not identify them as a distinct social group, like the “Creoles” in Russian colonies in Alaska or in Kamchatka. In the absence of European fathers, half-breeds entered Yupik society on equal terms. They were fully affiliated in the families of men who adopted them, that is, of their social fathers. By the end of the contact-traditional era, most of the descendants of mixed unions were still primarily children or youth and were unable to act as active cultural middlemen for their communities or for the European newcomers.

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Information Exchange In addition to intertribal and interethnic marriages, other components of the social net­work provided information exchange. These were various forms of partnerships and pseudo-kin ties as, for instance, so-called spouse-exchange marriages (chapter 6). There were also widely used trade jargons, intercommunity visitations and exchange (see below), and other ties brought by the contact-traditional era. An effective “oral telegraph” was in operation along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula, which conveyed information about marriages, deaths, prospective marriage partners, and local events from village to village. This flow of information created a living fabric of intercommunity and intertribal contact, often over large areas. In the spring of 1881, American sailors from the USS Thomas Corwin, anchored in St. Lawrence (Lavrentiya) Bay, learned of the demise of the American whaling vessel Vigilant. Eight months prior, the smashed schooner with its dead crew had been discovered by Chukchi hunters at Cape Serdtse-Kamen on the Arctic shore of the Chukchi Peninsula, that is, hundreds of kilometers from St. Lawrence Bay. However, local people knew the story in every detail, to the astonishment and even suspicion of the Americans (Hooper 1884, 9–10). Finding a European vessel was a truly remarkable event, and “the story had traveled from one settlement to another thus far down the coast. . . . We had heard substantially the same story earlier at St. Lawrence Island” (Muir 1917, 31). Cultural exchange also included the symbolic and spiritual sphere. This was channeled primarily through ritual and symbolic actions—dances, festivals, and athletic performances, always with a competitive component. Unlike the usual information stream that encompassed more or less the entire Chukchi Peninsula, the system of cultural exchange had its own communication junctions attached to the largest communities that

Fig. 5.9: Yupik residents of Ungaziq on board the steamer USS Bear in summer 1886. The woman in the middle (with a child) is obviously of mixed race. This is one of the earliest images of an adult Native person of mixed origin in the Bering Strait area (Photo by Lieutenant Charles Kennedy. PSU #25)

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acted as connection “hubs” along the Asian coast and across the Bering Strait. In the southern area, Ungaziq was one such hub in unifying the entire southern section of the Yupik land in Asia with the main axis of contacts directed toward St. Lawrence Island. In the Cape Dezhnev area, Nuvuqaq served as a similar communication center, together with the nearby Chukchi community of Ualeq/Uelen. From here, the trade routes and kin and marriage partnerships extended across Bering Strait, from the northeastern tip of Asia to Diomede and King islands and onto Seward Peninsula, Alaska (Kingston 2000; Schweitzer and Golovko 1995; 1997).

Intertribal Gatherings and Festivals People’s gatherings in the Bering Strait region often assumed the special form of intertribal festivals. Such festivals invariably involved intercommunity sport games, bartering, group dances, and mass exchange of gifts. We have many accounts of such gatherings in Yupik lore, narratives from the early 1900s, early photographs, and historical sources (Bogoras 1975, 264–268; Doty 1900, 188; Menovshchikov 1987, 212–215; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 315–316; Rubtsova 1954,74–75), as well as the memories of Yupik elders in the 1970s: In the spring the Sivuqaghmiit always used to come to visit in Ungaziq. In May or June. With good weather it only took eight hours with an outboard motor. Longer with paddles and sails, of course. They’d come for two or three days. They were met, folk dances were performed, and we’d have dance competitions with them. Their dances are quite similar to ours. We’d also have foot races, running on a circular path. We call that aqfaqughviik. There were two circles, a large one and a small one. So they’d run around the circle to see who could run longest. Then there was wrestling without kukhlyankas [reindeer skin coats], wearing only fur pants (Vladimir Tiyato 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 235; Fig. 5.10). Earlier they used to come here to Chaplino for the great festival in the summer, in June or July. From Sireniki, Kivak (Qiwaaq), Avan, Chukchi from Yanrakynnot, and the Sivuqaghmiit in their skin boats. Then there’d be big competitions. And Galmugyi hold a celebration too, they’d toss a person into the air using a walrus hide. And they’d play ball, men and women in their own teams, to see who could keep the ball longest. Everyone would play, our guests right along with us. They’d come on skin boats with sails, and everyone stayed with their friends in Chaplino. One or two large skin boats would come from every village (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 231; Fig. 5.11). Although contacts with St. Lawrence Island were primarily oriented via Ungaziq, they also included other villages of the southeastern Chukchi Peninsula, as attested by the following story: When summer came people’d come to Sivuqaq on skin boats from Ungaziq, Avan, Ugriileq, and Sighineq. Once they arrived they’d drag the boats onto the land. Then they’d disperse among the various yarangas. Later, when they’d finished, the hosts said: “Now we’ll have the competition.”. . . After spending one night the guests would set out for their home settlements (Rubtsova 1954, 74–75).

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Fig. 5.10: Men’s races in Ungaziq. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, spring 1901. AMNH Library #2496) .

Fig. 5.11: Communal festival in Ungaziq: tossing on a walrus hide. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, spring 1901. AMNH Library #2518)

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The oral tradition of the islanders is rich with similar narratives (Silook 1976, 6–7, 10– 16; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1985, 49; 1987, 137–143). According to elders’ memories, in Sivuqaq (Gambell) when boats from Chukotka arrived on summer visits, people played group ball games at three special locations (Fig. 5.12). Village “strong men” wrestled with their mainland competitors, and the runners raced on the circular route for foot-racing, called Kilgaaqu, nearly 3.5 kilometers (2 miles) long (Krupnik 2004, 214). Besides athletic competitions, dances, and joint feasts, certain magic and ritual acts were also included (Silook 1976, 7–10). Unfortunately, the memories were scarce in this regard among the elders whom we interviewed fifty, even seventy years later. The lives of regular people would naturally become interwoven into such big ritualized gatherings. They would find themselves new spouses, as in the story we cited in chapter 4 about the marriage of Yuupeni from Nunak and Ughyaq (Uriaq), a Diomede woman. Others would use such gatherings to check the opportunities for resettling. Around 1922, the young hunter Walanga moved from Avan to St. Lawrence Island with his family of two wives and several children. His descendants are still thriving in Gambell today. Walanga left with his two wives. He was an orphan and didn’t have close relatives, he was reared by Epekaak. Walanga and his wives left in a skin boat with the Sivuqaghmiit. From there they came to Avan on a visit one spring. He got his things together and left with them. They had probably made all the arrangements some time earlier (Petr Napaun 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 255).

Traveling and Visiting Regular journeys and visitations were less institutionalized but much more frequent during the contact-traditional era. People frequently took trips to other communities, often over great distances. From the southern Yupik villages from Ungaziq to Sighineq, men in skin boats, sometimes with their families, would regularly travel to the mouth of the Anadyr River and even some distance upriver to the nomadic Chukchi camps, a trip of several weeks and over 1,100–1,200 kilometers (700–800 miles) one way (Bogoras 1975, 59; chapter 4). People from Nuvuqaq did go south, visiting Nome and Ungaziq, but they largely made trading and hunting voyages along the Arctic coast up to Kolyuchin Bay and North Cape (Cape Shmidt; Bogoras 1975, 57). Such journeys were economically motivated and were aimed at securing special goods, in particular reindeer hides for clothing that were obtained in trading with reindeer herders (see below). They also provided an outlet for curiosity and the urge to see the outside world. Such travels should not be confused with resettlements. Travels widened people’s experience and brought new knowledge. Each community had individuals known to be fond of long journeys and wanderings. When a system of regular local communication was established about 1925 to serve the nascent Soviet administration, dog drivers and, later, postmen were easily recruited among the Yupik and the Chukchi. They fulfilled in a new form the same need of spreading information. Yet in elders’ memories the trips of the old days were portrayed primarily in terms of economic interest:

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Fig. 5.12: Men and women playing ball games at a summer festival in Ungaziq, 1928 or 1929(?). (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE, #И–115-98)

The old man Tiwla and my grandfather Pangawyi used to row to Anadyr every year, before we had outboards. Then, with porterage like barge haulers, they’d make their way up the Anadyr River. In the early spring they’d kill walruses, bearded seals, ringed seals, and make skin lines, bearded seal hides, and walrus meat, too. And from there they’d bring deer hides and meat. In my lifetime this was done by whaleboat, but they say it used to be done in large skin boats (Vladimir Yatta, in Krupnik 2000, 233). In the spring skin boats from various Yupik villages would regularly file toward Anadyr, moving along the coast as on a routine navigation course. Boats would sometimes gather from different villages and proceed as a caravan. When I was young, from the shore I saw people from Kivak (Qiwaaq), Chaplino (Ungaziq), and Avan passing us in Sireniki on the way to Anadyr. They went in the big skin boats, ayuqllighhtaq. Here we didn’t have boats like those, we’d buy them on Sivuqaq, we didn’t make them ourselves (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 232). The constant mention of Anadyr in the narratives confirms that at a certain point trips to the reindeer Chukchi camps began to be combined with visits to the Russian posts to trade furs, to purchase scarce goods, and to become familiar with the strange world of the foreigners. Around 1890, at the insistence of the Russian authorities, the summer fair, which earlier had been held in the open tundra north of the mouth of the Anadyr River, was moved to the newly founded post of Novo-Mariinsk. Fairs were held here twice a year: in the spring, when the maritime hunters and reindeer herders would meet by dog and reindeer team; and in the summer, when the coastal people could travel in boats, prior to the arrival of the visiting Russian steamer. Some ten to fifteen large skin boats from various Yupik communities would come together (Bogoras 1975, 59). Trips to Anadyr were timed to coincide with trade needs. On this long route, with the unavoidable numerous stops, traveling was possible only with the support and hospitality of the local residents. And it is here that the traditional institution of hospitality demonstrated its

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exceptional effectiveness, as travelers could count on a warm reception almost everywhere. In each of the villages, they could stay with relatives, partners, “friends,” and fellow tribesmen. When I went by dogsled to Anadyr [about 1932], I’d stay with Amqenga, he’s my cousin, in Nutapelmen. And in Uwellkal, with Qelaq, he’s my mother’s cousin. In Sireniki we’d spend the night with Angqawyi, he married one of ours, a Laakaghmii. In Qiwaaq we stayed with Qillghhun, he’s a Laakaghmii too. In Avan I was at Qaygeghaq’s, because our fathers were great friends, and I was in Imtuk only once, I stayed with Nutawyi, because he’s from Chaplino too (Ivan Ashkamakin 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 234). As one might imagine, the arrival of a caravan of skin boats or dog teams placed a considerable burden on the hosts who had to accommodate, feed, and provide warmth for the travelers. I was quite small, we set out for Anadyr on a whaleboat [about 1926]. In Quyngiiq [Quyngegergen] they’d host guests. Every kinsman was told “come to us, your kinsmen.” The friendly Laakaghmiit would have a festival together with the Quyngikians. They’d call everyone. They’d straighten up the yarangas. At two o’clock in the morning they take things to eat and drink around to all the guests, and call on them to visit—“come eat with us!” They’d invite everyone again for the next day, so that the guests would come when they woke up. The house was full of guests, drinking tea, eating. The polog [sleeping chamber] was full of guests, and the same thing was going on in the other yarangas as well. When it got light they’d give presents, the leftovers of cooked food. They’d bring the old men and the old women to have something to eat, they’d cook up all kinds of food (Ippi 1981). Visiting and hospitality standards encompassed Yupik and Chukchi villages equally: My father went to trade hides in Yanrakynnot, Anadyr, and Uwellkal in a skin boat with sails and paddles. He’d cut bearded seal skins for ropes, and mother would make torbasa [skin boots], and father would set out, he’d be gone the whole summer long. Once they spent the winter in Nunligran with the Chukchis. And they were brought back by a lot of dogsleds, probably 50 of them. Because there were a lot of people, many brought their families with them and their children too (Zinaida Anaka 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 234). Analogous to such trips were the trade routes of the Nuvuqaghmiit along the Arctic shore of the Chukchi Peninsula to Kolyuchin Bay and farther west. Here, too, regular gatherings and trade fairs took place (Bogoras 1975, 64–67), although these were less vividly remembered in the 1970s. Since the 1700s, Native contacts formed a continuous trading network stretching from the Bering Strait all along the Arctic coast up to the mouth of the Kolyma River some 1,200 kilometers (800 miles) to the west.8 The Nuvuqaghmiit and their neighbors, the Uelen Chukchi, controlled the eastern section of this trade network and spread their influence across Bering Strait via the Diomede Islands to Alaska.

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Crossing the strait with a stop on one of the Diomede Islands, the skin boats from Nuvuqaq and Uelen usually tried to avoid Cape Prince of Wales, with its large and aggressive Inupiat community of Kingingin (Kiighi, Wales). From here they would usually travel south, to the traditional Native summer fair on the Seward Peninsula at Port Clarence (present-day Teller) or to Nome, the booming town of gold prospectors (Rasmussen 1927, 357). Another regular route was along the northern shore of Seward Peninsula, toward another Native fair near today’s town of Kotzebue. The Nuvuqaghmiit and Chukchi trips to Kotzebue Sound, and the local Inupiat names for Nuvuqaq and Ualeq/Uelen, Nugghaq and Uoleq, respectively, are well remembered by the Inupiaq elders on the Seward Peninsula.9

Yupik-Chukchi Contacts The network of Yupik-Chukchi contacts, besides individual marriages and old genealogical tradition, was rooted in economic cooperation and regular, long-standing trade partnerships. Such age-old cooperation united coastal hunters with the reindeer herders of the tundra camps. The two subsistence patterns, maritime and inland, formed a symbiotically tied system (Krupnik 1993, 119–121, 211–212). To maintain the functioning exchange system, regular trade was required. Not surprisingly, it was conducted following certain institutionalized norms. The coastal hunters needed reindeer hides, an irreplaceable material used to make warm winter clothing, above all for men who went to hunt at sea. Reindeer meat, or “sweet meat,” as it was called by Yupik elders, was also considered a delicacy. For their part, the tundra nomads also needed the products of the coastal hunt: strong ropes made from sea mammal hides, sturdy soles for footwear, and blubber to heat the herders’ tents in wintertime. Sea mammal meat was also an important food for herders. In a word, both sides had a direct economic interest in regular trade. Yet beginning in the mid-19th century, contacts with American whalers, and subsequently with fur traders, introduced new items into the Yupik-Chukchi trade, such as tobacco, tea, cartridges for American-made rifles, sugar, biscuits, and flour. These and other items could now be provided by the coastal dwellers, who exchanged them from the trading schooners. The whole system of Yupik-Chukchi relations tilted toward specialized trading voyages from the coastal communities to the established meeting places where the products needed by both sides would be exchanged. At the end of the summer and in early fall, groups of Yupik men in skin boats or even on foot would travel up the rivers emptying into the Bering and Chukchi seas to the sites where the Chukchi camps could be found with their herds. Often the herders moved closer to the shore to facilitate communication. On the Yupik side, only men were engaged in these operations. As a result, many (most?) of the Yupik men were somewhat fluent in Chukchi because they spoke it on their visits to the tundra camps or on trading trips along the coast. Knowledge of the Chukchi language by women and children was mostly passive, at best. Contacts with the Chukchi herders were fundamental to Yupik life during the contact-traditional era and certainly in earlier times (chapter 7). Over the course of generations, firm ties were established between individual Yupik villages and specific groups or camps of reindeer herders. The Sighineghmiit and the Avatmiit had their trade partners in the herders’ camps along the Kurupka River, that is, among their close neighbors. The

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Ungazighmiit did not have reindeer herders in their immediate proximity, and they pursued regular trade some 150–180 kilometers (100 miles) to the north of Cape Chaplin, near the Getlyangen Lagoon and Mechigmen Bay. The prosperous herders who lived there were worthy partners for the well-stocked and entrepreneurial Ungazighmiit. The less prosperous Napaqutaghmiit on Itygran Island were content with their modest, yet close, trading partners who lived around Penkigney Bay and near the modern town of Yanrakynnot. The Nuvuqaghmiit would make trips of up to 250 kilometers (150 miles) to Kolyuchin Bay to meet with their Chukchi partners from among inland herders living in the Yoni Lake region.

Yupik-Chukchi Partnership Yupik-Chukchi exchange, though not trade in the full sense, and certainly not monetary, presupposed strong personal contacts between the partners. Each Yupik and Chukchi family usually knew precisely with whom they would barter. Yupik elders readily recalled that each had a “Chukchi friend” among the herders with whom they had been trading for many years and with whom the families had made friends. Such partnerships were often maintained for decades, even generations, passed from father to son. The cultural distance between the coastal and tundra folks was quite visible, and even the closest partnership was wrapped with a plethora of stereotypes. Regardless, both sides tried to lend a fairly harmonious character to their contacts. In our family the word aiwan [“Yupik” in Chukchi] was considered a bad word, not respectful. We used it in discussions among ourselves, but mother kept a very strict watch and would caution us never to refer to Eskimos that way in conversation. It wasn’t polite. In conversation one had to say angqallit, which means sea-dwellers, marine people. Among themselves Chukchi sometimes say “murgyn aiwan”—my Eskimo—when referring to their partners. But I think s­ aying that to an Eskimo’s face would be embarrassing (Tumgina 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 229). For their part, the Yupik tried to stress kind, respectful relations with the reindeer herders: In general we Ungazighmiit got along well with the reindeer herders. We always tried to give our best to the Chukchi. The Chukchi themselves think that we treat them well. We sometimes gave our women as wives to Chukchi men (Lyudmila Ainana 1976).

Yupik Attempts at Reindeer Herding In addition to regular trading with the Chukchi herders, individual Yupik families often turned to reindeer herding. This had also happened in the past when groups of impoverished coastal dwellers would go to the tundra, join reindeer Chukchi, and quickly be assimilated by them. For the Sighineghmiit of the mid-20th century, the former inhabitants of Saanlek, the Saanlegmiit, were remembered as “true Eskimos.” Yet, Bogoras, who in spring 1901 passed through the then abandoned village of Saanlek, reported that “a portion of its inhabitants, to save themselves from starvation, turned to reindeer herding and merged with

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the Chukchis” (Bogoras 1901, 28; 1975 [1904], 29). This reference may be supported by the narrative of the funeral of Nganganga, a respected leader of the Saanlegmiit in Sireniki, who died in 1948: Our grandfather was a true Saanlegmii, a Walwuraghmii. I know that he still had some relatives in Nunligran, Qetugyi, Ketellqot, and others. They all are Chukchi. When grandfather died, these Qetugyi and Ketellqot, his Chukchi relatives, they came from Nunligran to the funeral. They were beautifully clothed, all their skins were new, and their kukhlyankas [upper fur parkas] were embroidered. They took everything off and used it to dress grandfather. And they buried him the Chukchi way (Aleksandra Parina 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 441). A new phase in the life of the Alaska Eskimos, both Yup’ik and Inupiat, started in 1892 with the introduction of reindeer herding in Alaska. The several hundred domesticated reindeer imported from Siberia marked the beginning of a new form of economy in which dozens of Alaska Eskimo families were soon involved (Burch 2012; Hunt 1975; Ray 1975). By 1910, some twenty Yupik families were also engaged in reindeer herding on St. Lawrence Island (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 55–65); many of them traced their origins to Chukotkan settlers from Qiwaaq and Ungaziq. This development had no counterpart in any attempts at Yupik herding on the Asian side. Here, reindeer were and are tended primarily by Chukchi. A few Yupik families that acquired some reindeer would rather give them to their Chukchi neighbors to tend. This also occurred even in the rare cases when individual Yupik families would leave the large villages and live in small camps near the reindeer herders, like the residents of Singhaq in the 1920s (chapter 4): In Singhaq my grandfather did almost no hunting. We had our own herd of reindeer there. They’d graze there along with those of the Kurupka (River) people [nomadic Chukchi], our own reindeer. Those reindeer are still considered ours today, they belong to my youngest sister. Of course there weren’t many, it was a small herd. And Ayngawyi’s reindeer were there too (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 114). Some Ungazighmiit and Qiwaaghmiit families had their reindeer herded by the Nangupagaghmiit neighbors around the bays and fjords of Cape Chaplin. In general, however, the experiments in Yupik herding met with little success, especially compared with the similar attempts in Alaska. A few Yupik families who set out into the tundra ultimately returned to the coastal villages or mixed with the Chukchi, like the children of the above-mentioned Ayngawyi from Singhaq. The reindeer herds that reportedly belonged to the Yupik soon died (Bogdanovich 1901, 209; Vdovin 1965, 171). In other instances, as in the story about Saanlegmiit “relatives” at Nganganga’s funeral, the Yupik who turned to reindeer breeding became quickly assimilated into the Chukchi. In the contact-traditional society, economic patterns had always been cloaked in ethnic and language dresses. It meant not only that the Chukchi were reindeer breeders and the Yupik maritime hunters, but that everyone who was engaged in reindeer breeding was viewed as a Chukchi, in spite of one’s origin.

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Conclusion The social “speech” of Yupik community life was built in a flexible and dynamic way that offered various strategies in the event of change. In times of economic prosperity, villages grew in size; this led to the formation of large, complexly organized communities with diverse networks of contacts and internal institutions, as we see in Ungaziq and Nuvuqaq. Stable in the ideal, this model, nonetheless, was challenged by many disruptive factors, which by no means were introduced exclusively from the outside. Natural climate and weather fluctuations, changing migration routes of game animals, famines, epidemics, and conflicts with neighbors were constant companions of traditional Yupik society. Life in the Arctic was neither harmonious nor idyllic as ecological, economic, and demographic setbacks repeatedly threatened people with crises. In order to be sustained, a viable social system had to develop certain stabilization mechanisms. It is well known that contact is an essential factor for every society’s survival, one that prevents it from cultural stagnation and biological isolation. The exchange of women given as wives is an obvious means of maintaining contacts among traditional groups in which the basis for relations is kinship. The classical and more prevalent form of such exchange was clan exogamy. We do not find this social pattern among either the Yupik people in Asia or their Inuit kinsmen in North America, whose social life was based on the preferential endogamy of their basic social units, clans, “societies,” and residential groups or bands (Burch 1975, 10, 12; Damas 1968, 113; 1969, 126). Nonetheless, all Eskimo societies had found mechanisms that supported regular ties beyond the relatively small endogamous groupings. Age-old customs associated with visiting, individual partnership, and spouse exchange served these goals, as also did intercommunity trade and large intertribal gatherings organized as “fairs” or “festivals” (Burch 2005). Economic cooperation was another major impetus for communication, including regular meetings of sedentary coastal hunters and nomadic reindeer herders specific to the Chukchi Peninsula. Another important element of social adaptation was a broad spectrum of locus forms varying not only in size and hierarchy but also in function (see Table 3.1). In periods of stability, a leading role was obviously played by the more stable and closed social units based on kinship and multigenerational (“vertical”) genealogical tradition, such as the tribe, the tribal group, and the clan. In periods of rapid transition or crisis, the predominant locus forms shifted to the more flexible residential units, such as the village community, a resettlement group, or a village neighborhood, that were based upon “horizontal” relations, that is, the daily network of interactions. The strength of the latter units was in their ability to rapidly regroup and integrate various genealogical and territorial components, or, more precisely, their fragments, into new viable social entities. The late contact-traditional era, to which the bulk of our field data and main sources pertain, was a time of relative stability for the small Yupik nation. The transformative and often highly disruptive impact of the earlier contacts with the Russians in the 1700s (chapter 7) and, later, with American whalers and traders (chapter 1) was mostly behind them. For the Yupik, this short respite of forty to fifty years, prior to the new wave of modernization brought by the Soviet authorities, barely a person’s lifespan, was the time

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to strengthen traditional kin-based structures, the tribe and the clan, and to develop new institutions, such as multitribal communities, village neighborhoods, clan and lineage adoption, and the like. Yet even in this period of relative reintegration, any instability immediately brought residential-based units, that is, the resettlement group, the village community, and the neighborhood, to the fore. That happened even among the few most established tribes, like the Ungazighmiit, who better than other Yupik groups preserved their clan and tribal institutions (chapter 4). In other communities, like Avan, the old clan-tribal organization was in restoration via the residential neighborhood and community network, much like a destroyed forest may eventually restore itself through intermediate stages of shrubbery. Finally, in the most severely affected tribes, such as the Sighineghmiit and the Qiwaaghmiit, a new neighborhood-community system was crowding out the former tribal-clan structures to become a new framework for the society. It is not surprising that the Yupik quickly reactivated the same strategy in shifting from kin to residential social networks a few decades later when Soviet modernization threatened the very fabric of their social life (chapter 9). The mechanism, as we have tried to illuminate, had been invented many generations prior and was deeply rooted in the Yupik social order of the contact era that combined elements based on genealogical (kinship) and territorial (residential) connections.

Notes 1. See the sketch map of the Nuvuqaq village area by Tasyan Tein (1977; Krauss 2004b, 415). 2. The term nunalgutet also exists in the Central Yup’ik language of Western Alaska, where it has a more strict social meaning and is often used to designate all people living in the village, that is, the residential community (Fienup-Riordan 1984, 64–65). 3. Rubtsova 1940, text “Kak zhili ranshe, togda davno” (“As people used to live earlier, way back”); Arutiunov et al. 1982, 84. 4. Some elders argued that in addition to the two halves, Pagalighmiit and Unegkumiit, the community had a third section, the Kiiwalighmiit, “those of the far side,” represented by the Laakaghmiit clan. It did not disrupt the main dual structure and was functionally insignificant, as the third area had no distinct characteristics and was not contrasted with the other two. 5. The old underground houses in Uwellkal were abandoned at least 200–300 years ago; thus, the names applied by the Ungazighmiit settlers and their links to the ancient inhabitants were apparently imaginary. 6. Rubtsova 1940, texts “Sivuqaghhmi” and “Qaviaraghmi”; Rubtsova 1954, text “Kigighmiit”; Menovshchikov 1987, text 28; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, texts 76, 78, 131. Menovshchikov (1987, 189) claims that the term umelguyugnepik used in the Naukanski folk text was built from the word umiilek/umialek and literally means “tyrant,” “violent oppressor.” 7. There were a few notable exceptions. In Uelen during the time of our fieldwork, several dozen people were registered as “Eskimo,” all being the grandchildren and great-grandchildren

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of one Inupiat woman from Little Diomede, who was given in marriage to a local Chukchi around 1910. 8. For detailed descriptions of aboriginal trade networks in Northeast Siberia and the Bering Strait area, see Bockstoce 2009; Bogoras 1975, 55–67. 9. Krupnik, field notes from Shishmaref and Wales, 1991.

Chapter 6

Family and Kinship

G

enealogical, that is,

essentially kin, ties constituted the basis of Yupik society and cemented the integrity of all of its social units, in particular the clan. We recall that the Yupik language unites all locally associated social groups (locuses) into one category with the locative suffix -miit. Territorial affiliation and localization is the most fundamental, and virtually only, feature that defines those various types of locuses. Yet there was another social framework that operated with categories denoted by the collective suffix -kut and included groups of people related solely by kinship.

The Lineage The Relationship between Clan and Lineage The anthropologist must resist the temptation to draw the dividing line between these two categories in a different place from where the people themselves place it. From the anthropologist’s viewpoint, it is obvious that the clan consists of individual lineages. This is all the more so since in the traditional Yupik village the localization of a lineage was often even more visible than the localization of the clan (chapter 5). It would be logical to view lineage and clan together as a sort of “minilocus” (minimal locus). Yet according to the Yupik classification, this is unequivocally incorrect, as it unites the lineage with family and other forms of kinship structures. Indeed, when speaking of a clan, the elders usually stressed that all of a clan’s members were related to one another. There is an entire complicated series of group kinship terms belonging to the “Iroquois” type of kinship in both the Central Siberian and Naukanski Yupik languages (Appendices 2 and 3) that determine the degree of pseudo-genealogical distance between various groups of kinsmen. Yet when applied to the clan, these terms are unclear, and even our best experts were often confused when they tried to describe their relationships with some clan members with whom direct kinship could not be easily traced. While all the ties in a lineage, and, even more so, in a family, were well traceable and definite to its members, the clan appeared like a pseudo-kin group. To be sure, a gray zone often crops up here. Several small, dwindling clans such as the Pakaghmiit among the Ungazighmiit or the Kepenngughmiit in Nuvuqaq essentially 151

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consisted of one lineage or even a single family. Here all the designations applied at once: family, lineage, and clan. We may sympathize with the consternation of a Yupik Elder when the anthropologist persistently tries to pin down exactly who the “Pakaghmiit” or the “Kepenngughmiit” were. Nonetheless, at the level of differentiating social “language” and “speech,” the situation seems more or less clear: according to Yupik social grammar, lineages consist of families. Such a hierarchical view is typical of many societies that strongly differentiate lineages as organizational units, even in systems structured along a clear unilineal principle, with strict exogamy rules. In the course of our field studies, we found the latter social norms prevailing among many groups, such as the Nenets reindeer herders of Northwest Siberia or the agriculturalist Abkhazians on the Black Sea coast (Chlenov 1978; Krupnik and Chlenov 1987). Despite the fact that the Nenets or the Abkhazians may claim so, their lineages de jure do not consist of families because spouses must be members of different descent groups. When in this case they speak of “family,” they refer only to the patrilineal clan segment of a family. The situation was different among the Yupik because their preferential endogamy permitted and even presupposed intraclan marriages that are unthinkable under strict exogamic rules. It created for Yupik society an illusion of some sort of a continuous vertical hierarchy: the tribes consisted of clans, the clans of lineages, and the lineages of families. This may well be the case on the level of “social grammar,” but it was far from always observed because among the Yupik, endogamy was the idealized norm, but no more. It would usually manifest itself as a prescribed rule in an ideal situation, primarily in populous tribes and clans. When conditions changed, it receded. For this reason, even by the early 1900s, the number of clan-endogamous families among the Yupik was already, apparently, equal to (or even slightly less than) the number of families whose spouses belonged to different clans. In the latter case, deviation from the endogamous norm was compensated for by the principle of patrilineality or, more precisely, patrilineal incorporation. In the patriarchally orientated Yupik, the original clan membership of the wife ceased to play a role, and the wife was actually, though not formally, included in the life of the clan and lineage of her husband. As elders recalled, it was a strong rule among the Ungazighmiit and is still the norm among the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island (Jolles 2002). It was also applied to small children for whom the ties with their relatives in the father’s clan were viewed as generally more significant than those with their biological parents, particularly in the case of their father’s death (chapter 3). Unlike tribe, community, neighborhood, clan, or other localized social units, lineage is a unilineal kin group within which genealogical ties are real and easily traceable. True, elders commonly cloaked lineage functions and even the very mention of lineage in clan terms. The narratives we recorded most often began with the words “We, the Laakaghmiit” or “Among us, the Armaramket,” and so on. Elders only mentioned lineage, framed as its head’s personal name plus the collective suffix -kut, when discussing noteworthy events in public life, such as a successful hunt, a voyage to a distant place, or a migration. Various ceremonies and other rituals were also common cases when the lineage name appeared, such as “the Sighunkut did this ahead of us” or “we usually go there together with the Pangawyingkut.” References to lineage were common within the framework of stereotypic characteristics: some -kut groups were known to be successful, or strong, and others were

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the opposite: weak, unskillful, and so on. Naturally, people attributed positive characteristics to one’s own or to the large and powerful lineages.

Territoriality of the Lineage In everyday life, lineage was the social unit that actually performed several functions ideally prescribed for the clan and even for the tribe. Members of a lineage sought to settle together in territorial clusters, as groups of closely related families. According to the idealized model, the entire clan would settle together as a territorially separate fragment within the community residential area. In trying to explain the meaning of clan, Ungazighmiit elders commonly talked in this way: “In Ungaziq relatives used to place their houses in rows [along parallel beach ridges]. These rows had their own names: this one was ours, the Laakaghmiit, that one was that of the Akulghaaghwiget, and over there, the Armaramket, and so on.” And there were stronger comparisons as well: “In Ungaziq these rows were like your nations, like Russians or Tatars, that’s how the Sanighmelnguut or the Armaramket were for us.” In practice, the dwellings of clan members were often scattered within a village, with some families even residing in other communities. When we reconstructed the placement of individual family houses in Ungaziq, Avan, and Nuvuqaq, and also in Sivuqaq on St. Lawrence Island, from the early census lists and elders’ recollections (see below), it became evident that living in clan-based clusters was typical of the close kin aggregations, that is, of lineages, rather than of entire clans. This went unnoticed, however, because according to Yupik social language a clan by definition has to be territorially distinct from others. A decision to relocate to another village, the function to be performed by a sustainable localized social unit, was also made on the lineage level. All the cases of Yupik migrations in the early 1900s initially had the form of lineage resettlements. This is how groups of families moving from Ungaziq, Avan, and Imtuk populated Uwellkal, Nutapelmen, and several other camps in the Gulf of Anadyr area (chapter 4). The entire clan could ultimately move altogether, in several “waves,” as in the case of the Armaramket, who left Ungaziq for Uwellkal, Imtuk, and St. Lawrence Island in 1880–1930. But insofar as the chief means of transportation were large skin boats and wooden whaleboats, people actually moved in groups of close relatives, most often by families of brothers or patrilineal cousins, that is, by lineages (Chlenov and Krupnik 2012). The way I understand it, they arrived together: Silga, Ayveghhpak, and Atagen. And Tantikin along with them. Evidently, they came in one whaleboat. First they came here, and then from here they moved to Mayngengettama. When we arrived they were all still living here (Dmitrii Atelkun 1976). My father was Yakov Tantikin, he was an Unegkumii [Armaramka]. He and his wife came here, and his father came too. His father’s name was Silga, and his wife was Aran, they were both Unegkumiit. Grandfather and grandmother came here, to Uwellkal, and my father along with them. . . . Of our relatives Atagen came too, he was our cousin, our atalgun [patrilateral cousin, i.e., the son of his father’s brother]. Legta, Lanwen, and Uwela, too, they’re all Laakaghmiit, they all moved here. Their older brother was Amqenga, but he didn’t live here, he had died earlier (Anna Rynana 1976).

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Here we have a narrative of migration framed as a resettlement by individual lineages from the two largest Ungazighmiit clans, the Armaramket and the Laakaghmiit, respectively.

The Economic Role of the Lineage Living together as a compact group determined other corporate features of the Yupik lineage. It was the minimum self-sufficient economic unit within the community. The lineage was the body that actually recruited and operated the hunting crews, permanent groups of men hunting together in one boat (see below). We have already listed individual crews from several Yupik tribes and villages that elders always labeled by clan. In each case, beneath the clan exterior were clear lineage ties. Ideally each Yupik clan would have several boat crews, for each clan was supposed to contain several lineages. This applies to the large clans, such as the Laakaghmiit and the Armaramket in Ungaziq, and also to the Mamruaghpagmiit and Mayughyaghmiit in Nuvuqaq that were capable of mustering several crews. The many lists of boat crews we recorded prove that even the small clans preferred to have a few understaffed crews rather than a single stable, complete crew. In our clan, the Sanighmelnguut, we had two or three crews [in the early 1930s]. I remember grandfather Pangawyi had a whaleboat and so did Utataawen, who raised us; he had his own whaleboat too. And my grandfather on my mother’s side, Nekevestekaq [from the same clan], who was also called Aqumelghii, had his own boat. His brother Apeta used to hunt with him. . . . At the time, of course, we didn’t have enough men for three crews. We would get others too. In Utataawen’s crew, for example, only the harpooner, Nanughtaaq, was one of us, all the rest were from other clans (Vladimir Yatta 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 215). This narrative refers to the small, already declining lineages of the Sanighmelnguut clan in Ungaziq that were unable to provide five or six men for each of their three active crews. Nevertheless, all three captains named in the story were the senior men of their respective lineage groups in the clan. The lineage as a group of close relatives performed other economic functions. Its members would build and maintain a large skin boat for cooperative hunting by its members. The lineage controlled the preparation of winter food supplies in addition to what each family stored in its meat storage cache. We have somewhat vague reports of collective caches built and managed by “groups of relatives” (Fig. 6.1). In the traditional model, these obviously would have been members of the lineage (Fig. 6.2). Cooperative hunting by the men also stimulated the cooperation of women, children, and the elderly, that is, of the entire lineage, which was a law everywhere. They’d kill a lot of seals over there [in Siqlluk], and butcher the seals near the cache, skin them, and toss the meat into the cache. All the Siqlluk women came to help us, because Uqe and Ataateka would kill more than anybody else. Uqe would bring the catch and the women would butcher it. No sooner would the women finish than Ataateka would already be on the way with a full sled. They wouldn’t even divide the meat among themselves, they’d throw it right into the pit. When the men would set off on the hunt after eating lunch, the women

Fig. 6.1: Collective meat cache in Imtuk, most certainly used by a group of closely related families. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, spring 1929. MAE #ИI–115-83)

Fig. 6.2: Men repair the roof of the traditional winter house (mangteghapik) in Sivuqaq (Gambell), fall 1912. This work was commonly done by a group of “relatives,” that is, by the men of the lineage. (Photo by Riley D. Moore, summer 1912. NAA, Papers of Henry Bascom Collins, Box 114, GA 30-130)

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would eat lunch themselves. The next morning the men would come again, and the women would butcher again, and the old men would stretch the skins out to dry (Ayatkha 1977). It would seem that the narrator here was describing the communal life of a small village, where all the residents were involved in cooperative hunting. Yet it is no accident that she mentioned but two names, those of her husband Uqe and his brother Ataateka, that is, only two of the eight or ten active hunters of Siqlluk at the time. Regardless of how the hunt was structured, her story is focused upon the men of her lineage. Other families would have functioned in the same way.

Leadership in the Lineage and Its Ritual Functions The Yupik lineage as a corporate unit was the group that performed major everyday actions and implemented major decisions, particularly when the matter was beyond the sphere of the individual families. According to many stories, it was the oldest man in the lineage or another senior man who held this position by virtue of his status or personal qualities who usually made the decision. Well I lived with Neghhsipi. He was already a grown man with two sons of his own. But he was really afraid of my father Tengatagen [his uncle, the younger brother of Neghhsipi’s deceased father]. . . . Probably there was a law like that, that the youngest is subordinate to the head of the family. Now my father was considered the head of the family. Probably our grandfather gave authority over to him. Earlier, when the older man gave it to someone, that was it, like it or not, you had to obey (Vasilii Nanok 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 369–370). In the worldview of Yupik elders, a community’s ritual life was always structured along clan lines. Yet here again, implementation took place at the level of the lineage, as in the case of the Yupik winter festivals that we mentioned in describing the social functions of the clan (chapter 3). There used to be several such ceremonies in each clan as revealed by the names of their “masters” in the early 1900s (Krupnik 1979, 37; 1990b, 164–165). According to the list of the “masters” that we compiled, there were about twenty winter festivals for sixty to seventy families of the Ungazighmiit, twelve to fifteen festivals for all the residents of Sighineq and Imtuk (some thirty-five to forty families), and about ten festivals among the Avatmiit (twenty families). It is obvious that in the past, far from each family had a festival and the festivals actually had a lineage, and not clan, character. It was always that way with us: not everyone had his own winter festival. But usually several families celebrated together. My father, for example, had brothers, and all together, our three [families] had our own festival. . . . The Ivaaqangkut had a different one (Vladimir Tiyato 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 278). We had our own festivals. We were not celebrating them before those who were first starting to celebrate. So was the old Eskimo habit. The first was always the nunaleggtaq [“master of the land”], he was obliged to start festivals. I attended the festivals when I was a kid. People came together, everyone was in a merry mood. Everyone sings and dances in his own way, exchanges different goods. There

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were different festivals. Not only that, the Unegkumiit or Sanighmelnguut had their own festivals, even among the Unegkumiit there were different festivals. Everyone had his festival. Only in the fall there was one festival for everyone, it lasted only one day. In wintertime everyone celebrated his own festival separately. And everyone had a peculiar name for his festival (Dmitrii Atelkun 1976). As a rule, the families of several brothers had one shared winter festival that they inherited from their father. Here one of the brothers, usually the eldest, was considered the “master” of the ceremony and conducted it in his house. Small tribal groups of a few families, such as the Imtugmiit or the Atqallghhaghmiit, had one festival they celebrated together. But here, too, a ceremony had an individual “master” who conducted it in his house. In the large clans of fifteen to twenty families, like the Laakaghmiit or the Akulghaaghwiget in Ungaziq, each clan had five to six festivals. For this reason, in addition to all the members of their own lineage, people would invite one or two representatives of the other families that made up the clan. In clans where there were many family (i.e., lineage) ceremonies, one might trace some sort of hierarchy of lineages according to their “seniority.” In the Laakaghmiit clan, for example, the sequence of winter festivals obviously followed the age and statuses of individual lineage heads within the clan, albeit in the Yupik interpretation “it was established by the ‘elders.’” All the Laakaghmiit celebrated their winter festivals in November and December. The first were the Ilange [also known as the Uugetaq, the eldest of the Laakaghmiit], and then the Mumiglleghhii, the Qerngughtekaq, the Sighu, and then us, our family, and then the Taatqu, and then the Ilutaq. They probably decide it and make it known in advance, like every year. Announce it to the whole village. And other families, other clans, they wait and don’t celebrate. This always goes in order, so the festivals don’t coincide (Ippi 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 286). According to this narrative, which refers to the time around 1915, the order of the celebrations was obviously organized according to the age of the heads of families and lineages: Ilange (born about 1860), Mumiglleghhii (about 1875), Qerngughtekaq (around 1875), Sighu (about 1875–1880), Naataqaa (around 1880), Taatqu (around 1880), and Ilutaq (about 1890). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Sighu, Taatqu, and Naataqaa, who had already become quite elderly, started the festivals in the Laakaghmiit clan and reportedly took turns. The hierarchy of families and lineages thus shifted with the aging, increase in status, or death of individual heads of families. The same lineage organization was the pillar upon which lay other social units, such as the groups that honored the ancestors. Among the Yupik in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, these were associations of relatives who together observed the annual rite of paying respect to the dead (aghqesaghtuq; see Krupnik 1980, 212–214; Fig. 6.3). In small clans, all the families that belonged to the clan performed the ceremony together. When the clan had a fully developed lineage structure, there was a type of division into individual “memorial groups” similar to the situation for the winter festivals. Here, once again we come across the names of the same men who were the heads of their lineages within a clan during the childhoods of our narrators.

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The Laakaghmiit all went together to the ancestors’ memorial, but each went to their separate grave sites. They’d go to wherever their graves were. Their relatives would go with them. Qerngughtekaq was with us, he and my grandfather went together. With Ataata it was separate, I don’t know who was with him. Ilutaq’s was separate also. And so was Naataqaa’s. And the others, too (Ivan Ashkamakin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 312).

Lineage Descent Rules As might be expected, lineage was a nonendogamous group, and marriages within the lineage were ruled out. For this reason, the relationship of lineage and the various types of families is faintly reminiscent of the relationship between family and clan. In both cases, the patrilineal segment of the lineage constituted a permanent core of the family unified with its nonpermanent component, that is, the spouses who married into it and grown children who departed. This latter component was generally governed according to the rules of lineality and marriage residence, which, as we have noted repeatedly, were patrilineal, and very strongly so among the southern Yupik tribes, the Ungazighmiit, Sivuqaghmiit, Avatmiit, and others (chapter 3). Correspondingly, the children received clan and lineage filiation from the father and not the mother. It is another matter that according to the idealized model these two lineages could have been part of the same clan. The situation with exogamy is more complex. It would be natural to expect exogamy, if not on the clan level, as was argued elsewhere (Menovshchikov 1962a, 32; Sergeev 1962, 40), then at least at the lineage level. For the Yupik, exogamy has never been a social norm. In essence, the incest taboo applied only to the members of a nuclear family. Marriages between people related too closely by blood, between parallel first cousins, for example, were also considered reprehensible (as seen from many folklore texts). It was quite normal that, in accordance with their numbers, members of one lineage gravitated toward marriages outside their narrow kin group.

Fig. 6.3: Traditional sacrificial site for the fall ritual of “honoring the ancestors” (aghqesaghtuq) off Sivuqaq (Gambell), St. Lawrence Island. (Photo by Henry B. Collins, summer 1930. NAA, neg. 2000-4459)

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It used to be like this: they would try to dissuade close relatives from marrying. But if they weren’t close relatives from the same clan, they’d say go ahead and get married. . . . Close relatives were called nallqu, but they could marry one another. . . . They could marry if they weren’t too close, if their common relatives were more than three generations apart, then they could marry (Alpen 1976). From this narrative as well as from several others it is apparent that the word nallqu does not refer to members of one clan (or “gens,” as was ostensibly argued; cf. Arutiunov and Sergeev 1975, 116; Emelyanova 1973, 157). It was but one of several generalizing kin terms typical for the Yupik kinship system. Our narrator was trying to explain the ideal norm, most likely one imposed by contemporary Russian ideas on this subject. Judging by the Yupik lore, in the past the restrictions on marriages between parallel cousins, especially patrilineal (atalgun), were stricter, and violators were put to death by their closest relatives (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 263–265, text “Cousins”).1 All the same, there were cases of marriages between second and even first cousins in the genealogies from the early 1900s, although they were just few. More questionable was the situation with cross-cousins (ilughaq). According to exogamous rules, they are the most preferable marriage partners. With the Yupik, the situation was the opposite and marriage between cross-cousins seemed to be prohibited, at least theoretically. Unegkumii may marry an Unegkumii. Only for relatives marriage is forbidden, isn’t it? Cousins may not marry, we call them ilughaq. Only the Chukchi may marry a cousin, we may not. The Unegkumiit, they are not relatives with each other, so they may marry. In fact they even did whatever possible to make Unegkumii marry an Unegkumii. If you marry another one—that was considered not good. The best way is if husband and wife belong to one. . . . But people married others too. Unegkumiit with Sighunpak, Laakaghmiit, and others (Dmitrii Atelkun 1976). Certain behavioral norms for cross-cousins (ilughaq) lead us to the notion that at one time they might just have been considered eligible marriage or, at least, sexual partners. The relation between them differed from the spirit of close cooperation and friendship common between parallel cousins, particularly between patrilateral cousins (atalgun). Questions put to the elders about how the ilughaq should behave with respect to one another were always met with animation, confusion, or even loud laughter. This indicates that a sort of “joking relationship” existed in the past among cross-cousins, often recognized as an institutionalized teasing expected and permitted between the people involved (Radcliffe-Brown 1965, 90–91):2 Our relatives would marry among themselves, it wasn’t thought bad. You could marry your atalgun [patrilateral cousin], your aghnalgun [matrilateral cousin], and your ilughaq, too. But I don’t want to marry an ilughaq [laughing loudly] (Vera Pivrana 1976). The same sort of “joking relationships” between cross-cousins, with a remarkable lack of restraint and open sexual jokes, is reported for the North Alaskan Inupiat (Burch 1975, 188–189; 2006, 91).

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In reality, however, the vast majority of spouses belonged to different lineages, and the women joined the lineages of their husbands. The following example is indicative: With us the man was usually the master at the memorial rituals. In Chaplino, for example, Ayaanga was master for ours. But in Sireniki, sometimes women went when their husbands were dead. For example, Pengu went for Ranumayu, and Tagi went for Angqallen, she was the main one. If there is no man, the wife becomes the head. So Pengu is subordinate to Tagi [the wife of her older brother]. With those Saanlegmiit, Tengatagen is now the oldest master. Although there is Tenganga, her older sister, Tengatagen is the master anyway, she’s the one who summons everyone to the ritual. And Tenganga became the master among the Imtugmiit by way of Tiwla, her husband (Olga Mumigtekaq 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 309). The same practice is common today among the Yupik on St. Lawrence Island. Here, women are incorporated into the lineages of their husbands when they marry and, upon attaining advanced age, they often acquire the status of leader, or elder in the lineages, even in the clans of their husbands (Jolles and Kaningok 1991, 34; Krupnik, field notes, 2004). Patrilineal filiation was ignored only in the instances of marriages with Chukchi, when individual Chukchi male spouses were adopted into Yupik communities, and in births from Europeans out of wedlock (chapter 5). We found no evidence whatsoever of the former existence of a matrilineal organization among the Yupik that was, reportedly, replaced by the patrilineal system (Fainberg 1955, 82; Simchenko 1970, 325–326). Given the patrilineal character of Yupik society and the unchallenged male domination in social life, the idea of matrilineal filiation would have been profoundly alien to the Yupik or would have been acceptable in an extremely limited situation, such as for children born from unknown fathers or from the Europeans.

Lineage, Ramage, and Alternate Filiation The patrilineality of the Asian and St. Lawrence Island Yupik seems to be an exception compared to the social norms of other Eskimo societies in North America, both Yup’ik and Inuit/Inupiaq. The majority of them had no lineal structures, either patrilineal or matrilineal, and their kinship and community life followed a bilateral principle. Even among the Yupik the norms of patrilineality were not uniformly rigid, as we learned when building genealogical charts for the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe. Here, the rule of patrilineal filiation occasionally conflicted with a person’s clan membership, as recalled by elders. Furthermore, the number of instances in which the clan membership of individuals was either unclear or was disputed was much higher among the Nuvuqaghmiit than in the southern Yupik groups. The following dialog with one of the elders is indicative: —In the past, if the father was a Mayughyaghmii and the mother was a Sitqunaghmii, what were the children? —The same as the father. —Was the mother’s clan ever taken? —The mother’s clan was taken if the father died (Imaklik 1976).

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A statement of this type would be impossible for an Ungazighmii, who could not accept the idea of alternative clan affiliation. We already mentioned that among the Nuvuqaghmiit, filiation was ambilineal rather than unilineal or, more precisely, permitted the possibility of ambilineality (chapter 3). This means that the lineage included the descendants of one ancestor who were related to him through his sons, and also through his daughters, although the former clearly predominated. The Nuvuqaghmiit refer to such a group using the word kingunghiit (“bilateral offspring”) and explain it as “those who come later, that is, all the descendants of one’s sons and daughters.” Anthropologists call kin groups of this type “branches,” or ramages (Firth 1936, 371; 1957, 6; Fried 1957, 6; Goodenough 1955, 73–75). Such groups are widespread in the South Pacific region, for example, in many Polynesian societies, like the Samoan kainga. The structure of a ramage is more flexible than that of the unilineal groups, like patrilineages. The advantage becomes obvious given frequent migrations or when kin groups of different sizes form stable social cells. Alternate filiation and the almost equal roles of genealogical and territorial ties are characteristic of a ramage, while in unilineal groups the former always dominate over the latter. In practice, alternate filiation manifests itself most often through adoption. Inclusion into a clan always took place via a concrete lineage or ramage, that is, through a group of people who were linked together by traceable kin ties. Below is another story recorded from Alpen about one of her tribesmen who lived in the early 1900s. The picture bears an uncanny resemblance to the theoretical ramage structures of anthropologists: Kayqatiagen himself was a Mayughyaghmii, but was orphaned, and was adopted and raised by Rellten, a Kepenngughmii. But Kayqatiagen considered himself Mayughyaghmii by his mother, Gewelngawen. But his father, Mamatiingaq, was a Kepenngughmii, but he lived among the Mayughyaghmiit and called himself a Mayughyaghmii. . . . Kayqatiagen considered himself to be equally [!] Kepenngughmii and Mayughyaghmii. So as not to hurt Rellten’s feelings, he said that he was a Kepenngughmii, but at the same time considered himself to be the same amount Mayughyaghmii. . . . Teveltiagen’s clan [Teveltiagen was Kayqatiagen’s son, who at the time of this discussion was about forty years old] is unclear. In general he and his sister Nina revered their father, but their father died, and they were left with their mother. Here one had to know the relations the clans had among themselves. If they were on hostile terms with one another, then the children chose the clan they liked best (Alpen 1976). This was not the last we heard of Kayqatiagen (Fig. 6.4): Kayqatiagen was in a Sitqunaghmiit crew. Kergetagen got him into it. Kayqatiagen was his brother-in-law. Before he had married his sister Yetngiawen he hunted with Iyayin, a Mayughyaghmii. But because he switched to a Sitqunaghmiit crew that didn’t meant that he had become a Sitqunaghmii (Alpen 1976). Alpen’s account conflicts with that of another, no less esteemed Elder:

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Fig. 6.4: “Kaikategin, the Eskimo” (original caption). Kayqatiagen, ca. 1910–ca. 1950, from Nuvuqaq. Elders recalled conflicting stories about his clan and lineage loyalties, which points to the possibility of a former alternate clan filiation among the Nuvuqaghmiit. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1929. MAE #И–115-21)

When Kayqatiagen got married, he started hunting with them in their whaleboat, with the Sitqunaghmiit. And of course he began to consider himself Sitqunaghmii (Imaklik 1976). This confusion around the clan and, correspondingly, lineage membership of the long deceased Kayqatiagen is no ordinary occurrence even for the Nuvuqaghmiit. But it is indicative as evidence of other rules for clan formation and lineage filiation in comparison with those of the southern Yupik groups, where such a conflict was wholly inconceivable. We may explain the possibility of adoption of the husband into the lineage and clan of his wife among the Nuvuqaghmiit (and in Kayqatiagen’s case, even spanning two generations) by the ramage type of social structure that was also widespread among the Central Yup’ik in Western Alaska. Another factor might be influence of the Inupiaq people of Northwest Alaska, with their bilateral principle of kin structure (see chapter 3). It offered to a person various options of his/her group affiliation, eventually strengthening the corporate nature of the clan and ultimately of the village and the tribe. Kayqatiagen’s clan and lineage affiliation notwithstanding, he still was firmly a member of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe.

The Boat Crew The interweaving of social, economic, and ritual functions in each of the kin-based cells, such as clan, lineage, and family, came to the fore in the composition of the Yupik boat crews. As a core economic and social unit, these were built around a group of five to eight

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men who hunted together in a large skin boat (CSY angyaq, NY anyaq, Russian baidara) or a whaleboat and divided the catch among their families. For the Yupik, the organization of these hunting crews constituted a special part of their social structure directly tied to lineage and family.

The Angyalek: The Boat Captain In elders’ stories and in real life, each boat crew was personified by its captain, the a­ ngyalek (in CSY “owner of the skin boat,” pl. angyaliit; NY anyalek). Based on genealogies and elders’ recollections, we documented the composition of more than forty crews and the names of their captains from every Yupik village, often going back to the early days of the 20th century. In all instances, the angyaleks were the owners of the skin boats or wooden American whaleboats. The owner of the skin boat was the man who built it or who gathered the materials for its construction: hides for the cover, wood for the frame, and gifts or payment for the people who worked on it. The acquisition of one’s own hunting boat was an important event that increased a person’s status and that of his family in Yupik society. The owner of the skin boat or whaleboat automatically became the head of a group of men who hunted with him and the person in charge of all operations and the catch distribution. For this reason, the angyaleks naturally sought to preserve this role throughout their active life, periodically overhauling an old boat or purchasing a new one. In the case of old age or death of the captain, the right of ownership and command of his boat inevitably stayed within his family or, in rare instances, within his lineage. It commonly passed from father to eldest son, from older brother to younger, from uncle to nephew, and so on. This traditional norm was strengthened even more during the whaling era of 1850–1900 when Yupik communities suddenly became awash with valuable trade commodities, such as baleen, walrus tusks, and seal hides. New possibilities for social mobility appeared for the men who were able to purchase manufactured American whaleboats or to obtain them for their service on whaling ships or on traders’ schooners. Owners of these newly acquired boats became the captains of new hunting crews and transferred this status to their sons.

The “Fraternal” Boat Crew The stereotypical ideal number of members for a Yupik hunting crew was eight men. Yet in the folklore we often come across stories of boat crews consisting of five brothers in which the captain was the eldest. Five is a sacred symbolic number in Yupik lore, and five brothers constantly figure as the heroes of all manner of myths, magical stories, and legends.3 Of course, the most prominent image is that of the five hunting brothers, great whalers who killed whales every year.4 Most interesting in these stories about five brothers hunting in one skin boat is the absence of their father. In the Yupik norm, the father of five brothers was the natural owner of the boat and the crew’s captain. Thus the image of the “five brothers” hunting without a father is merely a symbol of a closely knit crew, that is, a symbolic representation of the lineage or even clan. In reality, crews made up of several brothers were extremely rare. The one reported example was the team of Naataqaa in Ungaziq around 1930–1935 made up of a father (Naataqaa) and his five adult sons. Naataqaa himself owned the boat until

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his death, and when he ceased hunting due to advanced age, his oldest son Qawita, the eldest of the five brothers, became the captain: Among us Laakaghmiit, Naataqaa’s crew was the best. The whole crew was his sons, all strapping young men—Qawita, Tullghhi, Uutgga, Quyngellqen, Anaghaghhaq, and on top of that, Anglupa and Akiiqaq, who joined when they got older. Hunting with them was easy (Uksima 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 214). Yet even for this ideal, almost mythological boat crew, its actual composition was more complicated than told in the narrative. Two of Naataqaa’s younger brothers hunted along with him in the same boat. At the same time, one of Naataqaa’s sons, Anaghaghhaq (mentioned in the story) joined another Laakaghmiit crew headed by Sighu and composed of members of Sighu’s lineage, mainly his sons, nephews, and brothers-in-law. One would more properly speak not of a familial but a lineage principle of hunting crew formation.

The Clan Boat Crew and Forms of Adoption In their stories of the past, Yupik elders most often listed former boat crews by the clans. They eagerly enumerated the names of old captains who formed their lineage crews in the early 1900s: the Laakaghmiit crews were those of Naataqaa, Sighu, Ataata, Ilutaq, and others; the Armaramket crews were those of Silga, Atagen, and so on. On St. Lawrence Island the lists of old crews are arranged the same way (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 183), so that individual angyaleks personified their crews and lineages. Yet in most cases, the angyalek conferred with the informal council of the lineage’s senior men on major decisions, such as the composition of the crew, construction of a new boat, or arrangements for the hunt. Besides the angyalek, this group included older men in the lineage who were the heads of their families (in CSY nuyekliq, “the eldest in the family or group of relatives”). Ideally, the boat crew consisted solely of members of the lineage, at times even members of one family; in any case, it was supposed to include men from the same clan. Not surprisingly, this was something the elders agreed upon unanimously and categorically: “No, no—the crews were never made up of different people. They were always chosen according to clan. Usually a father and his sons would hunt together. If there were no sons, then they took the brothers and their children” (Marina Sighunylek 1987). In real life, such a model could by no means be universal, simply because different families and lineages were of different size. Here, again, we encounter the need for a social mechanism to ensure the formation of complete crews if a lineage lacked sufficient numbers of adult men. The most natural solution was to combine the men from several closely related lineages of one clan or, in the case of the smaller, numerically weaker clans and tribal groups, from all of the families regardless of actual kin ties: My father, Ngepawyi, had his own whaleboat. All of us Imtugmiit would hunt with him: Pallkenten, Qirgi, Pilawyi, and Tiwla. All of the able hunters of our clan. Later my elder brother Qaygeghun joined them. We never took on anybody else. We had about enough men for one whaleboat, but not enough for two. And even then, when there weren’t enough hunters, they’d take my mother along to paddle, especially in September, when some of the men had gone

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off to the Chukchis [to trade with the reindeer herders] (Andrei Kukilgin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 205). Another, more prevalent, mechanism was the inclusion into the boat crew of the angyalek’s affinal relatives from other lineages and clans. This practice, though not a norm in the Yupik “social grammar,” was quite frequent in small lineages and clans, and even in the large lineages as well: The hunting crew of Sighu in Ungaziq around 1920 was a good example. Sighu led one of the strongest lineages of the Laakaghmiit clan. Six members of his boat crew were actually from his lineage. However, Sighu’s brother’s son-in-law from another Laakaghmiit lineage also hunted with his crew, as did the husband of Sighu’s sister, Qamiyelek, from the Sighunpaget clan. Though the latter was renowned as an experienced hunter, his own lineage was waning. On top of this, his clan in Ungaziq at the time only had two small lineages and was unable to form a full boat crew of its own. For this reason, Qamiyelek’s best option was to join the prestigious hunting crew of his affinal relatives. Another example is the hunting crew of the Aghqullughmiit clan in Avan around 1920: Its captain was Nanevgaqiya, the head of the Aghqullughmiit clan and the leader of the Avan community. The crew’s core was made up of men from the captain’s lineage: Nanevgaqiya, his two younger brothers, and his son Atatuga, who subsequently inherited the status of angyalek from his father. Yet this was not enough. The hunting crew included the husbands of two of Nanevgaqiya’s sisters from other Avatmiit lineages and Akaken, a Chukchi, who was married to the widow of the last surviving representative of another Aghqullughmiit lineage. This marriage permitted Akaken to live and hunt with the Aghqullughmiit. These and other examples of the crews in the early 1900s (cf. Menovshchikov 1962a, 32; Sergeev 1962, 38–39) illustrate both the general principle of crew formation and its rather flexible implementation. In spite of the frequent incorporation of affinal relatives and even members from other clans and tribes, the Yupik universally viewed boat crews as parts of the clans and lineages.

Boat Crew Statuses All of the boat crews in a village, like their captains, formally enjoyed equal status. The Yupik did not have “senior” and “junior” crews. All could hunt in the same place and join forces with one another as they saw fit. In the Yupik cooperative catch of whales and walrus, crews of many lineages and clans normally hunted together, side by side. To be sure, a whale killed “belonged” to a particular crew and, in particular, to its angyalek, so that recollections of the hunt always referred to the individual captain’s name. Phrases like “We, the Laakaghmiit, killed the whale” or “Sighu killed the whale” mean only that the Laakaghmiit crew was the first to harpoon the whale, in this case, Sighu’s crew. In real life, killing and butchering a big whale was always the outcome of cooperative efforts of many crews, often from different villages.

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The only exception to the equal status of Yupik hunting crews was the ritual opening of the spring hunting season (ateghaq). It was the crew or crews of the nunaleggtaq clan, that is, the “masters of the village,” who symbolically opened the community hunt: In the spring the festival before the hunt would be celebrated by all the Chaplino [Ungaziq] residents who had whaleboats or skin boats. They would make a big pile in the center of the yaranga [skin-covered winter house]: seal-skin floats, the mast from the whaleboat, the sails, and the lines, everything was put in the middle. They’d also put a large wooden bowl with meat into the pile, and for some reason the bowl was covered. Then the heap was covered with sails. . . . I remember our grandmother would boil reindeer meat in the evening, and then they’d pound it, adding seal blubber. This was all mixed together and made into a flat cake and then placed in a round wooden bowl. It makes a kind of paste, we call it perara. On the top of it they make five lumps and then they put it into the inner skin tent for the night, where it’s warm. In the morning they remove it and inspect it carefully, if one or two of the lumps is gone, it means that a polar bear or a whale will be killed this season. We consider polar bears and whales to be God’s creatures, God sends them only to those He wishes. They look at the contents of the bowl and then take the skin boat and carry it to the shore along with this bowl. The hunters and the elders go down to the shore along with the owner of the boat. They take tobacco with them. There they eat, giving God small pieces. Later they come home, bringing the remains, and we eat them. The festival ends. But after this festival the skin boats are no longer kept near the yarangas. During the winter they are kept on their paddles near the yarangas, on the four paddles, because it’s temporary. But after the festival it’s carried off to the shore (Uksima 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 267–268). The ritual opening of the spring hunt in Ungaziq around 1920 is seen here in the eyes of a young girl (which the narrator was at the time).5 What is not mentioned here is that traditionally in Ungaziq the Sanighmelnguut clan, the “masters of the land,” were the first to perform the ritual (Fig. 6.5). After the spring hunt it was they who similarly were the first to perform another ritual, nasquneggqelek, known as the “ceremonial of heads.”6 There is another festival in the spring, after navigation [open-water hunting] has been started. When animals are killed, their heads are cut off and the crew leaders place them into the storage pits and keep them there. Later, after the hunt is over, a festival is held, in June or July. That’s how the crew leaders celebrate, Ivaaqaq, Pangawyi, we Sighunkut, and the others. These festivals are held more or less all at the same time, but each crew has its own day. Sometimes two crews would have it the same day, but that was rare. There was a sequence for these festivals, I only caught a little of that. The first to go were the masters of the village, that’s Aqumelghii’s family and their Sanighmelnguut relatives. They were the masters in Chaplino. So they’d go first. And the others would follow after them in any order they wanted (Ivan Ashkamakin 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 269–270; Fig. 6.6).

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Fig. 6.5: Boat launch in Ungaziq, after the spring “boat-launch ritual” of ateghaq, April 1929. The first to celebrate and to launch their boats were the crews from the Sanighmelnguut clan. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-136)

Fig. 6.6: Walrus heads placed in circle inside the house of the boat captain for the nasquneggqelek ceremony in Ungaziq. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1928 or 1929, MAE #И-115-141)

There is one bit of evidence from St. Lawrence Island that alludes to a certain order in similar ceremonies even within one clan, a sort of seniority among the boat captains and their family crews: As for our group [the Aymaramket clan in Gambell], Angaatenganwan’s boat would be the first to have ceremonies because back when there was just one boat, Blassi was the captain. When the crew of that boat grew too large, Telenga was the first to build his own boat. Then Kowarren built one too. So that was

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the way the order of the ceremonies came about. Angaatenganwan would have his first. Then we would have ours. Booshu [Kowarren’s son] came next, then Owittillian [Telenga’s son]. When Kulukhon became a boat captain, Booshu scheduled him to hold his ceremony last (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1985, 211). Here the order followed the crew secession from the initial boat team drawn from one populous lineage during the late 1800s and early 1900s. We never heard of such an order on the Asian shore.

The Functions of the Angyalek In addition to leadership during the hunt and the related hunting rituals, one of the main functions of the angyalek was the control and disposition of the crew’s catch. Usually the families of the men who formed the boat crew received equal shares of the meat of marine mammals killed. According to many reports, walrus and bearded seal hides, which were of great value, were given in order to those who needed them most at the moment to repair the roof of their skin houses or to make footwear and lines. The hides of small seals were, again, divided equally among the hunters. Only the products that had trading value, like baleen and walrus tusks, were the property of the angyalek. The apex of the angyalek’s social functions was leadership of the whale hunt and all the rituals related to it. The most significant moment in an angyalek’s life came when his crew harpooned and killed a whale. Then the successful angyalek became the chief person in charge of an entire series of actions culminating in the “whale festival.”7 Yet the social functions of the boat crews and their captains should not be overstated. The leading role of the crews in community life and the economy was undisputed, but the crews were only a part of the complicated social network of large coastal villages. Boat crews did not regulate marriage norms and relations; nor did they establish the boundaries of tribal and village territories or have privileges with regard to hunting grounds. Nor did the crews incorporate members of other tribes into the community or determine the principles of filiation. These and other key functions were prerogatives of other social groupings, above all, clans and lineages. Here, our vision of Yupik social life departs significantly from some interpretations that argued that boat crews were a major, if not the only, social pillar of the Yupik and maritime Chukchi social system (cf. Bogoras 1975, 628–631; Vdovin 1965, 207–208). Even in the village economic life, the boat crews regulated cooperative whale and walrus hunting only. Seal hunting, fishing, fox trapping, trips to bird colonies, plant gathering, and trade with reindeer herders were all the individual affairs of each hunter and his family, or of small, usually short-term associations of a few families. Crew ties were then taken into account only to the degree that they coincided with lineage and other kin ties.

Boat Crews as Migration Groups The social role of the boat crews was pivotal only during the time of migration, insofar as the large skin boats and whaleboats were the only suitable means of transportation when people decided to move to other places (Chlenov and Krupnik 2012). The boat crew and the families of the hunters included in it made up the group that resettled. The reverse was also true: when several families set off together for a new place, they naturally formed their own crew.

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My father Numelen decided to take his family to the village of Achon for a while. . . . One spring, when the ice had begun to flow, we gathered our things together and left. There were three of us girls, and in Sireniki he picked up an elderly man, Wangtugergen, and his wife and his son Nutawyi. . . . Now, my father hunted there together with them and with our older sister. But then another family arrived and joined us, Atita, his wife was our grandmother’s niece. And they had all girls, too, four of them. Well, and they started hunting together: Atita and his eldest daughter, Numelen and his daughter, and Wangtugergen and his son Nutawyi. They put out to sea in a whaleboat, caught walruses and seals, and in the summer they fished and hunted ducks near the cliffs (Weyi ca. 1975, 7).

The Transformation and Disintegration of Kin-Based Crews The disintegration of kin-based crews among the Yupik began much earlier than the breakdown of their clan-lineage organization. This transition progressed due to contacts with American whalers and traders in the late 1800s and early 1900s that made it possible for many individual hunters to acquire wooden American whaleboats. It also cleared the path for the accumulation of great wealth by certain individuals in circumvention of the traditional clan-lineage norms. This, in turn, produced increased social mobility. An able hunter hired onto a passing whaler could return after a summer season owning an American whaleboat or having trade goods or money, received as payment, to acquire one. During the first years of the 20th century, in many Yupik villages there was a surplus of whaleboats compared to the number of active crews and hunters (Bogoras 1901, 80; Sergeev 1962, 62). Bowhead whale hunting and trade in baleen offered an opportunity to many ambitious hunters to acquire a whaleboat. That forced many of the new boat owners to enter into very complicated arrangements with one another. Here, in Sireniki, the village was small at that time. There were eight or ten yarangas [skin tents]. But there were many whaleboats. Yukeruk had one, Rellqutat had one, and so did Etugyi and Tagrugyi. There weren’t enough people to go around. So Tagrugyi and Etugyi took turns hunting in one crew. The day we hunted on our whaleboat, the captain was considered my grandfather Etugyi, and we divided the catch, it fell to us. The day we hunted on Tagrugyi’s whaleboat, Tagrugyi was the captain and he did the dividing. He and his brother Ayngawyi each owned half of the whaleboat because their father Maqe left the boat to the both of them. So on their day they also took turns commanding: first Tagrugyi would do it, next Ayngawyi. . . . Etugyi and Tagrugyi also even held individual spring festivals because the whaleboats were different, even though there was only one crew. Most likely, Tagrugyi and Ayngawyi did it separately too, because they shared one whaleboat. So they each put the heads in a circle in their own yarangas [when they performed the “head” ceremony] (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 271–272).

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Accumulation of wealth through trade and contacts made it possible even for hunters with few or no male relatives to come into possession of a whaleboat. This was unthinkable in traditional society, but became possible during the contact-traditional era: There were many whaleboats in Imtuk. Because they were good at killing bowhead whales over there. The Americans came and took baleen and left whaleboats. Now Umqawyi, he was once very poor, and then he got rich and bought a whaleboat. . . . Umqawyi—where’d he come from? We don’t know, he didn’t have any relatives at all. Somehow he’s close to my mother, but how exactly, I don’t know (Saivak 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 367). Umqawyi’s prosperity, however, was short lived. He did manage to kill a whale around 1915, but he died shortly thereafter, leaving no male descendants; we do not know whom he recruited for his boat crew. More colorful was the fate of another successful loner, Numelen from Sighineq: My father always said that he was alone here and that he didn’t have any relatives among the Sighineghmiit. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters. He would go to pay honor to the ancestors together with the Ngepawyingkut, with the Imtugmiit, because my mother is related to them. But he doesn’t have any relatives of his own. He would go alone to honor his ancestors. He had a separate place. And he would celebrate his festival alone. . . . Yes, he had his own whaleboat, before the time of the kolkhoz [“collective farm”; around 1920]. He was always short on crew. He would make a special trip to the tundra, to the herders [the Chukchis] and ask to hunt with them. Yatugyi [a Chukchi], the old man, he used to go with him. Yatugyi’s mother would come too, to help out. Sometimes Tiwla, an Imtugmii, would hunt with them. But all the same my father had very few people, only we girls helped out (Valentina Wyia 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 206, 368). All the same, lone angyaleks like Numelen and Umqawyi were still quite rare even in the late contact-traditional time (1900–1920). Normally, boat crews evolved through the erosion of lineage and clan restrictions. Eventually this produced numerous crews that had retained a stable kin-based core but also included affinal relatives, people from other clans, and even strangers. This pattern was very common in Sighineq and Imtuk in the early 1900s. Here men and youth from the Ungazighmiit, Qiwaaghmiit, and Avatmiit families who had moved to those places between 1900 and 1920 joined the weakened local crews. This also took place in Avan, where incorporation of affinal relatives and people from other tribes gradually eroded the previous lineage structure of the boat crews: When I was a little boy [about 1915–1920], during regular times we had only four crews in Avan: Nanevgaqiya’s, Nepagergen’s, Iyaiiqa’s, and Yaruq’s. But there were more whaleboats up there. Tasighmii, Angqanga, Angiwagun, and Epekaak each had one. Five or six or even seven crews were gotten together only in the spring, when men from Ugriileq would come to Avan to hunt. Then all the men would put out to sea in their whaleboats (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 206).

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Of the listed boat captains, only Nanevgaqiya, Yaruq, Iyaiiqa, and to a certain extent Nepagergen were able to form the cores of their crews from the men of their lineages. Lone individuals such as Epekaak, or recent arrivals such as Tasighmii, had to rely on other marginals or on hunters from Ugriileq. Epekaak’s crew, for example, included his adopted sons, Walanga and Qiwaaghmii, his son-in-law Aka from Siqlluk, and also Iosif Pavlov, a Kamchatka Creole married to a Yupik woman, and two Nangupagaghmiit brothers who resided in Ugriileq. Not surprisingly, kin-based hunting crews were among the first Yupik social institutions to perish under the Soviet modernization policies of the early 1930s, often with little pressure on the part of the Soviet administration (chapter 9).

Family and Marriage Patterns Family Typology: Some Explanations The typology of forms of family organization is a subject of continuing debate among social anthropologists: in some classifications, the number of terms for various types of family patterns reaches ten and more (Barnard and Good 1984, 83–84). We shall try to avoid the introduction of new terms for the Yupik social units described in this book. However, in some instances we are compelled to add our interpretation to the existing terms to facilitate better understanding. We begin with the most common categories of nuclear and extended family. Naturally, we should view them not in numerical terms but as different hierarchical institutions. A nuclear family is an economically self-sufficient reproductive unit whose core, or formative component, is one married couple. Its extreme form is the modern independent nuclear family (Murdock 1966, 32), which consists of a married couple and their children and which functions successfully outside the framework of any other larger kin groups. The nuclear family and even more so the independent nuclear family is atypical for traditional societies and occurs only in exceptional cases. Much more typical is a family that is externally indistinguishable from a nuclear family but that does not have complete economic and social independence, that is, one that is part of a larger kin group such as an extended family, lineage, and even clan. Such a unit is called a conjugal family (cf. Burch 2006, 79; La Barre 1964, 257) and its specific forms may vary. Most often, its core, like a nuclear family, is made up of a married couple with children; yet sometimes it may include elderly relatives as well. In rare instances, such a family may include other relatives or distantly related lodgers supported by the main couple. In contrast, the extended family is an aggregation of several conjugal families localized in one dwelling and operating as a unified household. Here the presence of several economically active married couples is the essential feature. When these couples belong to a single genealogical generation, they form a special version of the extended family termed fraternal joint family (Murdock 1966, 33). The extended family may not even temporarily shrink to one married couple due to the death or departure of some of its members. It then becomes a conjugal family.

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Among the Yupik, the extended family was a form of family organization that was taxonomically intermediate between conjugal family and lineage, due to the preferentially endogamous nature of the clan and the absence of rigid exogamous prescriptions within the lineage. It is only on this condition that a conjugal family, extended family, lineage, and clan may form an analogy to a nested doll, in which each lower form fits within the higher ones. We have yet to define two further elements of the typology we use here. A polygamous family is an intermediate form between nuclear and extended family. It is a product of a polygamous marriage, that is, a marital union of one man and two or more wives (or, theoretically, one woman with two or more men). Finally, a family may have no married couple in the case of the death of one of the spouses, divorce, or if a woman has children out of wedlock. This type of kin unit may be called a fragmented family. This category includes all the family versions without a reproductive couple, such as those of orphaned children, grandparents and grandchildren, lone men and women with adopted children, and so on.

The Family of the Early 1900s: Sources for Reconstruction Yupik elders whom we interviewed in the 1970s usually had memory of their deceased ancestors and former community members extending for two to three, even four generations.8 Most of the elders could also list members of their families and those of their relatives, name their neighbors, and recall the location of family houses in the village during their childhood years, roughly around 1910–1930. This information, together with genealogies, was our major source in studying Yupik social relations during the late contact-­traditional era. By combining elders’ recollections and genealogies, we were able to reconstruct village populations by families (households) and the composition of many individual families in several communities around 1910–1925. In a few rare cases, we were able to test these reconstructions against written (documentary) sources, such as village family lists from that or even a slightly earlier time. Three of such early written sources are introduced below and we used them extensively in our analysis. The first is the list of households in Ungaziq in 1901 compiled by Russian ethnographer Waldemar Bogoras (Bogoras 1901; Krupnik 2000, 455–475; appendix 4). The second source is the village census of Sivuqaq (Gambell) on St. Lawrence Island taken as a part of the 12th US Census of 1900 (Krupnik et al. 2002, 101–112; US Twelfth Census 1900; appendix 5). The third is a similar list of residents of St. Lawrence Island taken from the 14th US Census of 1920 (Krupnik et al. 2002, 38–53; US Fourteenth Census 1920).9 Bogoras’ list contains some 450 people in sixty-one families; each of the censuses for St. Lawrence Island includes 300-some people. A painstaking effort was required to identify all the people listed in the records and to determine their clan membership and kin ties.10 Success was far from absolute: Elders were unable to identify fourteen heads of families out of sixty-one in Ungaziq in 1901 and five of thirty-three in Gambell in 1900 because of the poor transliteration of people’s names or other reasons. Accordingly, the information concerning them, especially pertaining to their kin ties and clan ties, was lost. All 300 people listed on St. Lawrence Island in the 1920 census were identified. One should take into account that the enumeration units in the early censuses were not families in the anthropological sense, but rather households or domestic families (cf. Burch

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1975, 237). The latter included all the residents of the winter houses or summer tents and cabins where several nuclear or conjugal families, and even temporary lodgers, might reside. In our further analysis, we nonetheless equated each such household to an individual family “unit” based on the typology described above.

Patrilocality Generally, the concept of patrilocality means that the young wife moves into the home of her husband. A more professional definition of this term supposes that the husband in this case lives with his parents, which the Yupik considered the ideal norm. Many elders phrased this as follows: “When women marry, they move to their husband’s houses, where the husband lives with his parents. That’s how we lived” (Ippi 1979). This ideal resonates with frequent references in Yupik lore: “Usually the woman goes permanently to the master of the house, to the husband to live” (Rubtsova 1940, text “Kawyaraghmii”) or “Usually the woman does not live in her home, she is supposed to move in with her husband” (Rubtsova 1940, text “Uneeghchageta”). In theory, such a combination of patrilineality and patrilocal residence of a young family appears exceptionally harmonious. Nevertheless, in both Ungaziq and Gambell (Sivuqaq) around 1900, residence of the young married couple in one dwelling with the husband’s parents was not all that frequent (15 percent). Only a fraction of the extended families composed of several generations followed that pattern, in which a married father and his married son or sons lived together. In 1900 in Gambell, there were proportionally twice as many such families as in Ungaziq (Table 6.1); however, by 1920, the number of such extended families on the island dropped sharply and comprised but 4 percent (two of fifty). Table 6.1: Major types of families in Ungaziq, 1901, and Gambell/Sivuqaq, 1900 Type of Family

Ungaziq

Gambell/Sivuqaq

Nuclear Conjugal Extended Joint Fraternal Polygamous Fragmented Other Total

9 (14.8) 12 (19.7) 17 (27.9) 11 (18.0)a 6 (9.8)c 1 (1.6)e 5 (8.2)g 61 (100.0)

5 (14.7) 2 (5.9) 8 (23.5) 10 (29.4)b 4 (11.8)d 1 (2.9)f 4 (11.8)h 34 (100.0)

Note: Types of families are explained in the text. Sources: For Ungaziq: Bogoras 1901; for Gambell/Sivuqaq: US Twelfth Census 1900. a Includes families of male cousins and/or other clan kin. b Includes families of male cousins and/or other clan kin. In addition, families of two brothers were listed in extended family of their parents. c In addition, six more polygamous marriages in families of other types. d Plus three more polygamous marriages in families of other types. e Widowed man with a child. f Widowed man with children. g All families include “lodgers” of unknown relation to the head of the household. h All families include “boarders” of unknown relation to the head of the household.

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To fourteen “father-son” families we may add another eight families (out of ninety-five total, in two communities in 1900–1901) in which married sons lived with a widowed mother forming not extended, but conjugal families. The proportion of these families, too, was twice as high on the island as on the mainland. However, lone elderly widowers seldom lived with the families of their sons. The sole such instance was noted, again, in Gambell in 1900. In Ungaziq widowed men commonly resided with their married daughters or even more distant relatives. Thus, married men most frequently lived apart from their parents. Yet we should not rule out the idea of patrilocality for the dwellings of members of one lineage were commonly placed in the village side by side. Therefore, the dominant form of marital residence among the Yupik in the early 20th century was virilocal or patrineolocal. This means that a young couple, immediately or after a short stay in the home of the husband’s parents, would erect a new house for themselves nearby or would occupy the dwelling of one of the husband’s relatives where there was no other married couple.

The Fraternal Family Unlike the relatively rare occurrence of extended families with married couples of two, let alone three, generations, the fraternal extended family was quite widespread among the Yupik. In Ungaziq in 1901, there were nine families made up of married couples of two brothers living together, and six more had families of patrilateral cousins (atalgun in CSY), out of sixty-one total. In Gambell in 1900, the proportion of fraternal families was again twice as high as that in Ungaziq: eleven of thirty-four. Moreover, six other families were made up of two married couples recorded by the census as “lodgers” or “partners.” If we accept that at least some of them, as in Ungaziq, were patrilineal relatives of the head of the household, then the share of fraternal or analogous extended families in Gambell was about 40 percent. Among the Siberian indigenous people, the fraternal family is often referred to as being the most typical (Gemuev 1984, 20–37). This was certainly true for the Yupik, if judged from the early censuses and also from Yupik lore, with its frequent mention of families of brothers who hunted together (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 93, 257, 282, 287). To be sure, in the lore texts it is not always clear that the brothers necessarily resided in one house or underground dwelling, so that this image may also be the representation of the lineage and even clan boat crew (see above). Yet the data from Ungaziq and Gambell speak for themselves: the fraternal extended family was indeed an established social institution among the Yupik around 1900.

The Fission of Fraternal Families The actual composition of many Yupik families we documented from elders’ stories in the 1970s often contradicted the earliest censuses of 1900–1901. In the former, references to families of brothers living in one house were relatively rare. Those narratives pertained to a slightly later time, around 1915–1925. We also examined the physical remains of many abandoned houses, for which, according to elders’ identification, families of two or three brothers lived close by. In Avan around 1920, there was, reportedly, not a single fraternal extended family. Yet there were six instances of brothers living side by side in separate

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houses (Krupnik 2000, 64–66). On St. Lawrence Island, according to the 1920 census, there were four fraternal families out of fifty; yet in eight instances the houses of two (or more) brothers were listed one after the other, clearly as compact residential clusters. Such rapid change, taking place barely within two decades, was obviously the product of the erosion of the extended family that took place gradually during the contact-­traditional era. It was facilitated by social and property stratification, growth in the role of individual trading and fur trapping, and increased mobility (chapter 4). In addition, we should not interpret this transition solely within an evolutionary scheme. The higher share of extended families in Gambell in 1900 may be simply the result of more harsh living conditions. The majority of the population of Gambell at that time consisted of recent settlers from Ungaziq or other deserted villages on the island (Krupnik 1994). There was an obvious shortage of construction materials for people’s dwellings, particularly of wood, and also of walrus and reindeer hides, needed to cover the houses and to build the inner sleeping chambers (Yupik aagra). One such circumstance in and of itself could contribute to overcrowding and increased family size (Fig. 6.7). That such a trend happened to coincide with the ancient tradition of fraternal residence is another matter.11 There were other factors that served to preserve the extended family. The Ungazighmiit were very active in their contacts with American whalers and traders, and their main hub at Cape Chaplin with its population of 450–500 was, perhaps, the most overcrowded Native community on the Asiatic side. It would invariably have experienced all the problems related to the construction and placement of new family houses, the costs for their

Fig. 6.7: Large extended family of Akulki in Sivuqaq (Gambell), in front of their winter house (mangteghapik). Photo by Riley D. Moore, summer 1912. NAA, Ms 4696 (01480400)

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maintenance and repair, and the provision of blubber for house heating and cooking. By even a conservative estimate, an aboriginal village of 500 people would have consumed no fewer than 500–600 walruses and 2,000–2,500 seals annually to support its needs (Krupnik 1993, 58–60). Hunting in Ungaziq was no longer stable, after commercial whaling had decimated the stocks of whales and walrus in Bering Strait (Bockstoce and Botkin 1982; 1983; chapter 2). Congregation of several families in a shared house would have been a natural strategy under the constant threat of insufficient food and fuel supply. Again, this coincided with the traditional residence pattern and occurred in accordance with strong lineage ties. In smaller villages, where these factors were of lesser impact, the fraternal family rather quickly transitioned to the conjugal and, later, the nuclear family. This, reportedly, took place in two phases. Initially, the families of brothers settled in individual houses, but tried to live next to each other. Later, such “fraternal” groups of houses gradually disappeared as well under the impact of new agents of change: I lived so many years with Naataqaa: when I married I moved in with him in 1932, and we left in 1939. There were so-o-o-o many of them. I remember that family well: the father, Naataqaa, the mother, Umqangaawen, and their sons: Uutgga, Qawita, Tullghhi, Quyngellqen, Anaghaghhaq, Anglupa, and Akiiqaq. They all lived together. These agi [brothers-in-law] of mine had no sisters, and they considered me their sister. I was never afraid at all. Qawita was the oldest, and then he left, moved out. Because once he got married, Qawita had two children. Tullghhi was already married when I came, then he perished, leaving no children. Now Quyngellqen was also married already, and the wives all lived there with us. And that Quyngellqen had five children. He didn’t move out. Then Anaghaghhaq was the third to marry, he married me. And in 1939 we moved out, into sort of a little shack. And Akiiqaq got married and moved out. And then that Uutgga married, moved out, and had lots of kids. They moved out when they got the materials they needed to build a place to live (Kura 1987).

Other Extended Families The fraternal family and the coresidence of married couples of father and son/s were not the only types of extended families among the Yupik people. In Ungaziq in 1901, three households had married fathers and daughters and their spouses, in clear contradiction of the ideal patrilocal norm. Usually sons-in-law moved in with their fathers-in-law only when their own lineages were weak. A similar situation could occur under an opposite scenario, that is, if the family or lineage of the father-in-law were weak. In short, a principle of integration and of reliance on one’s kin support was a key factor when people made decisions about their residence. There were also some nonstandard versions of extended families in Ungaziq, as well as in Gambell, according to the early censuses, such as those of married uncles and nephews, both patrilateral and matrilateral, living together.12 In others, the families of a married brother and married sister resided together. This latter case would seem to be the greatest contradiction of the Yupik patrilineal and patriarchal norm. Yet such families also

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illustrated a new transition. We found a great number of them in small camps and temporary villages that emerged on the wave of population dispersion from Ungaziq after 1900 (chapter 4). Here bonds between the families of married brothers and sisters became an important mechanism for strengthening small resettlement groups and for incorporating male affinal relatives into the families and lineages of their wives. Another version of the transitional type of extended family emerged during the migration to Uwellkal around 1925. One of the leading figures of this migration, Sunbrown (Uughqaghtaq) (chapter 4), was childless, despite having a great number of wives. Moving to Uwellkal, he established his separate camp where, reportedly, he lived in a large skin-covered house with all the members of his extended household: the families of several of his sons-in-law married to his adopted daughters. This large extended family was not only multiclan, it was even intertribal as the result of the adoption of grooms from other Yupik tribes.

The Conjugal Family Extended families of all types comprised about one-half of all families in Ungaziq (44 percent) and Gambell (50 percent) in 1900–1901. Almost all of the others were conjugal families, also of various types. Structurally, the majority of these were made up of a married couple and its children. Yet a significant number, particularly in Ungaziq (12 percent), consisted of families in which the husband’s unmarried sister and her children resided along with the main married couple. Often these women were widows who had moved in with their brothers following the deaths of their husbands. In other cases, the children of these women were born out of wedlock. The genealogies contain a certain number of people born in the late 1800s and early 1900s whose fathers were considered “unknown.” Such people were members of the lineages (and correspondingly, clans) of their mothers or of those of the stepfathers who subsequently adopted them. Also, in both Ungaziq and Gambell, younger siblings often lived together with their older married brothers. Thirteen percent of the families in Ungaziq in 1901 and 7 percent in Gambell in 1900 were of this type. The actual share was, perhaps, higher because younger siblings often lived with their brothers in more complex extended families.

Fragmented Families and Adoption The fraternal extended family was in essence an expansion of the family model of younger siblings residing with the elder married brother. As grown-ups, those siblings would eventually marry and start families of their own. Yet its initial form could also be a fragmented family that included children orphaned by the deaths of their parents as a result of the high mortality of adult male hunters (twenty-five to forty-five years of age) due to hunting accidents and of women during childbirth, especially after thirty to thirty-five years of age (Krupnik 1993, 47). Lore stories, elders’ recollections, and Yupik genealogies featured numerous repeated marriages resulting because of the early deaths of spouses and the abundance of widows, widowers, and adopted children in the community. Premature mortality of men and women of young age left a great number of underage orphans. These orphans were commonly adopted into the families of other relatives, usually patrilineally, or were given to older, childless couples outside the lineage and clan. If,

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however, there was even one adolescent among orphaned siblings who was approaching working age, they could start an independent household. Their lives were of course very hard, as seen from many folk stories (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 201, 205, 221; Rubtsova 1940, text “Nughutkaq”). As a rule, the eldest of the orphans sought to marry as soon as possible, and the young married couple became the core of a new household of the conjugal type. High adult mortality and a short life expectancy would have continuously produced all manner of fragmented families. Orphans living with their grandmothers or other lone relatives are a common occurrence in Yupik stories (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 109, 110, 131, 156, 168, 185, 208, 316). The Orphan and the Unmarried Woman were typical mythological heroes of Eskimo lore (Chlenov 1981; 1989; chapter 7). Nonetheless, in the village lists of Ungaziq and Gambell in 1900–1901, fragmented families made up but a tiny fraction, 3 percent (three out of ninety-five). Elders’ narratives referred to the widespread practice of adoption of orphans, single mothers, and even lone elderly men. Childless and elderly pairs and influential, prestigious hunters were the most common adopters. For successful hunters, adoption demonstrated their devotion to tradition and their status among fellow villagers. It cannot be ruled out that the high losses from epidemics, the accumulation of wealth, and the acute need for labor added new stimuli to the strengthening of traditional adoption norms. The reverse is also true. As the old adoption norms eroded in the late contact-traditional era, the number of fragmented families increased. On St. Lawrence Island in 1920, 10 percent of the households constituted “fragmented” families (five of fifty), and in the 1930s, such families became common on the Asian shore as well.

Polygamy Early censuses and genealogies are excellent sources to estimate the number of polygamous marriages among the Yupik, that is, of men married to multiple women. In Ungaziq in 1901, out of ninety-five married families, thirteen comprised men married to two women (14 percent), including two instances in which the heads of the families had three wives each. For Gambell in 1900, the figure was 12 percent (seven families out of sixty), but all the men in polygamous marriages in Gambell had two wives. In 1910, eight out of sixty-six married families on St. Lawrence Island were polygamous (two wives only), which gives the same ratio of 12 percent. The frequency of polygamous marriages calculated from the genealogies of the Laakaghmiit clan, the largest among the Ungazighmiit, was 14 percent (18 out of 127 known cases) for people born between 1850 and 1900, and for people born between 1900 and 1912, the ratio was 17 percent (ten out of fifty-nine marriages). Among the Avatmiit, the share of polygamous marriages from the genealogies for the period 1890– 1930 was 11 percent; this may be a low estimate. Altogether, between the years 1880 and 1920, about 15 percent of Yupik marriages were polygamous, which made polygamy an established marriage norm. Moreover, the rate of polygamy among the contract-traditional Yupik people was appreciably higher than among the Inupiat of Northwest Alaska for the same period (Burch 1975, 102–103; 2006, 88). The higher incidence of polygamy among the Yupik may be explained by two independent factors: the predominance in the population of women over men of reproductive

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age (52–53 percent based upon several censuses of the early 1900s; Krupnik 1993, 46) and increased social stratification as the result of active contacts. As far as the second is concerned, polygamy among the Yupik was always an indicator of prosperity and social status. Almost all heads of large clans and lineages, the most successful hunters, and people involved in active trading were polygamists. Their number was particularly high among those who moved from Ungaziq to Uwellkal in the 1920s. All the known leaders of the Uwellkal migration had two or more wives. Polygamous marriages were far from always harmonious. In the family, the oldest favorite wife often held sway, and the youngest was treated as a simple laborer, as in the following narrative: — My father was not divorced from his two wives [when the Soviet administration outlawed polygamy]. And he died that way, too, and both of his wives lived together after he died. Mama died in 1967, and my father’s oldest wife had died earlier, in the 1940s. — What relation was she to you, how do you say it in Yupik? — She wasn’t any relation to me. I don’t think she was any relation [in fact, for this type of kin tie there is the term naakaghhqaq, “destined to be the mother”]. She starved me, I couldn’t stand her. Grandpa took me when I was three years old. And my mother was not a wife, she was a housemaid or something. She simply had no rights. Grandpa took me because he was married to my Mom’s sister, and that second mother was simply starving me. That’s why I don’t like her (Name withheld, 1976).

Other Polygamous Marriages: Levirate and Sororate The elders of the 1970s had no recollections of more exotic forms of polygamous marriages, such as polyandry, or the union of one woman with several men. Yet successive unions of special types called levirate and sororate marriages were quite frequent. The term levirate refers to a woman’s marriage to her brother-in-law after the death of her husband; likewise, sororate is the term designating a man’s marriage to his deceased (or divorced) wife’s sister. Levirate unions were entered into both by brothers and by patrilateral cousins (Yupik, atalgun), which among the Yupik were functionally indistinguishable from brothers (Hughes 1958, 1141; 1960, 241; 1984b, 255; Menovshchikov 1962a, 32). Incidentally, instances of the latter were rare. Levirate marriage was quite easy to implement in a fraternal family, and after the death or extended absence of one of the brothers, such a family transformed into conjugal polygamy without any relocation or household changes. Yupik genealogies offer examples of two types of levirate marriages, that is, in which the widow becomes the wife of the younger or of the older brother of the deceased husband. As one might expect, the marriage of the widow to younger brothers was the norm. If the husband died, the widow was supposed to marry only his younger brother. Anagikaq died, and his younger brother Qillghhun didn’t want to take Anagikaq’s wife Aka, and instead of her he took Pangantungaawen, a Tasighmii. But she died almost immediately and then he had to take Aka after all (Ippi 1976).

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The obligatory character of the levirate marriage could not be rigid in Yupik society, where there was no tradition of bride price. In real life, widows often chose new husbands from the lineage and clan to which they were tied by bonds from the first marriage. The patriarchal character of society still had its effect. Although the husband’s relatives could not force a widow into a secondary levirate marriage against her will, they were able to, and in fact did, lay claim to her children of the first marriage. Much less frequent were marriages of one man to two sisters (sororate). Most often, sororate marriages took the form of sororal polygamy, when a man took two sisters as his wives, especially when the elder sister turned out to be childless, as in the following story: First Yapa married Aynganga. They lived well together, only they had no children at all. Then they gave him Aynganga’s sister [to marry], but there was no love. She was much younger than he, they forced her to do it. She gave birth to many children, and they all died, all but one (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 363). Yarasi’s first wife was Ayugguq. She bore no children at first. Then Yarasi took her sister [cousin, actually] Tengagergen as his wife. She had children, but they died when they were young. And Tengagergen died too. Then Yarasi had children by Ayugguq. But there’s no one left from that family either (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 363).

Sister-Exchange Sister-exchange was another widespread marriage pattern among the Yupik. To our knowledge, this type of marriage was uncommon among both the Yup’ik and Inuit groups in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic. It was a form of interlineage ties and led to the formation of reciprocal marriage arrangements between families and lineages. Among the Yupik, sister-exchange was a common practice not only for two pairs of siblings, but also for patri-cousins, predominantly parallel, or for any patrilineally related relatives. Limited or compensatory exchange of women for marriage was a long-established social mechanism strengthening traditional societies (Barnard and Good 1984, 95–98; Lévi-Strauss 1969, 134–145). Unlike the elementary structures of kinship à la Lévi-Strauss, in which several social segments of a system unite into a chain of marital exchange, among the Yupik, marital exchanges took place only between two families or lineages. They were also strictly symmetrical. This rule led to the more or less opportunistic exchange of women as spouses between two families or lineages, often of different clans, within the framework of one age generation. Sister-exchange was by far the dominant pattern in regulating the selection of a marriage partner among the Yupik. We again refer to the example of the Laakaghmiit clan, for which we have the most complete genealogies between the years 1880 and 1930. In the age group of people who got married between 1910 and 1930 (i.e., those born between the years 1885 and 1910), sister-exchange accounted for more than one-half of all reported marriages, thirty-one out of fifty-nine. Based on the example of the Laakaghmiit clan, we may reasonably conclude that a substantial portion of Yupik marriages in the contact-­ traditional time, from one-third to one-half, followed this norm.

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The degree of compulsion in entering into such a marriage was dependent upon the individual circumstances and authority of the elderly relatives. Most often, it was younger blood or classificatory sisters, namely, stepdaughters and adopted daughters, female cousins, and so on, whom the relatives forced to enter into such reciprocal arrangements: My younger sister, Umqanga, was married to Qawak against her will. Because Ratgugyi, my brother, married Saywaq first. Then they gave Umqanga to Qawak, Saywaq’s younger brother. They [the parents] sort of swapped them (Panana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 357).

Wife Trading (Spouse-Exchange) Wife trading, or more correctly spouse-exchange—the extended or episodic institutionalized cohabitation of the partners of two (or more) married couples—is another exotic form of marriage union that is often discussed in the literature on the Arctic people. In his analysis of the origin of this institution in Northwest Alaska, Burch (1975, 106–111; also Burch 2006; Schweitzer 1989) enumerated several explanations for the emergence of this form of marriage. These include (1) to serve as a means of entertainment for two married couples (Guemple 1961, 23); (2) to relieve psychological stress in the marriage union (Gubser 1965, 68); (3) to satisfy economic and psychophysiological needs of the man during extended travel (Ray 1885, 44); and (4) to strengthen existing friendships and cooperation between men (Spencer 1959, 84). Burch himself viewed spouse-exchange as a means of establishing quasi-kin ties between people living in different villages or societies (Burch 1975, 109; 2006, 114). Yupik elders corroborated Burch’s position. We used to exchange wives frequently. We tried to exchange with other villages and even with the Chukchis. The person I would exchange with considered me like his brother. We would help one another. If you go to a village where you have that kind of brother, you don’t even have to do anything. Your brother does everything for you: feeds the sled team, gets the sleds ready, stores food for you. This custom was particularly strong in the north, in Uelen and Naukan. You couldn’t even go to Uelen if you didn’t have that kind of brother there. The Uelen people might kill you, but your brother would always protect you, and so would his relatives (Aleksandr Ratkhugwi 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 361). In the preferentially endogamous Yupik society, the possibilities for forming new kin and partner ties among people of neighboring communities were limited. Traveling along the coast without friends or relatives was difficult and dangerous. To be sure, in order to establish intertribal and intercommunity contacts there were many institutionalized situations (chapter 5): intertribal gatherings, festivals, trade partnerships. Spouse-exchange was the most durable and reliable form of ties on the family level. For a society based on kinship, this was of primary significance. Schweitzer (1989, 20–22) has summarized references in early ethnographic sources on the Chukchi and Yupik people to the effect that partners in spouse exchanges viewed each other (and were perceived) as relatives. Their children, as among the Alaska Inupiat, were

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also considered relatives, which transformed spouse-exchange into a durable kin tie over several generations. My father Tagrugyi exchanged with Iyaiiqa from Avan. Tagrugyi lived with his wife, and Iyaiiqa lived with my mother. So Iyaiiqa’s children are considered my brother and sister. Then Iyaiiqa died [about 1932], and Tagrugyi’s wife died too, and he took Iyaiiqa’s wife and her children, and married her. So they’re even like twice-brothers to me (Aleksandr Ratkhugwi 1975). Elders’ memoirs allowed us to identify several other features of the Yupik spouse-exchange not acknowledged by our predecessors: The Nunagmiit didn’t like to exchange wives at all. And if they did exchange, then it was with the Ualeghmiit [Chukchi people from Uelen]. In general they exchanged rarely and kept it secret. Sometimes the exchange was based on the fact that the ancestors of two families had exchanged with one another at some time long ago. The wives did not go into the yaranga [skin tent] of the new husbands, it was the husbands who went to the new wives. This agreement was supposed to be passed on to the children. But they didn’t force them to exchange if they didn’t want to. . . . It was noticed that deformed children were born of such marriages, and so they stopped exchanging and would only exchange jokes. . . . Usukunga’s parents, Uyaghaghmiit, exchanged with the parents of Asiinga, a Mamruaghpagmii, long, long ago. And it was passed on through inheritance. My uncle Aagraghhtaq and Asiinga’s father-in-law continued the exchange, but this was before I was born. That’s how they came to be close relatives (Alpen 1976). Here we see spouse-exchange continuing over several generations as a tradition inherited from the parents. In addition to intercommunity and interclan spouse exchanges, as well as short-term unions among hunting partners and “for pleasure” (about which we also have reports), spouse exchanges were often practiced if one of the couples was childless. In the past the Avatmiit often exchanged wives, especially if there were no children in the family. So they’d make arrangements to exchange for one night or for a week (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 362). If a man didn’t have any children at all, he’d agree with another, and they’d exchange wives. For a night or longer. Each husband would go to the other yaranga. And then there’d be children. The children were considered to belong to the man with whom the wife always lived. How many days they’d exchange for, I don’t know, ten or a month, I didn’t see it myself, I only heard about it (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 352). When two partners entered into spouse-exchange relations, all of the members of the union, parents and children alike, became recognized kin, according to the Yupik norm. This was spouse-exchange in its classical, pure form known among many aboriginal peoples of Northeast Asia and North America (Schweitzer 1989). Episodic use of male neighbors or guests for procreational purposes was another matter. The information we have gathered

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was surprisingly mute on relations between the participants of this type of agreement after it had functionally exhausted itself. Its purpose was obviously different: not to create new kin ties but to produce descendants (cf. Krupnik 2000, 358–359). Such unions were never paraded about and did not presuppose reciprocal obligations, unlike the usual spouse-­ exchange. To avoid confusion, we shall refer to this as “procreational exchange.”

Marriage Rituals The Eskimo people and, specifically, the Yupik did not have weddings as a special rite (Hughes 1960, 277–279; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 113–115). Nor were our elderly informants able to describe any ceremony in conjunction with a wedding, including their own.13 Parents usually came to a marriage agreement for their children, after which the young woman would move into the house of her husband’s parents and would live there with him in a separate inner skin chamber (aagra). Where possible, the young couple tried to put up its separate house not far from that of the husband’s father or his other relatives. Often, before entering into a marriage, a young man would move in with the parents of his bride for a certain period. In fact, he became their unpaid worker, earning his future wife. This practice was common among the Chukotkan as well as St. Lawrence Island Yupik (Hughes 1960, 276–279; 1984c, 270): They didn’t use to have marriage ceremonies. I didn’t see them in any case. When I got married I simply moved in to Atatuga’s yaranga to live. My father went to him and made the arrangements. There wasn’t any ceremony. Before that I hadn’t met her, my future wife, we hadn’t been involved. But even when I was at Atatuga’s place, I didn’t live with her. I just stayed at their place like a relative. It was only when we moved into our yaranga to live, it was only then that we began to sleep together. It wasn’t that Atatuga wouldn’t allow it, it was that we, well, we were shy. I lived like that for three years with Atatuga, and everything I did, everything that I killed went to them. We got along fine, I didn’t have any complaints. I was sixteen or eighteen. Seems it was like that for everyone, they’d live with them for a while and then take their wives off on their own. My brother Mallu, my younger brother, did the same thing. Taglaan, my cousin, too. Then he took his wife to his place (Petr Napaun 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 354–355).

Divorce and Remarriage Divorce was even simpler than marriage among the Yupik. We know of several instances of divorce from genealogies and from narratives: Ipeten was the first wife of my grandfather Etugyi. Then they divorced, why I don’t know, it was a long time ago. She took their daughter and married Wangtugergen, a former nomadic Chukchi, who had settled in our village (Anna Ankana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 364). Here is a clear case of psychological incompatibility. A woman with a small child left a prestigious hunter and owner of a whaleboat for a stranger with no relatives or ties in the community. Remarriage of both spouses after divorce (awiitelleq, in Yupik) was also a usual

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occurrence. In their stories about marriages, elders often stressed the motif of personal attachment and love. I got married when I was nineteen years old, my father made me. He felt sorry for them, their mother had died young, and there was no woman in the house. Nutalen, my father-in-law, never married again, even though he wasn’t old, he was still hunting. That was the accepted way, if a favorite wife died then they didn’t want to marry again, it was thought that you’d die quickly with a new wife. Well, people listened (Umrina 1977). Despite this clearly romanticized depiction, remarriages of divorced people, widows, and widowers were a common phenomenon, taking into account the high mortality rate of people of reproductive age. Almost every adult man and women had several marital and extramarital sexual partners during his or her lifespan. Instances of three or even four consecutive (nonpolygamous) marriages were quite usual. The married couple was the pillar of the Yupik social order, where the economic necessity of cohabitation determined the durability of the union to the same degree as did reproductive and psychological relations.

Transgender Persons and Homosexuals Transgender, effeminate men (aghnaasiq CSY, NY; “woman-like”) were common figures among the Yupik (Fig. 6.8) and even considered sacred among the neighboring Chukchi. The female impersonator was one of the most notable cultural heroes of Asiatic Yupik myth (Rubtsova 1940, text “The Woman-like [Aghnaasiq]”). People treated them with caution and often ascribed supernatural powers to them. In everyday life such people were not relegated into any separate caste, they simply lived as family members with their relatives. Our aghnaasiq behaved like a woman, but his hair and clothing were male. His name was Apqaluq. He sewed beautifully, and Aagraghhtaq, his uncle, would scold him for doing women’s work, and not men’s work. He was the best embroiderer in Naukan. Then he was talked out of it, and he decided to give up sewing, but he even took ill from his sadness. Usukunga, his father, was a skilled craftsman, he made a small boat out of baleen. He was taken on as a whale hunter, but he wasn’t very good at it. To make things easier he took a second wife into his home. And Apqaluq, after he quit sewing, began making toy boats, little daggers, and all kinds of small items (Alpen 1976).

Lone Individuals and the Disabled Much less easy were the lives of those who did not fit into the adopted norm of family life— the singles, the disabled, and elderly loners. Their position was unenviable and their status was very low. Because they could rarely procure for themselves, they were reliant upon the people with whom they lived. The lot of single individuals, and most often these were people with physical deficiencies, was to join the families of their relatives as junior members without any rights. All the same, people tried to contribute to the household, especially the men, who served as paddlers in the hunting crews of their supporters:

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Fig. 6.8: “Man in woman’s dress” (original caption). Adult transvestite/transgender man (Yupik, aghnaasiq) wearing typical woman’s summer clothing. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, 1901 [?]. AMNH Library #2579)

Saygugyi from Sighineq came to hunt with my uncle in Imtuk [in the years 1910–1930]. Saygugyi was the son of my uncle’s sister, but he was, sort of, retarded, like a child. I don’t know who his father was. But his father was a full-blooded Eskimo, a Sighineghmii. Saygugyi wasn’t married, had no kids. He was just like a child (Saivak 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 204). A mentally handicapped person, Saygugyi lived what by Yupik standards was a long life and died in 1933, when he was fifty-seven years of age. Disabled persons who were possessed of mental faculties but were not able to perform the work typical of adults often proved themselves in other spheres to lessen the burden on their relatives of supporting them. The blind and invalids often compensated by becoming able storytellers and keepers of the oral tradition. One such figure was Qiwaaghmii, a middle-aged hunter from Ugriileq who lost his frostbitten feet hunting and who became renowned as a superb storyteller (Sergeeva 1968, 30–46). Even more famous was the blind youth from Ungaziq named Ayveghhaq, known as the narrator of many stories recorded from his words (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, 506; Rubtsova 1954, 11). His fellow villagers also remembered Ayveghhaq as a shaman and at the same time a profoundly unhappy individual: In Chaplino [Ungaziq] there was such a singer [a shaman]. His name was Ayveghhaq. He was completely sightless. When we were children and would play on the shore in Chaplino, he would say to me: “Well, if I were only a hunter! If I went with the hunters, I’d be better than a compass. Even if there were fog, and

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if you couldn’t see a thing, I could bring the whaleboats right back to Chaplino.” For this reason he would go a long distance for water all by himself. In Chaplino the spring was far away. He would walk completely straight, with nothing but small stones in his hands, knocking them against one another. And he’d walk straight ahead, listening only to the stones. He’d get the water and come home, just like anyone else. And his eyes were completely white, he couldn’t see anything at all. He was young when he died, but he didn’t hunt. They wouldn’t take him (Ivan Ashkamakin 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 480–481).

Conclusion: The Transformation of the Yupik Family During the late contact-traditional era, the many types of Yupik families fit squarely into the social order of which they were an organic part. Large families formed lineages; lineages made up clans; and clans were building blocks to the communities and tribes. The differences and transitions between those units were scarcely perceptible. Children grew up and socialized among relatives and from a very young age were immersed in what was the norm in their society. The body of rules included not only how to behave, to work, and to follow the elderly, but also how to find marriage partners and structure relations with the relatives of one’s spouse and the obligations to one’s family, lineage, and clan. Such order seemed eternal to the people of the time. Yet the late contact-traditional society faced many challenges: flooding and resettlements, the collapse of commercial whaling and its associated trade network, the introduction of commercial trapping, and the like (chapter 4). Family structures adjusted to these new challenges in a way similar to what took place on the level of the lineage, boat crew, and clan, that is, by increasing their flexibility. First to erode were the old extended families. Almost imperceptibly to the people but quite visibly when comparing the subsequent censuses, they dwindled in size and transformed into conjugal families (Fig. 6.9). During Bogoras’ visit to Ungaziq in 1901, the average size of the domestic family was 7.2 people, with a quarter of all houses having ten and more residents. An earlier census by Gondatti in 1895 gave an even higher figure of 7.4 people for all Asian Yupik communities (Krupnik 1993, 46). In Gambell (Sivuqaq) in 1900, there were 8.4 residents for each house. Barely twenty to thirty years later, this figure had shrunk to 5 to 5.5 residents per household on the Asiatic coast (Krupnik 1993, 46), and to a mere 5.1 people in Gambell. This was an indicator of great social shift. In conjugal families of the early 1900s, many traditional forms of unions, such as levirate and sororate marriages, began to vanish. The first, albeit rare, instances of fragmented families appeared instead, headed by single elderly men or women, widows, and single mothers. An increase in the number of fragmented families was another sign of the transition. Yet spouse exchanges were still common in full measure, both of wives and of sisters for marriage. As before, hunters remained in need of supportive kin for boat crews and partners for trade and traveling in other communities. Prosperous hunters, heads of clans and lineages, firmly adhered to polygamy. These fundamental, though not yet radical, changes took place unobserved from the outside. The mechanism of transition was flexible. Like a Yupik skin boat that bends in

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Fig. 6.9: Yupik family at Emma Harbor (Ugriileq). (Photo by Bernhard Kilian, summer 1913. NBWM 2008.21.112)

the waves, its stitches twisting but remaining intact, the Yupik family flexed under the influence of new forces. Still, its basic framework was preserved. The late contact-traditional society maintained its core set of institutions, forms of filiation, ethics of family relations, and kinship terminology that made the family, along with the lineage, tribe, and clan, one of the pillars of the social order. Rapid changes in the Yupik family started in the 1930s only, spurred by the agents of the new Soviet power eager to step in.

Notes 1. See, on the subject of parallel-cousin marriages, Rubtsova 1954, 329–337, text “Atalgutkullghhik”—”Cousins”; Sergeev 1962, 40; Sivuqam Ungipaghaatangi 1979, 77–81. 2. On “joking relationships,” see also Radcliffe-Brown 1940. He defined such an interaction as a relation between two persons or between two groups of people, two classes of relatives, and so on, in which the parties are by custom permitted, and in some instances, required, to tease or make fun of each other, without taking offense (Radcliffe-Brown 1965, 90–91). 3. Rubtsova 1940, stories “Uneghhchagyta,” “The Five Brothers and the Woman,” “Five Brothers and the Eldest, Childless,” and “How They Used to Live, Long, Long Ago”; Rubtsova 1954, 323–328, text “Yuget tallimat anglygutkullghhet” (Five Brothers); Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, stories “The Five Sons,” “The Youngest of Five Brothers,” “Five Brothers and a Woman,” “The Five Daughters,” and “The Five Brothers.” 4. See Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1985, stories “The End of the Alighpagmiit Clan” and “The Utaaghmiit and the Napaghalaghmiit,” among others.

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5. See other descriptions of the spring hunt opening ceremony in Bogoras 1975, 403–404; Voblov 1952, 321–322. This ceremony is also depicted in a series of historical photographs taken by Aleksandr Forshtein in Ungaziq in 1928 (now at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg; Krupnik and Mikhailova 2006). 6. See descriptions of the ceremony in Bogoras 1975, 405–406; Voblov 1952, 322–324. 7. See Krupnik 2000, 169–172, 274–276; Menovshchikov 1979. The most detailed, though openly romanticized, descriptions of traditional ceremonies came from later-day Yupik intellectuals (see Leonova 1997; Nenliumkina 1975; Tein 1975; 1984). The Naukan whale festival, pualla, was reportedly organized and performed by the entire community and not by an individual captain or his lineage, as in Ungaziq. Nevertheless, the organizers or “masters” of the festival were well known and their clan had certain functions in performance of the event (Tein 1984, 8). 8. Some knowledgeable elders could recall names and stories of their relatives born around 1850, whereas those who grew up as orphans or adopted children had truncated historical memory. 9. Additional sources from the early 1900s were available to us, including the list of the residents of St. Lawrence Island from the 13th US Census of 1910 (about 300 people); the list of Yupik parishioners from Avan and Ugriileq around 1910 (about 100 people—see Ispovednaia vedomost’ 1910; appendix 6); and the census of Gambell (of 200-some people) compiled by Paul Silook (Siluk) in 1930 (Krupnik et al. 2002, 386–397). 10. We wish to express our deep gratitude for the assistance rendered us by Mr. Willis Walunga from Gambell, the utmost expert on the genealogy and history of the St. Lawrence Island Yupik people. Chukotka elders Ivan Ashkamakin, Ippi, Ukhsima I. Uksima, and Gapana were our main experts when working on Bogoras’ census of Ungaziq in 1981, and Nick Wongkitillin, Clarence Iirgu, and John and Della Waghiyi of Nome were helpful with the St. Lawrence Island genealogies in 1991. Willis Walunga, Beda Slwooko, Conrad Oozeva, Ralph Apatiki, and Estelle Oozevoseuk were our partners in Gambell in 1999–2000. We are grateful to the late Charles C. Hughes, University of Utah, and to Michael Krauss, University of Alaska Fairbanks, who kindly shared with us copies of their genealogical data and early population lists from St. Lawrence Island. 11. Overcrowding and the shortage of construction materials to build new houses were, perhaps, the key explanations for why the number of fraternal families in Gambell remained so high. According to Paul Silook’s list of Gambell residents in 1930, almost half of the village houses had “father-son” families or families of brothers or other distant relatives living together (Krupnik et al. 2002, 383–397). Many Gambell elders referred to an extreme overcrowding of their family houses during their childhood years. 12. In CSY, ataata, patrilateral uncle; angak, matrilateral uncle; qangigaq, patrilateral nephew for a male Ego; uyghu, matrilateral nephew for the male Ego (Chlenov 1973, 14–15; Appendices 2 and 3). 13. On St. Lawrence Island Yupik traditional courtship and marriage, see Jolles 2002, 121–127.

Chapter 7

“Upstreaming”: Lifetime of the Yupik Social System Upstreaming

A

s we sift through the pictures of the vibrant Yupik social life of the contact-traditional

era, we also face a challenging question. How relevant are elders’ memories to the events that took place 50 or 100, or even 150, years prior to their childhood years, or, rather, how far may the social order they remember be projected back in time? A direct query usually confuses Native experts. They may respond that the life they recall had been around since time immemorial or that they simply do not know. The former response is a cultural statement; the latter is an honest acknowledgment of the limits of one’s historical memory. This chapter addresses perhaps the most contentious aspect of study of the Yupik contact-­traditional society. What was the lifetime of the social system that we described in the preceding chapters or, rather, when did it originate? In chapter 2 we used various sources to argue that the system had been in place at least since the 1870s–1880s, the period for which we have solid records, both written and oral. In order to move “in reverse” for several more generations, we are to rely upon other approaches. One is to use the archaeological evidence, namely, the records from structured excavations of archaeological sites that may offer clues to the social life of their inhabitants (cf. Arutiunov and Sergeev 1969; 1975; Sheehan 1995; 1997). We have not excavated any archaeological sites ourselves nor do we believe that such sites have been properly interpreted on the Chukchi Peninsula. Nonetheless, we will discuss certain archaeological evidence as we move into the more distant eras in the history of the Yupik people in Asia. Another strategy called “upstreaming” relies on an approach developed in ethnohistorical research. William N. Fenton, an Iroquois cultural historian, was the first to advocate such a technique (Fenton 1949; 1952, 333–334), which involves moving backward (“upstream”) from the better-known present or recent past to the less known earlier periods. Usually it means moving from the contemporary or late 19th-century ethnologies to the earlier time, for which documentation is more fragmentary (Axtel 1981; Carmack 1972; Krech 1991; 1996). Present-day ethnohistorians, who favor “upstreaming” as a research tool, contrast its use by anthropologists, who work from the present to understand the past, with the 189

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methods of historians, who prefer to “downstream,” that is, to move from the past toward the present. The “upstreaming” method has limitations of its own (cf. Chance 1996; White 1988). As information in both historical and oral sources (memories) becomes progressively less reliable, the only test of accuracy is whether one may relate it to the better-documented events and practices of the later time. Burch (2010 [1988]), in particular, addressed this challenge of the decreasing reliability of ethnohistorical data with increased time depth. Burch’s advice to the practitioners of “upstreaming” was to proceed systematically from the known to the unknown, namely, to move in chronologically defined steps and to avoid major jumps over time. We will follow this strategy in search for the roots of the Yupik contact-traditional society described in the previous chapters.

Two Historical Traditions In assessing early written records on the Chukchi Peninsula, one faces two distinct historical traditions in the ways they described and interpreted the local people. The first tradition originated in the admiralties in St. Petersburg, London, and Washington. It started with Vitus Bering’s voyage of discovery in 1728 (for whom the strait between Asia and America was later named) and continued via later voyages of Russian naval ships and those of other nations. These voyages—under Mikhail Fedorov and Ivan Gvozdev in 1732, James Cook in 1778, Joseph Billings in 1791, Otto von Kotzebue (1816), Mikhail Vasil’ev (1821), Fedor Lütke (1828), Thomas Moore (1848–1849), John Rogers (1856), and others—were launched as Navy missions of discovery. Their basic objective was geographic and navigational exploration, usually mixed with colonial purposes. In addition to coastal surveying and taking coordinates and bearings, the crews on these voyages were engaged in collecting useful navigation data from the local people. Ethnographic observation, that is, the documentation of people’s way of life, was secondary to other goals, although it generally was included as part of a voyage’s mission. Most often, the study of the Native residents of the newly discovered lands fell to medical doctors or professional “naturalists” accompanying the expeditions. These men (always men!) were also involved with describing the natural environment and gathering specimens for natural science and ethnographic collections. For this reason, they were most attracted by the “exotic” external appearance of the local people (their clothing, dwellings, tools, hairdos), as well as by their languages. In order to describe local languages, the ship’s naturalists compiled special word lists defining basic terms that were usually filled out via multiple interpreters. The materials were then brought to the admiralties of the respective nations. Commonly, they were archived together with the officers’ logbooks and journals and later published as appendices or special chapters in the voyage reports. On those Navy missions, it was rather difficult to collect data on the location of Native villages and names of the local tribal divisions beyond the ship anchorage sites and to observe the relations between local groups. The brief ship stopovers provided little opportunity for this. Moreover, the routes of many voyages often took them around the world and stretched from the southern Pacific to the Arctic Ocean. Only three expeditions, those under the command of Billings in 1791, Moore in 1848–1849, and Rogers in 1856, involved extended times when the sailors had prolonged contact with the locals

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on the Chukchi Peninsula. Correspondingly, they left the best ethnographic records, discussed below. The contribution made by the early mariners is not to be belittled; yet when they approached the North Pacific shores unmarked on the Navy charts, they often came across people of another type: local colonial officers, border militiamen (Cossacks), trappers, and traders. These people were already in contact with the Natives and knew their languages and lifestyle. Russian colonial servicemen produced scores of valuable historical reports beginning with Semen (Semyon) Dezhnev’s account of his sailing around the northeast tip of Asia in 1648 (Berg 1946; Efimov 1950; Fisher 1981). By the mid-1700s, Russian Cossacks, veterans of military campaigns on the Chukchi Peninsula, were familiar with the local geography, economies, and cultural features of the Native populations (Alkor and Drezeno 1935; Vdovin 1965; 1977). They traveled along with the reindeer herders or by dogsled and skin boats with Native war and trading parties, and even crossed the Bering Strait into the Seward Peninsula, gathering information on the adjacent islands and the Alaska mainland. Several decades prior to the arrival of Cook’s or Billings’ ships in the late 1700s, they compiled maps of the area that featured local names for Native villages, bays, rivers, and mountain ranges. Gradually, these data on the Native languages, village sites, transportation routes, and other local features accumulated in the frontier garrisons and archives at administrative headquarters in Central Siberia. Yet for the participants of naval expeditions, such information was “local,” and as a rule, they neither collected nor processed it. For their part, the Russian border servicemen usually did not possess sufficient literacy or the means to publicize the knowledge they acquired. A typical written outcome of their traveling was a short “duty report” to their superiors long left collecting dust in the district quarters of the far-flung Siberian hinterland. The information was by necessity pragmatic and laconic; today, however, when available, it serves as a unique ethnohistoric resource. The records left by the followers of these two traditions, naval hydrographic and local administrative, produced two streams of historical data in describing the residents of the Chukchi Peninsula that hardly overlapped. By the early 1800s, the Russian colonial administration carried the same practices into Alaska under the purview of the RussianAmerican Company (Ray 1975; VanStone 1984). Yet the main thrust of the Russian expansion for the next forty-some years was along the coastal regions of southwest and southeast Alaska. Accordingly, major new systematic materials on the Asian Yupik people appeared after the 1860s only. At that time, the study of the Native people in the Bering Strait region shifted to small teams of professionally trained scientists and local administrators. They collected data during extended trips moving along the coast in small ships, in skin boats, and by dogsled. In Alaska, this new era was unveiled by the fieldwork of William Dall in 1865–1867, Edward Nelson in 1878–1881 (both also visited the Chukchi Peninsula), and the US International Polar Year Expedition of 1881–1883. In Chukotka, it was associated with the wintering of the Swedish Vega expedition in 1879 (Nordensheld 1936 [1881]) and the voyage of the Krause brothers in 1881 (Krause 1882; 1984) and later with the dogsled surveys by Gondatti in 1895 and Bogoras in 1900–1901 (chapter 2). These people once again visited Native villages and produced area maps with Yupik and Chukchi place names not heard of since the 1700s.

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Before the Whalers: The British Wintering in Emma Harbor, 1848–1849 Our first station on this “upstream” quest for the origins of the Yupik social system is the voyage of the HMS Plover in 1848–1849, a few years prior to the beginning of the commercial whaling era (chapter 1). The Plover under Thomas E. L. Moore sailed to Chukotka as part of the British Navy’s search for two missing ships of John Franklin’s expedition that disappeared in 1845 in the central Canadian Arctic. The Plover crew was looking for any evidence of the lost Franklin ships known to the local people (Bockstoce 2009, 230–232; Hooper 1976 [1853]). In late October 1848, the Plover reached the Chukchi Peninsula and was frozen in, wintering in Provideniya Bay, a few kilometers across from the Native village that the British called “Woorel,” an adaptation of the Yupik Ugriileq or Chukchi Gugrelen. The ship remained frozen in the bay until late June 1849. During their eight-month stay, the British traveled and interacted extensively with the locals. Some crew members, including the young and inquisitive Lieutenant William Hulme Hooper (1827–1854), learned to drive a dogsled and acquired some fluency in local languages. Eventually, Hooper converted his travel journals into a book (Hooper 1976). Stationed in the heart of the southern Yupik area, Hooper visited many villages described in our book: Ugriileq (Woorel), Sighineq (Wootair), Qiwaaq (Kaygwan), Tasiq (Tchaytcheen), Ungaziq (Oongwysac). He also passed through or was close to other Yupik sites and camps, not to mention the Chukchi villages of Enmylyn (Enmillane), Nyghchegen (Nootchoome), Mechigmen (Maytchooemin), Kukun (Co-cone), Llugren/ Lorino (Lorenne), Yandanay (Yandangah), and others. Unfortunately, Hooper’s geographically precise and lively writings offered few specifics on the social life of the people he stayed with for several months. Evidently, the area had fewer residents in winter 1848–1849 than enumerated by Gondatti and Bogoras some fifty years later (chapter 2). Ungaziq, by far the largest village visited by Hooper, had thirty-three skin-covered winter houses, with the total number of residents “between three and four hundred.” Sighineq, the other village of substantial size, had twenty to twenty-five “huts”; its population might have been 150–200 people. Ugriileq (Woorel) had “ten or eleven huts, and about seventy inhabitants.” Other villages were even smaller: Qiwaaq was “a very small place,” with five houses; Tasiq (Tchaytcheen, i.e., Chechen) had five “small huts,” and Nuvuq was a “miserable fishing station . . . of six small and dirty huts” (Hooper 1976, 118, 120). Hooper did not mention any people living at Egheghaq (Plover), Imtuk, Atqallghhaq, Saanlek, Kurgu, Napaqutaq, Siqlluk, or other Yupik sites that he passed by. He counted five to seven residents per winter house compared to the average of 7.5 in Gondatti-Bogoras’ time and 8+ on St. Lawrence Island in 1900 (chapter 6).1 Altogether, the combined population of the southern Yupik villages he visited was hardly more than 750 people, compared to 850–950 in the late contact-­ traditional era (Krupnik 1983, 86–87). In every village, the British tried to make friends with the family of someone they called the “village chief”: Akoull in Ugriileq, Teo in Ungaziq, Mooldooyah in Sighineq, Mahkatzan in Qiwaaq. None of those names had parallels among the hundreds of Yupik

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personal names we recorded, perhaps due to Hooper’s poor transliteration. Some of the “village chiefs” were active leaders (like Mooldooyah and Akoull), whereas others were old and weak (like Teo). In all communities that Hooper visited, people were residing in winter skin-covered tents; there were no references to the British stepping into, or seeing, a habitable sod or underground winter house. Evidently, people had already abandoned them by the 1840s. In Ungaziq, Hooper mentioned a special large tent “apparently erected for and devoted to public purposes” since it did not have any living apartments (Hooper 1976, 137).2 This is the first and the only available reference to a structure reminiscent of Alaska Eskimo “communal house” (kajgi, kazhgi, kargi), which has not been reported in the southern Yupik area. In Sighineq (Wootair), Hooper mentioned the existence of something reminiscent of a kin neighborhood of five houses in an area a substantial distance from the main group of twenty houses (Hooper 1976, 91). A pencil drawing by Dr. John Simpson, Hooper’s travel companion, actually shows five separate house clusters in the village (Fig. 7.1). The largest, of five to six tents and several skin boats on racks, was close to the beach. Five smaller skin houses stood on a hill above the beach, in the historical Uskuughnaq area of the 1900s. The third group of two tents and the remains of three underground dwellings may be associated with the Silaakshaq area (chapter 4); two more groups of five to six tents were farther inland.3 The British succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the Yupik. They traveled freely and were never confronted nor even harassed by the locals. There are no references to personal arms or to military precautions taken by the British or by the people whom they visited, including their Native guides on several trips.4 On two occasions only, the guides were concerned about their own safety—once when Mooldooyah from Sighineq refused to travel from “Lorenne” (Llugren, today’s Lorino) to “Yandangah” (Yandanay) (Hooper 1976, 153) and, later, when the guides from Nunyama refused to travel toward East Cape: We were now all agog to proceed to Po-orten (?), the village upon the [East] Cape, but our desires were imperatively checked by the refusal of any one to accompany us, and the positive assurance of the great risk we should incur by persisting in the attempt. A different language was said to be spoken there, and the natives represented to be at feud with their neighbors, and of fierce intractable disposition (Hooper 1976, 167). This passage clearly speaks of the Nuvuqaghmiit of East Cape and refers to the only linguistic or tribal boundary that the British noticed during their eight-month stay on the Chukchi Peninsula. Naturally, Hooper, age twenty-two, was not a trained anthropological observer. Although he duly acknowledged the difference between the reindeer Chukchi (“Tuski Proper”) and the coastal people (“Alien Tuski”), whom he, following the literature of the time, related to the American Eskimo, he did not differentiate the Yupik from the coastal Chukchi. The most plausible explanation is that Hooper used some sort of a Chukchi-Yupik trade jargon in communicating with the locals (see de Reuse 1994). He called most of the Yupik villages by their Chukchi names: Iwoonmon/ Eunmun for Avan, Ee’an/Ian for Egheghaq, Wootair for Sighineq, Chayechen for Tasiq, and so on. Most of the personal names cited in his book are also Chukchi forms.5 Evidently, he picked up this Chukchi-Yupik jargon at Ugriileq, and he used it on his

Fig. 7.1: View of Sighineq (“Wootair”) as seen from “Meetra’s houses” in February 1849. Clusters of houses and boat racks represent the village “neighborhoods.” Drawing by John Simpson (The John Simpson Papers, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Collection, DU, Box 2. Courtesy Ernest S. Burch, Jr.)

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travels from Enmelyn almost to East Cape, which proved its wide distribution on the Chukchi Peninsula around 1850.6 Another remarkable detail in Hooper’s account was the broad scope of local people’s contacts and geographic knowledge. Mooldooyah and his wife from Sighineq had visited “Kolyma,” where they had been baptized by Russian priests, evidently in the Russian area at the Low Kolyma River (Hooper 1976, 182). Ahmoleen from Tchoolgen (Chulgen), a small camp in Lavrentiya Bay, had made several visits to the Russian settlements and he had “much furniture and other property . . . obtained by barter at the annual [Russian] fair.” Ahmoleen also produced a map of the area for Hooper that was printed (upside down) in Hooper’s book (Hooper 1976, 163). According to modern interpretation (Bockstoce 2009, 232–233), it features the entire Bering Strait area, including the Asian side, St. Lawrence Island, and a large portion of the Alaska shore, almost to Point Hope in the north and Norton Sound in the south. Evidently, people of the prewhaling era traveled widely and their contacts included numerous Yupik, Chukchi, and Inupiaq groups in Siberia and Alaska, as well as the Russians in the Kolyma River valley. Overall, Hooper’s account looks like a dim projection of the same (or close?) social system that we construed for the late contact-traditional era. It reflects a substantial coastal population in relatively few known villages made up of family skin dwellings, with active trade and almost free traveling and communication along the shore. There are no references to warfare, though the area was not free from memories of hostilities, particularly at its northern edge, closer to Cape Dezhnev. Hooper’s projection has low “resolution”; but some contact-­traditional institutions more or less adequately explain what he observed in 1848–1849.

Russian-American Mariners’ Era: 1816–1840 Twenty to thirty years prior to the British Franklin search expeditions, scores of Russian Navy voyages visited and explored the Russian side of the Bering Strait. Launched from St. Petersburg or from the new hub of the Russian-American Company in Sitka (then called Novo-Arkhangelsk), the mission of these voyages was to supply the company and to explore its prospective range of operation in Western Alaska and north of Bering Strait. Welltrained Russian Navy officers Otto von Kotzebue (1788–1846), Ferdinand von Wrangell (1796–1870), Mikhail Vasil’ev (1770–1847), Gleb Shishmaref (1781–1835), Fedor Lütke (1797–1882), Vasilii Khromchenko (1792–1849), and Mikhail Teben’kov (ca. 1800–1872), all excellent observers, were commanders on these missions. Many converted their travel journals into published books. Most of the Russian mariners spent most of their time exploring the Alaska shore and had but brief communication with the local people on the Russian side of the Bering Strait. They anchored in the same harbors explored in the 1700s (see below), primarily in Lavrentiya Bay, and followed similar ship routes that avoided the main Yupik area of the southeastern Chukchi Peninsula. Otto von Kotzebue, the first of this cohort, touched the Siberian shore in 1817 in two places only, at Uelen and in Lavrentiya Bay. In both areas, his team communicated via a crew member from Kamchatka who could speak some Koryak language, and thus in broken Chukchi. They found “many houses” at Uelen and

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twelve summer “huts” at Nunyama, on the northern side of Lavrentiya Bay, but not many people elsewhere. They also made three short landings on St. Lawrence Island, whose name Kotzebue recorded as “Tchiboko” (Sivuqaq), at Northwest Cape, at Southwest Cape, and at “Kealegack” (Kiyalighaq), at Southeast Cape. At all of those sites, interactions with the locals were peaceful, unlike many previous encounters that Kotzebue and his crew had on the Alaska side. At each site, Kotzebue reported seeing “several dozen people,” which speaks of substantial, though not very large communities (Kotzebue 1821).7 Many of the later Russian voyages were under the command of the officers who served on Kotzebue’s journey or used his materials. They mostly touched the familiar shores and reported seeing more or fewer people at the same anchorage sites, such as Nunyama in Lavrentiya Bay or Kiyalighaq and Pugughileq on St. Lawrence Island. They confirmed that people around Lavrentiya Bay did not understand the ship interpreters from Alaska, who spoke the “Kodiak” (i.e., Alutiiq Eskimo) language but communicated easily with the sailors who mastered the Koryak language from Kamchatka (Lazarev 1950; Litke 1948). Lieutenant Aleksei Lazarev on Gleb Shishmaref’s voyage of 1821–1822 reported that the language of the reindeer and “sitting” (coastal) Chukchi in Mechigmen and Lavrentiya bays was one and the same (Lazarev 1950, 301). Lazarev noted that one of the visiting “Chukchi” boats had eight people who could understand the ship’s Aleut interpreter and spoke a language close to that on Kodiak and St. Lawrence Islands. Other Chukchi called those men “Yu:ut” (Lazarev 1950, 308). This is the earliest reference to the word Yuget (plural of yu(u)k, “man” in Siberian Yupik) used as an ethnic name. It also attested that few if any Yupik resided around Lavrentiya and Mechigmen bays by 1820. Fedor Lütke, who also visited Lavrentiya and Mechigmen bays in summer 1828, spent two days exploring the fjords and islands of the Senyavin Strait area. He reported several populated villages on both the southern shore of Arakamchechen Island and the northern shore of Itygran (Siqlluk) Island. During his short stay, the ship and the Russian exploring parties were surrounded by the “noisy, laughing though not annoying Natives” in large skin boats and also by a few men in kayaks. Again, Lütke’s crew communicated via a Koryak interpreter. All the names of Native villages in Lütke’s book and on his map were Chukchi forms, such as Pagelyan, Yergin, and others (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 91–92; Litke 1948). Lütke also reported a “large” village at Cape Chaplin (Ungaziq), another village near Cape Chukotsky (Qiwaaq?), and yet another near “Cape Ulyakhpen” (Sighineq?), where his ship met two Native boats at sea. The last significant visit to the Yupik area of this era was Mikhail Teben’kov’s (Tebenkof) cruise of 1829–1831, on which his crew circumnavigated and mapped St. Lawrence Island in July 1830. Teben’kov’s map of the island published in 1852 featured thirteen inhabited sites, all without names; but he listed four villages, Puguviliak (Pugughileq), Chibukak (Sivuqaq), Kukuliak (Kukulek), and Kealegack (Kiyalighaq), in the attached excerpts from his 1830 journal (Teben’kov 1981, 36–38). He estimated that the island had a total population of some 1,500 inhabitants, but provided no details to support his estimate. He reported that the language of the islanders, “like that of the inhabitants of the adjacent coast of Asia and America, is Kad’iak [i.e., Eskimo]” (Teben’kov 1981, 38). Evidently, he used a Kodiak native as an interpreter.

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These and other reports of the early 1800s had very much in common. The interactions with the Natives were short and friendly, particularly when compared to the hostilities that the Russians encountered along the Alaska shore (Bockstoce 2009; Burch 2005). The Siberian coast was well populated; but we have no reference to any settlements unknown from the contact-traditional era. Summer villages were made of skin-covered “huts” (tents), but sailors had also seen larger winter houses, “yourts,” as the Russians called Native underground or sod-covered dwellings. During short ship stopovers, Russian sailors communicated with the locals primarily via Chukchi or Koryak interpreters from Kamchatka. Ships now arriving from Sitka and Unalaska also commonly carried people who knew the Aleut or “Kodiak” (Alutiiq) languages. For them the resemblance of their languages to that of at least some residents of the Chukchi Peninsula was obvious (Lazarev 1950; Litke 1948; Vdovin 1954; Vrangel 1948). This gave rise to a view (later shared by Hooper) that “settled” Chukchi had come to Asia from America and belonged to the “American” or “Kodiak,” that is, Eskimo, language group. Wrangell (Vrangel 1948, 298) called these people the Onkilons (evidently a version of Chukchi Angqallet, sing. Angqallen, “the coastal folk”), whereas Lütke (Litke 1948, 219) used the name Namollo, which he probably picked up from his Koryak interpreter.8 One is hard pressed to imagine that those who visited the area in the early 1800s were utterly ignorant regarding local linguistic and tribal boundaries. The most likely explanation is that during the early contact era, the Chukchi language or some Chukchi-based jargon served as a lingua franca on the Chukchi Peninsula. The use of the Chukchi language or an intermediary jargon in communicating with the Natives might have confused many visitors. In summer 1855, the Americans on the USS Vincennes under Commander John Rogers failed to mention the linguistic border that fell almost at their anchorage off Arakamchechen Island (and where Lütke had spent a few days thirty years prior). Yet they actually documented that border by compiling two word lists: one in Chukchi and another in Chaplinski Yupik, only 3 kilometers (2 miles) away (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 92–93; Baer 1855).9 Apparently, the northern limit of the Ungazighmiit area passed along the strait between the Arakamchechen and Itygran islands, exactly where it used to be in the late 1800s (chapter 2). The perception of ethnic differences by the Native people themselves might have played a role. Reindeer Chukchi referred to all coastal residents by the term Aiwan (Bogoras 1949), which included both the maritime Chukchi and the Yupik. Nor do the Yupik have a special word for the maritime Chukchi, as their name for the Chukchi, quilleq (pl. quillet), means nothing other than “reindeer herder.” One may assume that in the “olden times” there simply was no clear-cut distinction between the Yupik and the coastal Chukchi based on their separate ethnic languages, and people were called by the specific names of their local groups, communities, or villages.10

After the “Big War”: Billings’ Voyage, 1791 Our next projection on the social life of Chukotka indigenous people came from the reports of Joseph Billings’ voyage of discovery of 1785–1795. This Russian foray into the area was separated from the later voyages of the 1800s by a twenty-five-year gap (1791–1816) during the era of the Napoleonic wars in Europe. Few Russians visited the Chukchi Peninsula in

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those years.11 Billings’ voyage, officially titled “The Northeast Geographic and Astronomical Expedition” (Titova 1978), was the first Russian Navy incursion to the Chukchi Peninsula after the Russian-Chukchi wars and the Russian withdrawal from Northeast Siberia in the 1760s (see below). For the first time, the expedition engaged trained naturalists and artists, as well as Native interpreters from the Aleutian Islands with some knowledge of the Alutiiq language of southern Alaska. Nonetheless, its key resources were two men who joined the expedition on the Chukchi Peninsula, the Cossack officer Ivan Kobelev and Chukchi interpreter Nikolai Daurkin. In August 1791, Billings’ crew explored the Russian side of the Bering Strait, mostly around Lavrentiya Bay, close to James Cook’s short stopover in 1778, near the Chukchi village of Nun’emun/Nunyama (Cook 1784 [1967], 412–414). Following a short survey of barely three weeks, Billings left his ship and made a land journey through the Chukchi Peninsula to the Kolyma River, accompanied by a small team that included Kobelev, Daurkin, and a group of Chukchi herders (Bronshtein and Shnakenburg 1941; Merck 1980; Sarychev 1811; 1952; Titova 1978; Vdovin 1965). The expedition members interacted primarily with the coastal and reindeer Chukchi and had few documented contacts with the Yupik. Nonetheless, one of expedition “naturalists,” Dr. M. von Rohbeck, was able to compile a list of a few hundred words in the language later identified as Naukanski Yupik, evidently from people who came to visit the ship at Lavrentiya Bay (Chlenov 2006, 79–80).12 A small surveying crew also visited the village of Uelen on the Arctic shore, which at that time was apparently a mixed Yupik-Chukchi community (see below). The crew that visited Uelen reported that the village consisted of twenty-six “summer yourts” (houses) and seven winter houses. In 1881, there were forty-two houses in Uelen with 259 residents (Krause 1882); it is unlikely that the village was larger in 1791 than in 1881. Ivan Kobelev in his daily journal of 1789–1791 reported that he traveled from Uelen to the Diomede and King islands with a group of ten large skin boats (Titova 1978, 121). They probably carried some 100 men, perhaps from several villages. In Uelen, the expedition team documented and made color drawings of an underground winter house of the “settled Chukchis” built of whale bones covered with sod. The name for the house they recorded, kjaigit (gleirat, in the language of the reindeer Chukchi), was definitely akin to qargi, qaigi, qazhgi, the term used among the Yup’ik and Inupiat in Alaska for the communal men’s house. A similar word, qaigi, is also known in Naukanski Yupik as a term for an old communal underground house (Dobrieva et al. 2004).13 Reportedly, the underground houses were still in active use in the late 1700s and were occupied by “several families” (Titova 1978, 106). Skin- or sod-covered surface houses also served as winter dwellings, so that the coastal people were in transition from communal underground winter houses to the family skin- and sod-covered tents. The relations of Billings’ crew with the local people were generally peaceful, but the expedition materials abound in references to warfare and violence.14 One crew member witnessed a spear fight between two local men from Uelen that ended in one man killing the other in front of laughing spectators (Titova 1978, 156). The expedition’s main ethnographic account written in German by medical doctor Carl Heinrich Merck (see below), contains extensive sections on Native armament—bows and arrows, lances, slat armors—as well as on raids against, and trade with, the residents of Alaska. According to Kobelev’s

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report, during one such raid in 1790, American Eskimo killed Siberian men driven by storm in three large boats to the Alaska shore, while the crew of the fourth boat committed suicide (Titova 1978). Merck cited raids by “settled Chukchi” to Alaska (reportedly from Kobelev) with the aim of taking captives, women and children, whom they took as wives, used as servants, or sold to the reindeer herders (Burch 2005; Nefyodkin 2012). The materials of Billings’ voyage and of his winter land traverse offered few insights to the social organization of the Yupik people of the time. We learn that the coastal people of the Chukchi Peninsula were engaged in organized trade as well as warfare with the inhabitants of Alaska; that they made alliances with the reindeer herders and residents of the Diomede Islands against the American Eskimo; and that reindeer and coastal people mixed freely. The population might have been slightly higher at certain places (see below); but overall it was not much different from what was known from later sources. Lastly, communal underground dwellings (“winter houses”), if not “men’s houses,” were still in use, at least at some locations.15

Siberian Yupik Language Areas in the 1700s The most intriguing piece of information regarding the Yupik people that originated from Billings’ expedition came from its main ethnographic account, the above-mentioned manuscript written by Merck (Bronshtein and Shnakenburg 1941; Chlenov 2006; Krauss 2005; Merck 1980; Titova 1978). Perhaps the most famous and widely cited section of that manuscript, barely a paragraph long, treats the distribution of languages of the “settled Chukchi” (“stillsitzende Tschuktshi”) and describes the language situation on the Chukchi Peninsula as of the late 1700s. In his manuscript, Merck stated that the language of the “settled Chukchis” was divided into four “dialects” (Mundarten or Untersprachen, in German) that in no way resembled the language of the reindeer Chukchi.16 Merck listed these dialects in geographic order, from the Gulf of Anadyr to Cape Dezhnev and then westward along the Arctic shore. The first dialect according to Merck was spoken from “the site of Cape Serdtse-Kamen or from the small island Maetschchen and up to the village of Uigin.” The two former sites are the mountain at the entrance to Kresta Bay (Cross Bay) in the Gulf of Anadyr and the nearby bar island of Me’echkyn. The eastern limit, “up to the village of Uigin,” gives the modified Chukchi name, Ungiin, for the Yupik community of Ungaziq at Cape Chaplin. All of the authors who interpreted Merck’s data identified that “dialect” as the Sirenikski language, thus delineating the former area of the Sighineghmiit (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; Dolgikh 1960; Fortescue 2004; Krauss 2005; Menovshchikov 1964; Vdovin 1954). We believe that the German word vorn (“slightly before”) that Merck used with the name Uigin was not accidental and that Merck meant that this area ended slightly to the west of Uigin/Ungaziq and did not include the land of the Avatmiit and other small groups of the Chaplinski Yupik speakers of the contact-traditional era (Chlenov 2006, 77; chapter 2).17 Merck’s second “dialect” covered the area from “slightly before” Uigin/Ungaziq to the “Puuchta village.” The latter was the name of a historical village and a small bay halfway between Lavrentiya Bay and Cape Dezhnev (Puwughtaq, in Central Siberian Yupik; Piightuq, in Naukanski), presently known by its Chukchi name Pu’uten (Pouten, in Russian

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adaptation). Both Yupik oral tradition and many local place names point to the earlier presence of Yupik-speaking people in this area (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov 2006; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; Krauss 2005). The second of Merck’s “dialects” was obviously the Central Siberian Yupik then spoken over most of the eastern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula. Merck also mentioned St. Lawrence Island by its Chukchi name, Eiwugi-en, and noted that the “sedentary Chukchis living at the Chukchi Cape proper (Chukotskii Nos) speak the same language as the islanders, with whom they trade for long baleen and driftwood to build their boats” (Titova 1978, 100). The third coastal dialect in Merck’s manuscript transliterated elsewhere as “Pankniskoi” or “Paunkuiskoi” (Titova 1978, 99) should be rather read as Paekeiskoi (Chlenov 2006, 78; Krauss 2005, 166). The word is almost identical to the early Russian name for the Naukanski Yupik language (Peekskiy, Peekskoy) and for the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (Peeki, Peekit; chapter 2).18 Merck’s description of its area, “from Puuchta village to the northeastern cape that lies somewhat south, which is called Mengihenitkin, but more often in the two villages Nuchin and Peakij,” marked the historical boundaries of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe in the 1700s.19 The fourth coastal “dialect,” “Uelenskije” (Uelenski), named after the village of Uelen, was, according to Merck, spoken from “the above mentioned cape” (i.e., Cape Dezhnev) to “the last village on Cape Shelagskij” (Chlenov 2006; Krauss 2005; Titova 1978, 99). The latter is Cape Shelagsky in the East Siberian Sea. We argued earlier (Chlenov 2006, 79) for a more plausible western boundary of the Uelenski language to be taken from Billings’ diary: “The Chukchis told us that the last settlement of the Sedentary Chukchis called Reer-Karpee is located between the mouth of Karpee River and the mouth of Ekichtuma River” (Titova 1978, 99). With this correction, we may assume that the “Uelenski” language on the Arctic coast expanded from Uelen westward only up to Cape Shmidt (North Cape), called Ryrkaypiya in Chukchi. Whereas the first three of Merck’s coastal Chukchi “dialects” have been long identified as Sirenikski, Chaplinski (Central Siberian Yupik), and Naukanski Yupik, respectively (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; Dolgikh 1960; Krauss 2005; Vdovin 1949; 1954), Merck’s manuscript was the first and the only source that mentioned a fourth language, “Uelenski.” Moreover, Merck’s manuscript listed sixty-three words in that language, with their explanations and parallel German and reindeer Chukchi translations. Our analysis of the sixty-some words cited by Merck (Chlenov 2006, 83–87) confirmed some earlier assessments that the language presumably spoken in Uelen was Eskimo and, specifically, one of the dialects of Central Siberian Yupik (Chlenov 2006, 87; also Krauss 2005; Vdovin 1949; 1954). The specific dialectal position of Uelenski within Central Siberian Yupik proper is not at all clear. Merck’s Uelenski word list has a significant number of Chukchi loanwords, indicating extensive Chukchi influence on its speakers. Evidently, by the time of Merck’s writing (1791), the area of his “Uelenski” language was already populated by a mix of Yupik and Chukchi speakers (Chlenov 2006, 87). During his stay in 1791, Merck did not master any Native languages of the area. Most certainly, his interpreter and the main source of information was the veteran Cossack officer Ivan Kobelev (1739–ca. 1840?), who accompanied Merck and Billings on their land journey to Kolyma (Chlenov 2006). Kobelev’s own sources, besides his extensive personal knowledge of the Chukchi Peninsula and the adjacent Alaska coast (Chernenko 1957;

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Fedorova 1971), were his Native companions, with whom he joined the Billings-Merck party for the journey to the Kolyma River. The information thus passed via several interpreters, with Kobelev trying to summarize and explain its content for Merck. Merck himself visited only a small section of the Chukotka coast near Lavrentiya Bay, where, as evident from the Native words included in his manuscript, the inhabitants spoke Chukchi. Most probably, Merck methodically summarized the information given to him by Kobelev (and Daurkin?) and also sought explanation from their Native companions using Kobelev and Daurkin as interpreters. Merck’s list of four “dialects” (languages) spoken by the coastal people on the Chukchi Peninsula was thus a general summary created for him by his local experts who had extensive knowledge and had traveled in the area since the 1750s (see below). Merck’s data revealed a fundamentally different distribution of Siberian Yupik languages compared to the late contact-traditional era. Apparently, the Sirenikski language area once extended farther westward beyond the historically known boundaries of the Sighineghmiit tribe (chapter 2). Even more intriguing was Merck’s, that is, Kobelev’s and Daurkin’s (?), information on the northward extension of the Chaplinski Yupik almost to Cape Dezhnev, whereas during the contact-traditional era 100 years later, the Yupik occupied its southern portion only. Apparently, they had abandoned most of the eastern shore area between 1791 and 1895, if not earlier, as evidenced in Lütke’s and Rogers’ data mentioned above. Merck’s summary of the four “dialects,” including the Naukanski and “Uelenski,” projected a vision of the “rim” of Yupik languages spoken along the shores of the Chukchi Peninsula, from the Gulf of Anadyr to the Arctic Coast. Evidently, that Yupik “rim” was broken by the Chukchi expansion during the 1700s and early 1800s. It left the Yupik in two small isolated enclaves during the late contact-traditional era (chapter 2). We argue that this process was already in place during Merck’s visit in 1791, if not earlier. Of the four (actually, three) Eskimo “dialects” identified by Merck, Sirenikski should be considered to have had the most ancient foothold in Asia. Chaplinski Yupik appeared on the Asiatic side later, apparently via Bering Strait. One stream of its speakers moved westward along the Arctic coast (the “Uelenski” language of Merck), whereas the other turned south, toward Cape Chaplin and St. Lawrence Island. Naukanski Yupik arrived with the third and the latest wave of migrants from Alaska judged by its historical presence as a small enclave on a rocky cliff of Cape Dezhnev that is ecologically very similar to the Bering Strait islands (Chlenov 1988a). That latter migration probably originated in the Norton Sound area, as attested to by the close similarity of languages in both areas (Krauss 1985; 2004a), as well as by the legend about the origin of the Naukan people from the residents of Unalakleet in Norton Sound (Nelson 1983 [1899]). We recorded a version of the same legend from a Naukan Elder in 1981. Some version of the Naukanski–Norton Sound Yupik might have been present (or known?) on King and Diomede islands in the 1700s (cf. Krauss 2004a, vi). Ivan Kobelev was the last person to document its presence on King Island on his visit in 1791, when he claimed that “the speech [on King Island] is the same as on Imaglin [Big Diomede] and among the settled Chukchis who live near the East Cape” (Titova 1978, 163). This language had been later supplanted by the Inupiaq dialect from Seward Peninsula, as the Chukchi language had supplanted the Yupik on the Asian mainland.

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The Ermeremket Ferdinand von Wrangell, who overheard some old Chukchi legends during his survey in 1822–1824, argued that the coastal people with the Eskimo speech, whom he called the Onkilons, were once expulsed by the Chukchi from the Arctic and the Bering Strait shores of the Chukchi Peninsula (Vrangel 1839; 1948). Several later authors reiterated his view (Litke 1948; Nordensheld 1936 [1881]; see Krauss 2005). Bogoras (1975 [1904]; 1925; 1949) cited scores of old Yupik place names on the Arctic coast and the eastern shore then populated by the maritime Chukchi, which he viewed as evidence for the much wider former Eskimo presence in Asia. Later studies revealed dozens of Yupik-based place names adapted by the Chukchi that survived into the 20th century (Krauss 2004b; 2005; Leont’iev 1969; Leont’iev and Novikova 1989; Menovshchikov 1963; 1971; 1972). We also documented dim traces of the old language and ethnic shifts in the form of vague memories or folk narratives we recorded in the 1970s (Chlenov and Krupnik 1983). These referred to the Yupik-speaking people who once lived along the eastern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula, around Mechigmen and Lavrentiya bays: Our very-very early ancestors lived in Masiq [the Yupik term for Mechigmen]. The entire group later moved, to Yanrakynnot and Aliaiunga [Alyaevo], with some heading into the tundra, others to Lorino, and further, to Naukan, and Chaplino; still others went off elsewhere, they were thrown every which way. Originally they were all Masighmiit (Yatylin 1977). Our narrator, Yatylin (Yatelen) (1906–1978), came from the Sighunpaget clan of the Ungazighmiit. Some other members of his clan also remembered the name Masighmiit once used for their ancestors. Another name, Qayqaghmiit, was used for a section of the Armaramket clan (Krupnik 2000, 447–448). Evidently, it originated from the old name for their former village, Qayqaq, located at today’s Cape Litke (Lütke), north of Lavrentiya Bay. In the folklore of the Ungazighmiit, there is a reference to another extinct group, the Singighmiit, that is, the “residents of Singiiq” (Chingin, in Chukchi; Cape Chini), in the same area (Rubtsova 1940, text “Sinikski”). Lastly, in 1999, the late Yupik Elder Flora Nemaayaq Aymergen, from Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, recalled that her late grandfather Nemaayaq (born around 1860) once told her that their family had originated from the “Masighmiit.” Though she did not have any knowledge of where the word came from, it proves that at least some “Masighmiit” could have ended up on St. Lawrence Island. Elsewhere we associated those vanished people from the Mechigmen Bay area with the Chukchi name Ermeremket, which means “strong people” (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 164; Chlenov and Krupnik 1984b, 15). Strictly speaking, this word did not refer to a particular ancient group, but was merely the name of one of the clans among the southern Yupik, Armaramket in contemporary form among the Ungazighmiit and Aymaramket (Aymaramka) on St. Lawrence Island. When asked why a certain clan’s name means “strong people” and in Chukchi, no less, elders usually shrugged their shoulders: “There used to be strong people back in those days.” Perhaps, the Chukchi name retained the memory of a group that was once numerous and warlike, but was compelled under pressure to abandon its home area. The mechanism we construed for the disappearance of the former Yupik residents of the area between the land of the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit, whom we call

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the Masighmiit or the Ermeremket, was by no means an expulsion or physical extinction (Chlenov and Krupnik 1984b, 15). Rather, those people formed a series of migrating groups (locuses) that used various survival strategies. Some eventually transformed into new clans within other Yupik tribes, like the Sitqunaghmiit in Nuvuqaq, the Armaramket in Ungaziq, and the Aymaramket on St. Lawrence Island—the two latter even keeping their old name, Ermeremket (“strong people”). Others formed small independent tribal groups, like the Masighmiit-Napaqutaghmiit on Itygran Island (chapter 2). Yet others retained for some time clan-like names indicating their former place of residence, such as the Qayqaghmiit or the Singighmiit. The majority, however, remained in place and their descendants joined the local Chukchi communities in the villages of Llugren (Lluughraq, in Yupik; Russian “Lorino”) and Mesigmen (Russian “Mechigmen”). The latter name, listed as Matschigmin in Merck’s diary of 1791,20 was an adaptation of the Yupik format, Masighmii = Masik + the locative suffix -mii (-miit). The ancient Masiq site and another village, Kukun, at the northern edge of Mechigmen Bay, were once very large communities. They had numerous underground houses and monumental structures made of gray whale and bowhead whale bones (Chlenov and Krupnik 1984a; 1984b; Figs. 7.2, 7.3). Only a fraction of their residents remained by 1791. Merck listed six large yarangas (summer tents), five small ones, and two winter houses, when he passed through the area (Titova 1978, 145). In 1849, almost sixty years later, Hooper found several (?) houses in Mechigmen (May-tchoo-emin) and seven “huts” in Kukun (Co-cone); by 1901, the number was down to six houses in Mechigmen and one in Kukun (Bogoras 1975). With regard to Kukun, Bogoras mentioned that “all the other inhabitants have become reindeer-breeders” (1975, 30). The same combination of language shift, migration, and gradual depopulation occurred elsewhere, as the Yupik area had shrunk under the pressure of Chukchi expansion and the shift of coastal people to inland herding camps (see below).

Early Contact (Pre-1800) Populations Earlier we offered a conservative estimate of the size of individual Yupik tribes around 1800, based on their known territories and the number of populated villages (chapter 2). We argued that the average size of the historical Asiatic Eskimo tribes in the ­“prewhaling” era, such as the Sighineghmiit, the Avatmiit, the Qiwaaghmiit with the Tasighmiit, and the Big/Little Diomeders, was about 250–300 people. The total for all Yupik groups on the Asian mainland was close to 1,700–1,800 people, plus there were about 1,200–1,500 people on St. Lawrence Island and 250–300 Inupiaq-speaking residents on the two Diomede Islands. We have few if any reliable data in the records from the 1700s for an earlier estimate of the precontact or early contact population. Some villages, for which there were actual counts of the summer and winter houses, like Uelen, Utten, and Mechigmen (see above), were hardly more populous in the late 1700s than in the 1800s. Others, like Llugren, Yandanay, and Nunyama, were probably slightly larger, but had hardly more than 100–150 residents. The only documented population drop in the 1700s happened on the Diomede Islands. Ivan Kobelev, who first visited the islands in summer 1779, counted 388 residents on Big Diomede (205 males and 195 females, including children) and 164 people on Little Diomede (85 males and 79 females, including children; Chernenko 1957, 122), about 550

Fig. 7.2: Ruins of ancient communal houses and jawbone poles at the Masiq site, Mechigmen Bay. (Photo by Sergei Bogoslovsky, August 1981)

Fig. 7.3: Interior view of one of the large communal houses at the Masiq site. (Drawing by Sergei Bogoslovsky, August 1981)

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total. Twelve years later, in summer 1791, he found 218 residents on Big Diomede and 100 residents on Little Diomede; 318 total (Titova 1978, 162–163). It is possible that in 1779 Kobelev counted both local islanders and summer visitors from the Asian or the American mainland (or both), which inflated his population data. The early Russian maps from the 1700s that featured several coastal communities on the Chukchi Peninsula with their Native names may serve as another indirect source for population estimates. Nikolai Daurkin (ca. 1734–1795), the baptized Chukchi interpreter, compiled perhaps the earliest such map in 1765 with the names of several dozen coastal villages (Efimov 1964, 129, 131) based upon his travels with Chukchi herders from the Anadyr fortress to St. Lawrence Island and the Bering Strait (Alekseev 1961; Ray 1975, 28–30). Daurkin’s map lists several sites along the southeastern shore of the peninsula, among them, from west to east, Wutein, Imtun, Regian, Wugrel, Ivunmon, Khyuven, Techin, Ilkegen, Unil, Nepyakhut, and Khyignen, plus three more in the Cape Dezhnev area: Nunegnin, Nukhen, and Memrakhpen (Efimov 1964, 89). These were easily recognizable Chukchi names for the Yupik villages of Sighineq, Imtuk, Egheghaq, Ugriileq, Avan, Qiwaaq, Tasiq, Ingleghnaq, Ungaziq, Napaqutaq, and Kiginin, and also Nunak, Nuvuqaq, and Mamruaghpak at Cape Dezhnev. We recall all of these names from the later sources and from the Yupik narratives of the late contact-traditional era (chapter 4).21 Fifteen years later, in 1779, Ivan Kobelev compiled another map of the same area (Chernenko 1957; Efimov 1964, 174; Ray 1975).22 It featured no coastal villages from the mouth of the Anadyr River up to Cape Bering, where it showed three communities, Wupwugey (?), Eymelyan (today’s Enmylyn/Enmelen), and Neralo (most probably today’s Nunligran). After another stretch of empty coastline, the map featured another cluster of several villages with the familiar names in their Chukchi forms: Wutenn (Sighineq), Imtyun (Imtuk), Echtelyan (Atqallghhaq?), Evonmon (Avan), Khikhun (Qiwaaq), Tchetchin (Tasiq), and Uginyakh (Ungaziq), and then Khygini (Kiginin) and Nigungin on a big island in Senyavin Strait. On St. Lawrence Island, called by its Chukchi name “Iwogon,” Kobelev’s map showed six villages: Tchiwukhan (Sivuqaq), Puelyan (Pugughileq), Nunen (?), Pugun (Punuk?), Kukuli (Kukulek), and Kyunian (?). Two villages were mapped on East Cape (Cape Dezhnev), Nunegnin and Nukhin (Nuvuqaq), next to Uelen (Ualeq) on the Arctic coast (Table 7.1). Ten more site names appeared on the Asian mainland, between Senyavin Strait and East Cape, all of the historical coastal Chukchi villages known in the 1800s and the 1900s. It is obvious that the number and the location of the main Native communities did not change notably in the 120–130 years between Daurkin’s and Kobelev’s journeys and Gondatti-Bogoras’ era. Nonetheless, some coastal villages were depopulated during the 1700s. In August 1728, the Russian Navy boat St. Gabriel under Vitus Bering met with four Native skin boats at Cape Yakun at 64°25’N, off the southern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula (Kushnarev 1976, 95). Of some forty men and women in the boats, only one (!) was able to communicate with the ship’s Koryak interpreter. Singhaq was the only large coastal community west of Sighineq from which those boats could have originated (Krupnik 1983, 71). Most certainly, it ceased to exist between 1728 and the time of Daurkin’s and Kobelev’s journeys of 1765–1779 as it was not featured on either of their maps. Another major ancient settlement near today’s town of Uwellkal with several dozen underground houses (chapter 4)

Chenlin Wuteen Imtun ? Ian Gugrelen Evunmun ? Sesin ? Uñi'in Nepekuten Etygran Kihini Nunegnin Nöökan Memerepen

Saanlek Sighineq Imtuk Atqallghhaq Egheghaq Ugriileq Avan Qiwaaq Tasiq Ingleghnaq Ungaziq Napaqutaq Siqlluk Kigi Nunak Nuvuqaq Mamruaghpak

Nunegnin Nukhen Memrakhpen

– Wuteen Imtun – Regian Wugrel Evunmon Hyuwen Techin Ilkegen Unil Nepakhut –

Daurkin 1764 – Wutenn Imtyun Echtelyan – – Ievonmon Khiwun Chechin – Uginiakh Nigungin – Khygini Nuenvin Nukhan –

Kobelev 1779 – Wootair – – – Woorel Ahoonmool Kaygwan Chaycheen – Oongwysac – Tchatlook Kayeenen – – –

Hooper 1848

– Nuokan –

Tschendlin Uten – Akatlak Rirak Uredlak Awan 4 houses Calico (?) – Unguaschek – –

Krause 1881

– Nuukan –

– Wooteen Imtun – Ian – Eunmon – Tchechin – Uniin Nepekhuten –

Gondatti 1895

Enmitahin Nabuqak –

Chenlin Cherinak Imtuk – – – Avak Kikwen Tesik – Unisak Napakutak

Bogoras 1901

Sources: for Chukchi names: Bogoras 1975, 29–30; for Daurkin 1764: Efimov 1964; for Kobelev 1779: original Russian publication of 1784 (Mesiatseslov istoricheskii i geograficheskii na 1784 god. [St. Petersburg]) reproduced in Chernenko 1957, 125; Efimov 1964, map 124; German publication by Pallas in 1783 (Auszug aus dem Tagebuche des kasakensotniks Iwan Kobelef über das Land deer Tschuktschen und demseln entgegenliegende Inseln und Landeche von America. Neue Nordische Beyträge 1783, Bd. 4) reproduced in Ray 1975, 46—spellings according to the Russian version; for Hooper 1848: Hooper 1976 [1853], map; for Krause 1881: Krause 1882, 34–35, 128, 134; 1984, 47; for Gondatti 1895: Gondatti 1898; for Bogoras 1901: Bogoras 1975, 29–30.

Chukchi Name

Yupik Name

Table 7.1: Yupik village names of the 1700s and their later equivalents

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disappeared prior to Daurkin’s and Kobelev’s surveys, since both maps showed no villages between the mouth of the Anadyr River and Kresta Bay. These indications and other evidence of village abandonment are to be taken with caution. Bogoras, our best source on Yupik-Chukchi relations, argued that “the decrease in the maritime population may be partly accounted for by the fact that each year many families turn from maritime pursuits to reindeer-breeding. Several villages have nearly or altogether disappeared because all the inhabitants have gone inland and have turned reindeer-breeders” (Bogoras 1975, 32). He cited, specifically, “on the Pacific coast, Kukun, Chenlin [Saanlek], Wukwen, also nearly one-half of the inhabitants of the large village Enmilin [Enmelen] and others.” Bogoras’ point was that the Chukchi had gradually assimilated the Yupik rather than expulsed them (Bogoras 1975, 22). Russian ethnohistorian Boris Dolgikh once used the data from the first Russian Census of 1897 (actually, from Gondatti’s counts of 1895) to estimate the precontact (late 1600s) indigenous population on the Chukchi Peninsula. He assumed that all of the coastal people on the peninsula were then Eskimo (Yupik) and that their numbers in the late 1600s were more or less equal to the combined population of the maritime communities in 1895, some 4,000–4,400 altogether (Dolgikh 1960). Projecting Merck’s linguistic boundaries of 1791, Dolgikh estimated the precontact Vute’entsy (Sighineghmiit) tribe was around 500 people strong; the Aywuans (Ungazighmiit and other Yupik groups between Provideniya and Lavrentiya bays) had 1,500 people; the Pe’eks (Nuvuqaghmiit) of East Cape were 600 people; and the Uelentsy on the Arctic coast made up another 1,500 people (Dolgikh 1960, 554). Other Russian authors have spoken of “many hundred” (Sergeev 1962, 42), even “a few thousand” (!), residents in the ancient village of Sighineq with several dozen underground houses, each sending out “eight hunting boats with eight men” to sea (Menovshchikov 1962b, 13–14; 1964, 7). By the same stroke, the precontact Yupik population on St. Lawrence Island was often estimated at 4,000 people, by counting residents in all dwellings and at all of the known historical sites (Burgess 1974; Ellanna 1983; Foote 1965). Elsewhere, we expressed reservation about such precontact population estimates that we consider highly inflated (Krupnik 1981; 1983; 1990a). None of the above-cited sources offered any evidence to a former social system that could have governed the life of “many hundred” or even “a few thousand” residents of a huge village or of a particular area. If such a system had existed in the precontact era, it disappeared leaving no traces in the social institutions we construed from elders’ stories of the 1970s.

Russian-Chukchi Wars and Chukchi Expansion: 1700–1770 The main corpus of early historical records about the residents of the Chukchi Peninsula was generated in the decades prior to Billings’ voyage of 1791. The years between 1700 and 1770 marked a time of open hostilities between the Russians and the Native people that periodically erupted in full-scale wars. These wars, while commonly called the “RussianChukchi wars,” engulfed various Native groups across Northeast Siberia and the Bering Strait region. In the armed conflicts with the Chukchi, the Russians relied upon their Native allies, the Yukagir and the Koryak, whereas the Yupik and the Inupiaq-speaking Diomede Islanders joined with the Chukchi.

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The key documents of the early contact era, the official reports of Russian military personnel, maps, and accounts of Russian servicemen kept in Chukchi captivity, defectors, and allies, have been summarized many times (Alkor and Drezeno 1935; Antropova 1957; Bogoras 1975; Nefyodkin 2003; Timofe’ev 1885; Ray 1975; Vdovin 1950; 1965; 1987). The Russian-Chukchi hostilities started immediately after Russian entry into Northeast Siberia in the mid-1600s, particularly after the establishment of two Russian military footholds, the Nizhne-Kolymsk fortress on the Kolyma River (around 1643) and the Anadyrsk fortress on the Anadyr River (1652). The Yupik were initially buffered from the Russian expansion by the militant reindeer Chukchi and they had hardly viewed any Russians until the early 1700s, besides the passing boats of Semyon [Semen] Dezhnev at East Cape in 1648. In 1708 and again in 1711, the Russians made their first major military raids to the Chukchi Peninsula (Alkor and Drezeno 1935; Timofe’ev 1885). They launched major military expeditions again in 1731 and 1744. In the two latter cases, Russian detachments and their Native allies advanced along the coastal areas of the Chukchi Peninsula. They pushed through (or very close to) the heart of the Yupik land, from Kresta Bay toward the upper reaches of Provideniya Bay and then to the Mechigmen Bay and Lavrentiya Bay area toward Cape Dezhnev (East Cape).23 They continued north and raided scores of Native coastal villages and herders’ camps up to Chaun Bay on the Arctic coast (Alkor and Drezeno 1935; Bogoras 1975; Vdovin 1943; 1965; Zuev 2001). The hostilities receded in the 1750s, although skirmishes along the Anadyr River continued until 1756. In the 1760s, the Russians changed their policy and opted for peace with the Chukchi. The Anadyrsk fortress was officially closed in 1764 and abandoned in 1771, so that the Chukchi and the Yupik were mostly left alone for the next 100 years (chapter 2). This basic outline invites additional comments. Although the Russians directed their raids primarily against the militant reindeer Chukchi, in many cases Russian troops faced a coalition of local tribal forces. The Yupik were reportedly staunch allies of the Chukchi, particularly during the Russian raids on the Chukchi Peninsula (Nefyodkin 2003). In 1731, when the Russians fought a major battle with the Chukchi north of Lavrentiya Bay, they found one or two dead men on the battlefield with “holes cut in their upper lip” (i.e., with labrets; Efimov 1950, 262–263). These were men from the Diomede Islands whom the Russians commonly called the “toothed Chukchis.” In 1732, the Diomeders greeted a visiting Russian boat with a claim that they had “fought with your people last year” (Efimov 1950; Ray 1975). The ability of the Chukchi to muster a battle force of several hundred, let alone a few thousand, armed men is an indicator of intertribal, even multiethnic military alliances (Antropova 1957; Nefyodkin 2003; Vdovin 1965). Unlike the mobile herding camps, the coastal villages of both the Yupik and the Chukchi suffered major losses during Russian punitive assaults. Even the largest coastal communities stood little chance of resisting a frontal attack by a superior Russian military force armed with firearms. People were slaughtered, houses were burned, and skin boats were destroyed to inflict maximum damage. Even if major Russian campaigns against the Yupik and coastal Chukchi were few, the protracted hostilities kept the society on edge fearing an imminent attack and required the constant preparedness of all men for combat (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988; Nefyodkin 2003). It also increased the social role of

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young warriors and military chiefs, compared to that of the kin and community leaders and institutions. Wars always have their winners and losers. As the reindeer Chukchi emerged victorious after repelling the Russians, the Yupik, their allies, found themselves on the losing end. At some point between the “precontact time” (pre-1650) and the late 1700s, the once-continuous Yupik language rim projected by Merck’s data was broken. The Chukchi arrived on the shore and either replaced or linguistically assimilated residents of many marine hunting villages who had previously spoken Eskimo (Yupik). The old Yupik names of many landmarks and coastal sites were the last remaining evidence of that transition (Bogoras 1975; 1925; 1949; Menovshchikov 1971; 1972; Vdovin 1961). Not accidentally, the areas from which the Yupik retreated in the 1700s, the Arctic coast, Mechigmen Bay, and the northwestern section of the Gulf of Anadyr, coincided with the routes of Russian retaliatory campaigns. Like the Ermeremket, the survivors of the Russian raids sought refuge in the mountainous areas at the southeastern and northeastern edges of the Chukchi Peninsula. Others joined the herders’ camps in the interior, while the majority allied with the reindeer Chukchi and eventually switched to their language. The large coastal communities known under their Chukchi names Enmelen/Enmylyn and Nunligran, even if once occupied by the Yupik, switched to the Chukchi language, perhaps in the early 1700s (Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; Menovshchikov 1962b; 1964; Vakhtin 2000). Another factor in the transition was the region’s changing ecology. Elsewhere we referred to an overall decline in the productivity of Native maritime hunting in the northern Bering Sea and Western Arctic in the middle of the second millennium ce due to the climate cooling known as the “Little Ice Age” (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 153–154; Krupnik 1993, 193, 210–215). Climate cooling, unfavorable for marine hunters, stimulated the development of inland caribou hunting and, later, reindeer herding. It facilitated the population growth of the nomadic people. Population pressure in the interior tundra could have triggered a move of inland Chukchi closer to the coastal villages. Chukchi expansion was further accelerated by the transformation of their emerging reindeer economy into a productive animal husbandry, which, to all appearances, may be dated to the 1600s and 1700s (Krupnik 1993, 162–167, 177). The shift of former caribou hunters to a more stable herding economy was another trigger to population growth. As the numbers of reindeer Chukchi swelled (by some estimates, from 2,000 to 6,000–8,000; Dolgikh 1960; Gurvich 1966; Krupnik 1993), their territory grew larger in the search for new reindeer pastures. By the late 1700s, the Chukchi became the main military and economic superpower in Northeast Siberia. Their ranks and area had expanded dramatically by the crowding out, assimilation, or outright cleansing of the neighboring groups: the Yukagir, Kerek, reindeer Koryak, and some Yupik as well. This, we believe, was the mechanism of the “transition to Chukchi” of the majority of former Yupik-speaking people in Asia, except for those in the rocky areas at Cape Dezhnev (the Nuvuqaghmiit) and in the fjord zone of the southeastern Chukchi Peninsula (the Ungazighmiit, the Sighineghmiit, and other small groups). Only the Diomede and St. Lawrence islanders were spared the Chukchi assimilation, though not their raids.

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Wars and Raids: Yupik Warfare and Lore Tradition The lore of the Yupik and of their neighbors, the Chukchi and the American Eskimo, offers yet another insight into Yupik social life of the precontact and early contact era. Using the lore for past social reconstruction is often problematic, as it is rarely an authentic projection of the social and cultural institutions of the time (Chlenov 1981). Precise dating of the lore evidence is even more challenging. Bogoras, who pioneered the use of the lore to construe the former social life of the Chukchi and the Yupik people in Asia, was perhaps too literate in generalizing from the stories he recorded. According to his typology (Bogoras 1975; 1930; 1949), Chukchi lore included several historical “layers” referring to specific events. In his view, the most recent layer from the 1600s and 1700s featured narratives about the Chukchi wars with the Tanngit, that is, the Russians, and their Native allies, the Koryak and the Yukagir.24 Stories about Chukchi wars with the “coastal people,” the Aiwan, constituted an earlier layer. Although Aiwan is the general term that the reindeer Chukchi commonly used for all coastal residents, Bogoras believed that it referred primarily to the Yupik. In the stories about the Aiwan-Chukchi wars, Chukchis were portrayed as small herders, whereas the Aiwans were maritime hunters, mostly whalers. Many narratives started with a whale hunt by the Aiwans, who tried to keep their catch away from the Chukchis, who begged for whale blubber and meat. In the end, the Chukchis always won. They plundered the Aiwans’ possessions, destroyed their houses, and took women and youth captives to serve as servants in the reindeer herds (Bogoras 1975, 654–656). Most often, the confrontation morphed into a fight between a Chukchi warrior and an Aiwan “strongman,” defender of his community, who was killed by his Chukchi adversary. Bogoras believed that these stories were projections of the reindeer Chukchi expansion and their takeover of the land once occupied by the Yupik. In his view, this occurred “somewhat” prior to the arrival of the Russians, that is, before the late 1600s. Bogoras once argued that the Yupik retreat in Asia eventually led to the Inuit (Eskimo) advance and expulsion of the Norse in West Greenland in the 13th–15th centuries ce, at the other end of their area (Bogoras 1949, 34), for which, of course, we have no proof. The history, we believe, was more complex, as the lore commonly pushes individual heroes to the forefront at the expense of more mundane social institutions. For example, among several hundred recorded Yupik lore narratives, there are few references to the clans, usually disguised as “five (or eight) brothers hunting together” (Menovshchikov 1987, no. 27; Rubtsova 1954, no. 6; chapter 6). Lineages (big families) or village neighborhoods are hardly mentioned at all. No tribal names are recorded either, as people are always referred to by their community name or place of origin. Instead, we often come across the names of the old villages or clans that were not cited in elders’ memoirs from the 1970s, like Kegeq, Kurgaghaq, Nutqak, Napegalaq, Nuuwetqaq, Qayaqsighvik, Ququk, Qiivaluq, and Uutaq; also the Alighpagmiit, the Pangagmiit, and the like (Menovshchikov 1987; 1988; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988; Rubtsova 1940; 1954). In accordance with Bogoras’ typology, Yupik lore is also rife with stories of wars with various invaders, who are commonly called Tanngit (e.g., Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988, no. 127). Often the raiders are clearly the reindeer herders from the inland tundra or invaders from the North, who came in boats, evidently from the Asian Arctic shore

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or from Alaska, across the Bering Strait. Yupik men fought the invaders with bows and arrows, often dressed in defensive slat armor (Figs. 7.4, 7.5)—hence the name of the Yupik clan Akulghaaghwiget, “people with the armor”—and also engaged in hand-to-hand combat with lances—hence the old clan name Pangagmiit (Chukchi panga, lance; Yupik pana, spear) among the Ungazighmiit (Aivangu 1985, 53; Menovshchikov 1962a). Their favorite defense tactic was to build stone fortresses of big boulders, from which they would shower the invaders with arrows (Menovshchikov 1987, no. 25; Silook 1976; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989). The remains of such ancient fortresses may still be seen in the Cape Dezhnev area (Leont’iev 1969), in the interior of Cape Chaplin (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 71–74), and near the abandoned village of Singhaq (Krupnik 1983; Fig. 7.6).25 The Inupiat from Seward Peninsula tell their own stories about Siberian raiders coming in large skin boats across Bering Strait, who looted native villages, killed their inhabitants, and took women prisoners (Bogoras 1930; Burch 1988; 2005; Fair 2004; Koutsky 1981a; Nefyodkin 2012; Schweitzer and Golovko 1995; Sheppard 2009; Vdovin 1965). Besides the narratives about wars with various types of aliens, the Tanngit, the Yupik lore abounds with stories of wars among the Yupik themselves. The best-known stories of Yupik-to-Yupik warfare are those between the two communities within the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe, Nunak and Mamruaghpak, mostly without even mentioning Nuvuqaq, the central village of the tribe (chapter 2; Menovshchikov 1987, nos. 1–2). Another area of Yupikto-Yupik warfare was between the Ungazighmiit and the Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island.26 Stories of Ungazighmiit raids against the Sivuqaghmiit abound on both sides (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988; Rubtsova 1954; Silook 1976; Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989). A narrative recorded in 1974 from the above-mentioned Elder Yatylin is a detailed account of a coalition of raiders in skin boats from various mainland communities led by the Ungazighmiit. They overcame the Sivuqaghmiit in a coordinated maritime assault (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988, no. 133). These raids were primarily for revenge or to capture women and children to be traded to the reindeer Chukchi (Menovshchikov 1987, no. 38; Rubtsova 1954, no. 15). In a story that we recorded in 1977, the Ungazighmii narrator seemed ashamed of the behavior of his ancestors, who pillaged their island neighbors: You see, that pig from Chaplino killed almost everyone on Sivuqaq. Eskimos were fighting with Eskimos, they turned on their own brothers. Their military leader was Ngepawyi. My father Tiina saw him when he was a young man. That Ngepawyi was a killer, he killed eleven people in Chaplino. And then he got the skin boats together, about a thousand people from the entire coast, and sent them there. They killed everyone, not even sparing the children, there were guts flying everywhere. Several women and children concealed themselves among the rocks and one of the Chaplinians saw them. One woman says, “What do you want? Take me as your wife, the children will be yours.” He says, “No, I’ll stand here and keep a lookout so no one sees you.” And so he saved them. But they didn’t touch the elders (Semen Iena 1977). Another typical lore theme with no parallels in the late contact-traditional society is that of a village “strongman” or boss (Russian starshina), called umiilek in Yupik (chapter 5). He is a different character from the community war leader or village defender whom

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Fig. 7.4: Chukchi man posing in slat armor, with his shield and lance. (Photo by Waldemar Bogoras, 1900, AMNH Library #2723)

Bogoras invoked in the lore cycle about the Aiwan-Chukchi wars. The folklore umiilek is neither a clan “chief” nor the “master of the land” (nunaleggtaq), but a brutal village bully who achieves his status through physical force and harassment of his neighbors. The umiilek takes food away from his co-villagers and violates other rules of Yupik community life (Badten and Krauss 1971; Bogoras 1910; 1930; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988; Rubtsova 1954). He also turns people into his serfs, usually captives from the Alaska side of Bering Strait, but often his neighbors as well. Naturally, the vicious umiilek finds his end in a total defeat, a violent death even (Menovshchikov 1987, no. 23; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988, nos. 131, 133; Rubtsova 1954, no. 2). In the lore, the common antagonist of the ruthless and oppressive umiilek is a poor orphan boy who often resides with his elderly grandmother at the very end of the village (Menovshchikov 1987; 1988; Rubtsova 1954). Sometimes the boy is called a “little orphan”

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Fig. 7.5: Historical war scenes depicted on modern decorated ivory tusks from Chukotka: (above) “The story of my clan,” carved by Tatyana Pechetegina, 1988, Uelen; (below) “The reindeer Chukchi raid” (from the decorated tusk The Giant Woman) carved by Elena Ilkey, 1987, Uelen. Both tusks are in the collections of the State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow, Russia (Photos courtesy Mikhail Bronshtein)

(yawalengighhaq in Yupik) to underscore his age and low status. Bogoras (1930) argued that the high general mortality and hunting death rate in the traditional society produced many orphans, lonely elders, and single mothers living at the edge of survival. According to Yupik genealogies and elders’ stories, such people were, actually, rare and were commonly adopted by their relatives and clansmen (chapter 6). Nonetheless, stories about an orphaned boy raised by his elderly grandmother were common in the lore of all the Yupik tribes, which speaks of its ancient origin. The most common story is that of an orphan boy who through rigorous athletic training becomes a “strongman,” a powerful wrestler, and eventually kills his oppressor, the umiilek (Menovshchikov 1987, no. 6; Rubtsova 1954, 44). In all of the known lore narratives, the orphans never reintegrated with their relatives as was the norm of the contact-traditional society. Rather, they made families of their own and lived their separate life (Rubtsova 1954, nos. 11, 19). Overall, the lore appears to be a highly ambiguous depiction of the Yupik social organization of the distant past. It offers valuable references to some ancient communities or clans with now-forgotten names, to the age-old relations with the reindeer herders, and to wars and trade with the Alaska Eskimo. It tells about community festivals, kinship rules (such as the prohibition against patrilineal cross-cousin marriage; Menovshchikov 1964, no. 9; Rubtsova 1954, no. 28), polygamy and spouse-exchange, intertribal marriages, and social gatherings (Menovshchikov 1987, no. 17; Rubtsova 1954, no. 4) that are well documented in elders’ memories. It also reveals the past existence of Yupik-to-Yupik warfare, violent village oppressors, serfs and even slaves, abandoned orphans, and destitute elders. Whatever ancient social realities stand behind these stories, they do not resonate with the institutions of the late contact-traditional society that we construed from elders’ stories. They also speak of a far more violent and less balanced nature of the Yupik social order as it is reflected in the lore.

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Fig. 7.6: Old Yupik stone fortress at the abandoned village of Singhaq. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, September 1975)

Veering into the Unknown: Whale Alley The processes described so far—the Chukchi expansion, language area shifts, wars and raids—left at least some evidence in the early documentary records and the oral tradition of the Yupik people. We may also look back to the contact-traditional society in our search for clues, comparison, and explanations. That “home-base” starting point in the upstream journey to the earlier days of Yupik history is not to be there for long. Eventually, it sinks beyond the time horizon. In August 1976, a survey team led by Michael Chlenov came across an unknown ancient site barely half a kilometer from the abandoned historical village of Siqlluk on the northern shore of Itygran Island (chapter 4; Chlenov 1976). The site we named “Whale Alley” was a monumental construction, even when compared to the ruins of the largest ancient Eskimo settlements on the Chukchi Peninsula.27 It looked like an early complex built of two parallel rows of skulls of the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) that were set in the ground in regularly aligned groups of two or four,28 with accompanying groups of vertically set whale jawbones (mandibles) (Figs. 7.7, 7.8). The skull and jaw rows were set along a southwest–northeast axis on a gravel spit following the shore for a distance of 550 meters (600 yards). A well-beaten stone path (trail) runs for approximately 100 meters (325 feet) from the geometric center of the alley up the hillside, perpendicular to the main ­southwest–northeast line. It ends in a ring of large boulders that we called the “Main Sanctuary.” Approximately 120 funnel-shaped stone pits built into the talus slope below the “Sanctuary” revealed traces of desiccated meat at their bottom (Arutiunov et al. 1979; 1982; Chlenov and Krupnik 1984b; Gusev 2010). For three seasons, 1977, 1979, and 1981, we surveyed “Whale Alley” and the nearby area, sifted through written records, and conducted interviews with Yupik and Chukchi elders seeking clues to the origins of the site. Monumental ritual centers—and that was our eventual interpretation of Whale Alley—particularly of such an architecturally organized type, were unknown on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait. Although we collected many references to individual whale skulls and groups of vertical jawbones excavated at several

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historical sites (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Bogoras 1975, 412), nothing in the organization of contact-traditional Yupik life was comparable to this monumental construction found on a small island far from major population sites. Several aspects of Whale Alley puzzled us; but they were equally confusing to the Yupik themselves. Altogether, we interviewed more than fifty people, including all the former residents of the village of Siqlluk and many of the elders who grew up in the nearby communities, to no avail. Some knew about the structures, others did not, but nobody had a plausible explanation. Eventually we concluded that the builders of Whale Alley were direct ancestors of neither the historical Yupik groups, such as the Ungazighmiit and the Napaqutaghmiit, nor of the coastal Chukchi, even less so the reindeer Chukchi or any nonaboriginal group (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 134–135). The carbon dates obtained from the whale bone at the site point to the early 1600s (without correction for the carbon reservoir effect; Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov and Krupnik 1984b). Those with correction were in close range of this, from the 14th–15th to 16th–17th centuries ce (Gusev 2010). The ancient builders of Whale Alley had a social system that was capable of bringing together large numbers of people to construct such a monument and to practice certain coordinated rituals at the site. We viewed them hypothetically as the pre-Ungazighmiit (?) Eskimo population of the area. In our earlier book and several papers (Arutiunov et al. 1979; 1981; 1982), we argued that Whale Alley served as a ritual center of an intertribal (intervillage) whalers’ cult, a sort of a male secret society. Such societies were known in Alaska among the Yup’ik and the Alutiiq, as well as among the Aleut and Tlingit people (Birket-Smith 1936, 144; Fainberg 1964, 199–204; Lantis 1938; 1966, 27–31; Veniaminov 1840, 308–313). It was a far more complex social system than anything we learned regarding the Asian Yupik people of the contact-traditional era; but so was Whale Alley itself. We hypothesized that it was built during the peak of ancient aboriginal whaling around 1200–1500 ce and was abandoned during the so-called Little Ice Age in the 1600s because of the reduced whaling activities in the colder icebound climate. Eventually, the memory of Whale Alley faded away, due to population movements, but mostly due to the later social transitions of the contact-traditional era (Arutiunov et al. 1982, 153–157). More plausible interpretations of Whale Alley are perhaps more pragmatic. It could once have served as a major whaling camp for boat crews from several communities who came together for collective whale hunting in the narrow channels and ice leads of the Senyavin Strait area. A model of such an intertribal whaling camp (also unheard of in the Yupik contact-traditional era) was recently introduced for the historical Inuit site called Kitigaaryuit that was also located on a small island in the Mackenzie River Delta in the Canadian Arctic (Friesen 2004). It was used by several local groups for beluga/white whale hunting for brief periods of a few summer weeks only, and then the hunters went back to their home areas, to return the next summer. The functioning of such an intertribal hunting site of several hundred people required complex social arrangements, though there was nothing similar to the monumental bone construction of Whale Alley. The story of Whale Alley is a lesson of ethnohistorical “upstreaming” running aground when faced with past social phenomena that left no traces in people’s memories or in written records. Whether we interpret Whale Alley as a ritual sanctuary of a whalers’ secret society or as an intertribal whaling camp, it had no parallels in contact-traditional

Fig. 7.7: Whale Alley: general view from the mountain facing north-northeast. The monumental scope of the site is visible in regular groups of whale skulls and jawbone poles erected along the beach line for over 500 meters. (Photo by Levon Abrahamian, September 1979)

Fig. 7.8: Group of whale skulls used as a constructive element of Whale Alley. (Photo by Levon Abrahamian, September 1979)

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Yupik society. No institutions we describe in this book—clans, neighborhoods, boat crews, even tribes—had the power or capacity to mobilize its members for such epic construction efforts or mass ritual performances far from their home areas. Actions once performed at Whale Alley had been forgotten, and the site remained confusing to the people of the late contact-traditional era.

Punuk Whalers and Warriors: The Origins of Military “Society” Archaeologist Henry Collins (1937) was the first to argue for the past existence of a certain complex of cultural elements associated with advanced warfare, which—as he believed—had been introduced to the Bering Strait from Northeast Asia. It included slat (bone plate) armor, the sinew-backed bow, special types of arrowheads, and wrist guards. Collins related this complex to the advent of a new culture he called “Punuk,” after a site on the Punuk Islands off St. Lawrence Island he excavated in 1929. The emergence of advanced warfare in the Bering Strait, according to Collins, was a “sudden appearance” that he tentatively dated to the 7th–8th centuries ce. He interpreted it either as an intrusion of a hostile group or as a northward diffusion of advanced archery, slat armor techniques, and other improved tools of warfare developed “among the warlike tribes of central (Inner) Asia” that reached Bering Strait from northeast China or Japan (Collins 1937, 224–225). Sergei Rudenko (1947) corroborated most of Collins’ arguments and found the same elements at the Punuk-era sites on the Chukchi Peninsula. Both Collins and Rudenko pointed to the correspondence of the new Asian warfare complex with the development of whaling during the Punuk era. The link between the origins of whaling and of warfare remained for decades the backbone of the interpretations of ancient cultural transitions on the Chukchi Peninsula and in the adjacent area. Dikov (1979), Ackerman (1984), and, particularly, Arutiunov and Sergeev (1975) argued for substantial population growth and an increase in settlement size in the Bering Strait area during the Punuk era, due to this related development of whaling and warfare. Efficient whaling generated a reliable food supply that allowed the coastal population to grow. Successful whaling operations required more hunters and boats, and thus stimulated the growth of whaling villages. Larger villages could defend themselves and were better protected from hostile raids and plundering. This reinforced transition might have been quite rapid and it led to the development of many social institutions, rituals, forms of group ceremonies, and arts (Arutiunov and Sergeev 1975, 196). Later excavations and synthesis added new elements to our vision of the ancient Eskimo whalers-warriors’ society. The list of its typical features now includes building of stone fortresses and other defensive locations; rigorous physical training of young warriors; a whaling cult; sociopolitical organization based upon men’s houses (qargi); coordinated maritime raids and attacks; and the emergence of aggressive military leaders (umiilek; see above) and even of a “warrior class” (Ackerman 1984; Bandi 1995; 2006; Sheehan 1995; 1997). This new argumentation strengthened the postulated links among communal whaling (a local Bering Strait development), a warfare complex (most certainly of Asian origin), population growth, an increase in social complexity, and favorable climate conditions

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during the Punuk era that corresponded to the “Medieval Climate Optimum” of 1000– 1400 ce. We used this same complex of evidence in our early scenarios for the origins of Whale Alley (Arutiunov et al. 1979; 1982).29 Warfare, apparently, had a long history in the Bering Strait region (Mason 1998; 2009); but sophisticated intergroup warfare known from archaeological, historical, and folklore sources was another matter. It developed at some point either via cultural intrusion (as Collins and, later, Mason argued) or as a response to the increased population numbers, population density, and village size. Larger groups required new forms of social cohesion and stronger systems of leadership, including military leadership. Following earlier studies, we assume that the emerging social system of Punuk whalers and warriors responded to these new demands sometime by the end of the 1st millennium ce (?). People who built that society were engaged in warfare that included coordinated raids and battles, intergroup alliances, building of stone fortresses and other defensive constructions, and also early forms of slavery or serfdom. All of these features were unknown to the members of the later contact-traditional society but were preserved in their lore. In various iterations, this ancient whalers-warriors’ society lasted until the arrival of the Russians to Northeast Asia in the late 1600s and was then invigorated during the era of the Russian-Chukchi wars. We can only guess whether this was one social system that survived for almost a thousand years till the late 1700s, or many systems, which is what we tend to believe. In any case, it had its starting and ending date (or time) and was a marked departure from the social order that had preceded it and the one that followed it.

Old Bering Sea Societies: Ancient Art and Graves The era that predated the Punuk society of whalers and warriors was a time of spiritual artists and exquisite ivory carvers. By the 1950s, archaeologists viewed the earliest phases of Eskimo prehistory in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island as the succession of three maritime cultures that preceded Punuk: Okvik, Old Bering Sea (OBS), and Birnirk (Collins 1937; Rudenko 1947). Better excavation and dating techniques of the 1960s and 1970s pushed for more complex cultural scenarios (Ackerman 1984; Arutiunov and Sergeev 1975; Dikov 1979) and, later, for the challenging and rejection of the Okvik-OBS-BirnirkPunuk succession model. The most compelling evidence for the latter came from the statistical analysis of various decorative art patterns on archaeological objects excavated at ancient cemetery sites on the Chukchi Peninsula and St. Lawrence Island. Russian art historian Mikhail Bronshtein, who first applied this technique, argued that the Okvik-OBS-Birnirk-Punuk cultural styles were historically coexistent rather than chronologically layered phenomena. More likely, in Bronshtein’s view, they served as identity markers of social units or small bands that resided side by side with the bearers of other decorative traditions (Bronshtein 1985, 106; 1986; 1991). The relations among individual local groups and within ancient coastal communities were, apparently, based on peaceful coexistence and cultural and marital exchange, according to the rarity of personal weaponry and related objects in OBS and other early burials (Bronshtein 2007, 37).30 Lastly, Bronshtein advocated for “open borders” and frequent population moves across the Bering Strait area based upon the

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similarities in decorative art styles at many ancient sites (Bronshtein 2010). Medium-size hunting communities of the 1st millennium ce were linked via overlapping cultural and trade networks that exchanged people, objects, and ideas across the Bering Strait area. This linkage included Chukchi Peninsula, St. Lawrence and Diomede islands, and the adjacent coast of Alaska. Mason (2009, 113) called this the “Old Bering Sea confederation” or the “Old Bering Sea/Ipiutak alliance” bound by a common spiritual tradition. Recent analysis of the scores of radiocarbon dates from St. Lawrence Island supports this vision of the “OBS universe.” Okvik, OBS-I, OBS-II, and OBS-III decorative styles were found to be generally coexistent between 100 ce and 1000–1300 ce (Blumer 2002, calibrated dates). Between 635 and 1200 ce, they were also associated with the objects of the early Punuk and Birnirk styles. This means that the bearers of the Okvik, OBS-I, OBS-II, and OBS-III art traditions had all migrated from the Chukchi Peninsula and resided together or side by side (?) until about 650 ce. Another group of Punuk cultural style bearers accompanied by a small number of the Birnirk style people reportedly arrived from Chukotka around 650 ce. All of these groups coexisted on the island until about 1000 ce, when the Okvik, OBS-I, and OBS-III style groups disappeared or were assimilated. The OBS-II style persisted at some sites until about 1300 ce. After that, only one dominant culture remained, called alternately “late Punuk,” Western Thule,” or “late prehistoric.” This scenario looked almost like a replay of the post-1880 development on St. Lawrence Island and its repopulation by groups of migrants from various communities from the Asian mainland. Eventually they merged into one tribal entity together with scores of local survivors, also from various sites (chapter 2). There are, however, substantial differences. Social units of the contact-traditional Yupik society—extended families, clans, neighborhoods, or tribes—did not mark their tools and implements with clan- (or tribe-) specific ornamentation. Their communal life had many venues to express group identity, such as tribal dialects, clan-specific stories and names, dances, rituals, clothing, and facial ornamentation styles (chapter 5). The OBS communities also displayed their social stratification in elaborate grave construction and rituals that were unknown in the contact-traditional era. The most famous OBS grave, “burial 204” from the Ekven cemetery near Cape Dezhnev, once called the “encyclopedia of the ancient Eskimo life,” contained 365 objects (Arutiunov and Sergeev 1983, 213). It contained the remains of an old man accompanied by three clearly aligned skeletons with no attached objects. In two associated burials, the skulls were missing but the lower mandibles were left in place, as if the heads were artificially removed. Archaeologists interpreted this burial complex as the grave of a high-status man accompanied by at least three other men in some service (bondage?) to the main person (Arutiunov and Sergeev 1983; Bronshtein 2007). Nothing of this type of burial ritual had parallels in the lore or in the contact-traditional burial practices we heard of from Yupik elders in the 1970s (Krupnik 1980; 2000). One could argue that the richness of ethnological tradition leaves few traces in the archaeological record. Language, stories, names, songs, rituals, clothing, facial and body ornamentation are hard to be retrieved from the age-old sites (Fig. 7.9). The various ornamentation styles that had persisted on carved ivory objects from the same communities for almost 1,300 years (!) together with the remarkable inequality in grave rituals point to

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different rules of integration in the ancient Bering Strait societies compared to the system we construed for the late contact-traditional era.

Conclusion: Upstreaming and the Beginning of the Contact-Traditional Society Our search for the roots of the contact-traditional Yupik society illustrates the limitations of the “upstreaming” method. As the time depth increases, the high resolution of the ethnohistorical sources, such as the written records, personal memoirs, and oral histories, progressively diminishes. Our focus also shifts from individuals, families, clans, and communities toward larger analytical units, such as the ethno-linguistic areas, coastal-interior (Yupik-Chukchi) interactions, and the Old Bering Sea “universe.” At a certain point, other sources become more relevant, such as linguistics, archaeology, and prehistoric art styles. They act as the new lenses added to sharpen ethnohistorian’s vision; but they also introduce refraction, even blurriness, due to their varying time precision and geographic scale. What is obvious is that Yupik society went through numerous transitions prior to the contact-traditional era. Two related factors acted as the critical triggers (or stressors) of change in the past, war and high population density, or lack of thereof. The “Punuk transition” about 900 ce exemplified in the spread of whaling, population growth, and large-scale warfare unmistakably marked the emergence of a new social system, with a higher level of stratification, violence, and power, and the ability to organize (or operate with) large groups of people. The preceding OBS social system, to the contrary, relied on peaceful coexistence of smaller social groupings. It also offered enough room for group splitting and reintegration, resettlement, and cultural mixing. In the same vein, as peace settled on the Chukchi Peninsula in the late 1700s, after the Russian-Chukchi wars, and the coastal Yupik population thinned under the pressure of the Chukchi nomads, free traveling, population moves, an increase in status versus rank positions, and more relaxed rules for the reintegration of small social units might become more common. Abandoned open niches along the coast represented by the ruins of Singhaq, Masiq, Kiginin, and other old settlements created space for the moving locuses to play a larger role in regulating group dynamics and organizing social life. Nowhere was that population trigger more obvious than on St. Lawrence Island following the catastrophe of 1878–1880. By that time, intergroup peace and free borders, rather than endless warfare and defendable tribal boundaries, were the law of the land. The construed similarities between the Yupik contact-traditional system and OBS society should not be overestimated. They do speak of the ancient character of locus, a self-sustainable migrating social unit, with a capacity to reintegrate. We view this as the foundation of Yupik social organization; but its implementation arguably varied in different eras. There is no way to guess whether the OBS system was based on localized unilineal clans or the Inupiaq-like bilateral kargi units, and whether it had been strongly patrilineal, as among the contact-traditional Ungazighmiit, or ambilineal, as among the Nuvuqaghmiit. We found it hard to believe that in the early 1800s the Yupik simply “returned” to an OBS-like social life after almost a thousand years of a different order. Almost certainly, they established a new one. The remarkable difference in the key social

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markers of group affinity used by the two systems, the decorative art and burial rituals in the OBS society versus expressive culture, language, and community-based statuses in the contact-traditional era, suggests a new process rather than reinvention of the old tradition. Therefore, we tentatively view the origination time of the contact-traditional Yupik society somewhere between 1760 and 1850. Unlike among the Inupiat of Northwest Alaska (Burch 1975) or the Yup’ik of the Yukon-Kuskokwim area (Funk 2010), it was neither a collapse of the previous system nor a momentous transition over a lifetime of one generation. Nor did it happen at once across the Siberian/St. Lawrence Island Yupik area on the Asian side of Bering Strait. Wars and raids, the basic features of the previous social order, probably lasted longer along the two axes of traditional hostilities and trade, namely, between Ungaziq and St. Lawrence Island in the south and along the main trade route from Nuvuqaq and Uelen (Ualeq) via the Diomede Islands toward Wales and Seward Peninsula in the north. In the southern area, the well-preserved memories of the Ungazighmiit raids on St. Lawrence Island (Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988; Silook 1976) and the aggressive behavior of the visiting Ungazighmiit in Sivuqaq/Gambell in the 1890s make up undisputable evidence. In the northern area, as late as 1819, an armed Native militia of 150–200 men at Big Diomede Island and, again, at Cape Dezhnev, was able to prevent the Americans from entering into the intercontinental trade between Alaska and the Chukchi Peninsula (Bockstoce 2009, 16). Lastly, the latest reported “Siberian” raid on Qawiaraq in the interior of the Seward Peninsula took place around 1850 (Sheppard 2009, 50). Both events speak of the preservation of the trade-war relations well into the early 1800s. In the latter area, active trade-war relationships probably lasted longer in response to the aggressiveness of the local Alaska Inupiaq and Yup’ik societies that maintained their military culture into the 1840– 1860s (Burch 1974; 1975; 1988; 2005; Fienup-Riordan 1994; Funk 2010; Sheppard 2009).

Fig. 7.9: Yupik girls dance inside a family house. This kind of social activity cannot be revealed via archaeological records. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1928 [?], Ungaziq. MAE #И-115-117)

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In any case, when the HMS Plover anchored in Emma Harbor in 1848, the British were met by Natives who had traded, battled, and communicated with the Europeans for over 150 years. By that time, the Yupik contact-traditional society described in this book was firmly in place.

Notes 1. Hooper made a detailed population count at one site only, in the Chukchi village of Nootchoome (Nyghchegen), where he found forty-one residents—thirteen men, nine women, and nineteen children—in eight family winter houses (yarangas). The average was five people per house, which, according to Hooper, “may be considered greater than usual” (Hooper 1976, 146). 2. The tent was used “possibly as a council-room as well as theatre, for in place of the usual inner apartments, only a species of bench, of raised earth, ran around it [to seat] numerous spectators” (Hooper 1976, 137). 3. The original drawing from John Simpson’s papers is at Duke University, Durham, NC. We used a photocopy kindly shared by the late Ernest S. Burch, Jr. 4. On one occasion only, a Chukchi man named Ahmoleen (Amulen?) from a small village south of Lavrentiya Bay showed to the British his personal slat armor made of walrus hide with thin iron plates attached in the chest area. He also inquired whether the British might provide him with a much lighter chain mail armor (of the old Russian style that he obviously had heard of), since his set was too heavy to be worn in combat (Bockstoce 2009, 231; Hooper 1976, 160–162). There is no evidence that Ahmoleen’s armor had been used lately (if ever?) and it might have been a family heirloom. 5. Altogether, Hooper’s narrative lists over two dozen local names, of which most are clearly of Chukchi origin, though these might have been also common among the Yupik (Yaneenga, Ahmoleen/Amulen, Ka-oong-ah/Qaqunga, and others). Hardly any names have parallels in Yupik genealogies and village lists from the 1920s-1930s. 6. Cf. Hooper’s statement that the “dialect” spoken in Lorenne (Llugren) “was identical with that at Oongwysac [Ungaziq] and Kay-gwan [Qiwaaq]” (Hooper 1976, 154). The Yupik language, nonetheless, was clearly present in the area, judged by one short song that Hooper reported in Sighineq—”Kapookahh, Wahlda (?), Maazinkah—Ahh-ahh-ah” (Hooper 1976, 181). The first word is the Yupik qipuqaq, “humpback whale,” and the third word, masingka, is the most common Yupik form meaning “it’s alright, well, very well” (though originating from the Chukchi mec¡ nk¡; Jacobson 2008). On the former use of the Chuckhi-based trade jargon on St. Lawrence Island, see de Reuse 1994. 7. Kotzebue (1821) reported five big boats in Mechigmen Bay; twenty armed men at Kiyalighaq; three boats with ten men each at Gambell; a big boat and “about ten or fifteen” people at Pugughileq. 8. Nymylan is a common name for the coastal Koryak (Jochelson 1908; Vdovin 1973). 9. We are grateful to Michael Krauss, who kindly brought to our attention those two early word lists, now at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

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10. Lazarev’s report of 1821 refers to the same system of naming people by communities, rather than by languages, among the Chukchi. The reindeer Chukchi “chief” Ley-gay-gu (Lligawyi?) from Mechigmen Bay told the Russians that “the settled people around East Cape and Cape Chukotski . . . are called by different names, such as Emnunka [Ewunmyn/ Avan?], Kamayngyr [?], Ilirlyaut [?], Unyven [Ungiin/Ungaziq]” (Lazarev 1950, 325). 11. The only new source between 1791 and 1816 came from Ivan Kruzenshtern’s three-­volume report on the 1803–1806 round-the-world voyage of discovery that contained a word list from the language of the “sedentary Chukchi” from the Chukchi Peninsula collected by a local Russian military officer, Dmitrii Koshelev. It is the earliest documentation of the Chaplinski/Central Siberian Yupik language (Kruzenshtern 1950 [1809]; see Chlenov 2006; Fortescue 2004). 12. On Rohbeck’s Naukanski word list, see Chlenov 2006; Fortescue 2004; Krauss 2005. 13. We encountered similar large underground houses (about 8 by 8 meters; 26 by 26 feet), also called klegran by the local Chukchi, at the abandoned site of Masiq in Mechigmen Bay (Chlenov and Krupnik 1984a; 1984b; see Fig. 7.3). They were remarkably similar to those viewed by the members of Billings’ party. 14. Evidently, people around Lavrentiya Bay were familiar with big European sailing ships after Cook’s short stopover in August 1778 (Cook 1784 [1967], 410–413). Cook’s crew, to the contrary, was met by men armed with spears and bows who were ready to fight at first notice. Neither women nor children were visible in or around the village (Cook 1784 [1967], 411–412). 15. They were in use during Cook’s visit to Lavrentiya Bay in 1778 (Cook 1784 [1967], 412–413). 16. The original German version and the full English translation of this section of Merck’s manuscript were first published by Michael Krauss (2005, 165; see also Merck 1980). Russian authors primarily cited an earlier Russian translation by Bronshtein and Shnakenburg (1941) or one by Titova (1978). 17. Krauss (2005, 165) came to the same conclusion. We may not exclude that the area of the Chaplinski language around Provideniya Bay might have expanded later due to the migration of groups from St. Lawrence Island in the 1800s (chapter 2). Merck’s informants for his summary (Kobelev or Daurkin?) might have not been very familiar with the area. 18. The earliest known use of the term pe’ekely in Russian came from the map compiled by Ivan Lvov ca. 1710 (Efimov 1964, Map 55). It is applied, however, to the residents of the second island in the Bering Strait, evidently Little Diomede. As written on the map, “they are called ‘toothed pe’ekely’ [Russian pe’ekely zybatye] dressed in bird parkas” (Efimov 1964, 39). The residents of the first island, Big Diomede (?), are called, again in Chukchi, aghyughalyat (?), and the people on the “Big Land” (Alaska) are called Kigin elyat (from Kigi, Kiginin–Wales). 19. We interpret the word Nuchin as Merck’s spelling for Nuvuqaq. The following word, Peakij or Preaky (Paeky), is the name of the southernmost cape of the mountainous promontory of Cape Dezhnev (Leont’iev 1969), at which the village of Nunak was located (chapter 2). We assumed that the village might have been often called by the same name as the cape. We identify the word Mengihenitkin as Merck’s adaptation of the Chukchi name meaning literally “big extremity,” that is, the general term for the rocky massif of Cape Dezhnev (Chlenov 2006).

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20. The village of “Meching” and also “guba (bay of) Mechi(ng)” were first listed in the Russian accounts of the 1744 military campaign on the Chukchi Peninsula (Alkor and Drezeno 1935, 165; Vdovin 1943, 54) and on the maps resulting from that raid (Efimov 1964, 86, 87). 21. Daurkin’s map of 1765 also lists six coastal sites to the east of Kresta Bay up to the first Yupik settlement of Vuteen/Sighineq, eight sites between Senyavin Strait and Lavrentiya Bay, and five more between Lavrentiya Bay and East Cape. All of Daurkin’s site names were those of the known coastal Chukchi communities of the late 1800s and early 1900s. 22. The compiled Russian map of Kobelev’s journey combined names for the Native villages, rivers, and bays on the Asian coast and the islands from Kobelev’s journal of 1779 with the records from Cook’s voyage of 1778 for the Alaska coast. Some names from Kobelev’s original source were probably misspelled. 23. The routes of the Russian raiding parties were shown on several maps from the mid-1700s, including the maps produced by Jacob Lindenau (1742), Timofei Perevalov (1744), and F. Plenstner (1766?) (see Efimov 1964, 122, 123, 127; also Vdovin 1943, 54; Zuev 2001, 12–14). 24. Among the Nuvuqaghmiit, the invaders were known in Russian as yakuty (the Yakut), the term for Native people from the Sakha Republic/Yakutia (Schweitzer and Golovko 1995, 107). 25. One Nuvuqaghmiit narrative tells about a series of village stone fortresses built along the East Cape area in Sanluk, Nuvuqaq, and Nunak to protect the residents from invaders (Menovshchikov 1987; Menovshchikov and Vakhtin 1988, no. 132). 26. A St. Lawrence Island story of the Yupik-to-Yupik wars is about the people from Aasa on the Asian mainland (evidently the former village of Aasaq near Avan), who were driven to the island by incessant hostilities with their neighbors (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1989, 3–7). 27. The original Russian name given to the site, Kitovaya alleya, was translated in English as both “Whale Alley” and “Whalebone Alley.” It is built of bones of the whales, skulls and jawbones; but the Russian name stylistically is closer to the former translation, though it does not imply “alley of whales.” 28. The skulls on the Whale Alley site were set in regular groups (4:2:4:2:4:2:4:4:2:2:4:2:4:4:4:4) separated by 20-meter (65-foot) intervals. Two large jawbone poles marked the edges of the site, accompanied by a group of four skulls placed perpendicularly to the main line. 29. For a critical view of the proposed relation between ancient whaling, population growth, and warfare, see Mason 1998. Mason (2009) also argued for a much smaller population footprint of Punuk whaling groups that mostly explored the largely unoccupied or nearly vacated landscape. 30. Mason (2009) disputes the all-peaceful nature of the Old Bering Sea society and argues for an early origin of warfare in the Bering Strait; see also Maschner and Jordan 2008, 104–105.

Chapter 8

The New Life Begins, 1923–1933

O

“upstreaming” in search for the beginnings of contact-traditional Yupik society produced mixed results. As we progressed into the past, it required painting with an ever-coarser brush and operating at an increasingly higher social and geographic scale that lacked compelling resolution. It is a different story when we switch lenses and move in the opposite direction (“downstream”), from the contact-traditional era to the more recent decades. Here we may approach the events and their actors with increased precision and rely on a plethora of sources, including archival documents, published texts, and personal memoirs. The last three chapters of this book take stock of this later historical material. They cover the final phases (1923–1960) in the lifetime of the Yupik contact-traditional society. In these chapters, we are zooming in on the transitions that befell the Russian (Asiatic) Yupik only, as they diverged from those of their fellow kinsmen on St. Lawrence Island. Their social system encountered growing strain and, ultimately, its demise. ur attempt at

Soviet Paternalism: The Ideology of the New Life The contact-traditional era in the history of the Yupik people in Asia entered its final phase after 1920. As the new Soviet administration gradually expanded its control over the Chukchi Peninsula (Fig. 8.1), new ideas, policies, and patterns of interactions began to reach even the most far-flung Native communities. The impact of the new agents of change was dramatic, for a shift had already begun in the foundation of Yupik social life (chapter 5) that amplified the transition from the earlier clan-tribal ties to a more flexible network of residential communities and neighborhoods. The nascent Soviet administration directed its initial efforts toward setting up and strengthening local agents of governance and forcing out the competitors, the independent traders, American, Russian, and Native alike. A few handpicked local Russian executives made all key policy decisions, usually under general orders from their high offices in the provincial city of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka or in the new administrative hub in Anadyr 225

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Fig. 8.1: Yupik man confronts a Russian official on the deck of the USCG Bear at Emma Harbor (Ugriileq), summer 1921. (Photo by Alfred M. Bailey, DMNS BA21–401c)

hundreds of kilometers away from the Yupik land. Once the consolidation of the new power system was essentially complete, the general political slogans began to acquire a more specific and aggressive character. The fundamental approach of the Soviet regime to the Siberian indigenous people, including the Yupik, was overtly paternalistic.1 The basis of a paternalistic ideology is the bipolar social and ethical model that puts at one extreme the so-called backward groups that are in need of reformation and at the other the “right” (progressive, advanced) social order as seen by the creators of the ideology. Naturally, the “right” model is either the creators’ own or one to be established by them. A paternalistic approach always stipulates its strategy as “elevating” the target groups to a new way of life (Bennett 1968). It also presupposes a top-down and quite negative attitude toward the institutions of the people whose life they aim to recast. The new Soviet administration on the Chukchi Peninsula, as elsewhere in Siberia, armed itself with paternalistic slogans from its very beginning. The documents and decrees of the early Soviet era abounded in expressions like “backwardness of the natives” and the “need to raise their level of cultural sophistication” (Sovety 1979, 65). At the same time, the policies of the regime with regard to non-Russian ethnic groups also praised the path to self-determination. It envisioned the expansion of local government in the form of territorial autonomy for the minority nations, including the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The combination of paternalism and territorial autonomy within the framework of a single policy was, of course, unrealistic. The solution that was found created a short-term compromise in which the paternalistic approach invariably became dominant. The process

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of transition, according to the design of its communist architects, was to be initiated “from below,” but was to take place under constant direction and supervision “from above.” From the outset, however, one thing was clear: the builders of the new way of life could not be recruited from the present Native leadership, either from the local trade elite or from the clan-tribal leaders and elders. That leadership had to be forced out and the newly arrived Soviet officials themselves had to act as the recruiters of Native proponents of the new social order.

The First Soviet Reform In 1925, the first reform of the Soviet administration in Chukotka took place. The village “leaders” appointed by the Russian district officer (chapter 1) were replaced by a network of so-called camp committees (lagernye komitety or lagerkomy), whose members were selected from among the locals. The reform established twenty-seven “committees” in the Native coastal villages on the Chukchi Peninsula, including seven committees in the largest Yupik communities. A camp committee consisted of three people: a chairman and two members. To all appearances, this differed little from the previous network of appointed village “elders” that had existed since the late 1800s. The first camp committee members were usually well-to-do Natives, which also suggested continuity with the earlier administrative forms. Yet the next year, new camp committee members were to be selected and, for the first time, via a public vote. To make things worse, the Soviet officials from Kamchatka sent a directive “to exclude all shamans” from the ranks of the prospective local voters. This was hard to implement. As one of the champions of the new Soviet system put it, bluntly, “We could have ended up without any voters whatsoever, and in the worst case, completely antagonized the native population. The old men, who in the majority of cases had to be considered shamans [!?], enjoyed universal recognition, and their authority was not shaken in the least. The population adhered firmly to the tradition of their unwritten laws” (Syomushkin n.d., 18). Nor were the camp committees long for this world, because they were soon replaced by what were termed “Native councils.” The latter included new figures not connected to the Native elite formed around the agents and trading posts. These were the first true Soviet activists drawn from among the locals (Fig. 8.2). They were charged with the function of promoting the new order in the region. In March 1928, the first Chukchi District “Congress of Native Councils” was held in the district hub of Uelen; forty-one delegates representing the local residents took part. Initially, the attitude of the delegates at such events was rather passive. The only issues that generated interest on their part were trade and supply. It is not surprising that the Soviet authorities picked trade as the key vehicle to implement their policies.

The Eskimo Native District The first tangible manifestation of the new Soviet ideological and personnel approach was set up in 1928 under the auspices of the Committee on the North.2 This committee existed

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Fig. 8.2: Nutawyi’s family inside their family house in Imtuk, 1929. Most of the new Yupik activists had traditional upbringing and differed little in their lifestyle from their neighbors. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-150)

for eleven years, from 1924 to 1935, as a part of the Soviet government charged with coordinating administrative, educational, and scholarly work across Siberia and the Russian Arctic. In the 1920s, it was responsible for all state-run activities across Siberia—from supplying the population with bread and cartridges, to undertaking censuses, compiling lists of the Siberian indigenous groups, and even dreaming up new names for them (Antropova 1972; Forsyth 1992; Sergeev 1955; Vakhtin 1994b). One of the tasks of the Committee on the North and its district branches was the creation of local Native self-government. In accordance with the committee’s recommendations, in June 1928, fourteen “Native districts” (tuzemnye raiony) were established across northeastern Siberia. One of these was the Eskimo Native District (Eskimosskii tuzemnyi raion) within the southern portion of the Chukchi Peninsula. The administrative hub for the new “Eskimo District” was set in the largest Yupik community of Ungaziq (Sergeev 1955; Sovety 1979; Syomushkin n.d., 30). The new district included nine “Native councils” (tuzemnye sovety), small territorial administrative units that generally coincided with the large coastal villages or nomadic communities. The village council was the lowest body of local authority, made up of a chairman and two or three council members. All council chairs and members were Natives. Five of the Native councils within the Eskimo District were in the Yupik communities of Ungaziq, Imtuk, Qiwaaq, Avan, and Napaqutaq. Four other councils were Chukchi, including two in the herders’ camps (Map 8.1). For the first time, the “Yupik land” in Siberia was divided into several administrative precincts, for Nuvuqaq (Naukan) and Big Diomede Island became independent Native councils within a similar “Native district” in the northern portion of the peninsula named

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the “Native District of the Chauchu [i.e., Chukchi] People.” The newly established Yupik camps in Kresta Bay (such as Uwellkal, Nutapelmen, and others; chapter 4) were subordinated to the Russian administration in Anadyr, while the small Yupik group on Wrangell Island was under the direct purview of a Russian island “chief” appointed by Moscow.3 The Eskimo Native District and its new administration, the Eskimo District Executive Committee (the Eskimo DEC, Raionnyi ispolnitel’nyi komitet), were officially created in April 1929 at what was termed the “First Eskimo District Congress of Soviets.” The small Communist Party cell under the local geological survey crew of the All-Union Gold Trust (Soyuzzoloto) made up of a few Russian surveyors and mining workers was charged with making all of the preparations for and supervising this “congress” of the Native deputies. Of course, among the local Yupik and Chukchi, there was not a single communist to be found. A few dozen participants of the first “Eskimo Congress,” as well as the Eskimo DEC representatives chosen at it, were picked from among the members of Native (village) councils. There was simply no alternative. The Five Yupik village officials elected as members of the Eskimo DEC were Nutawyi and Alalawen from Imtuk, and Mallu, Pelaggtekaq, and Kayngenan from Ungaziq. Mallu (Matlu, in Russian), the most prominent Yupik activist of the early Soviet era, became the DEC’s chair. These people made up the first Yupik leadership recruited by the Soviet regime. Wrangell Island

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Map 8.1: Native communities and “village councils” in the Russian Bering Strait area, 1926–1928. Black dot = Eskimo (Yupik and Inupiaq); open dot = Chukchi. Native Village Councils are marked with numbers (black = Eskimo; white = Chukchi): 1—Nunligran; 2—Kurupka; 3—Sighineq/Imtuk; 4—Avan; 5—Qiwaaq; 6—Ungaziq; 7—Napaqutaq; 8—­Kuvet; 9—Yanrakinnot; 10—Gilmimil; 11—Loren/Llugren; 12—Yandagay; 13—Nunyama; 14—Kuven; 15—Dezhnev; 16—Nuvuqaq; 17—Imaaqlliq; 18—Uelen; 19—Inchoun.

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All of the new committee members were Ungazighmiit, including Nutawyi and Alalawen, who at the time resided in Imtuk (Fig. 8.3). The industrious Ungazighmiit quickly established themselves as the most active force in carrying the new policies to the neighboring communities and, later, even far past the boundaries of the Yupik land. Two of the most senior figures among the new Yupik leaders, Mallu (1894–1943) and Nutawyi (ca. 1900–1949), had had contacts with the Russians prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Nutawyi was, reportedly, baptized by a Russian missionary (evidently Father Nikolai in Teflleq; chapter 1) and could recall parts of Russian prayers (Menovshchikov 1977). Mallu had also worked for this same missionary and picked up some fluency in Russian that facilitated his interaction with the Soviet administrators. No one among the new Yupik leaders had links to the former trade elite. Nor could they rely on strong support from their kin in their home communities. They either belonged to weak lineages among their clans (like Pelaggtekaq and Kayngenan) or were newcomers, like Nutawyi and Alalawen (Fig. 8.4) in Imtuk. Even Mallu, who came from the most prestigious Sanighmelnguut clan in Ungaziq, was not directly related to any senior people of his clan.

The Hunt for the Class Enemy The Eskimo Congress of 1928 took place during a time when the ideological tonality of Soviet policies was becoming increasingly aggressive. In order to mobilize its social base, the regime was in dire need of political opponents. To the communist ideologues, there was no shortage of enemies: the “world bourgeoisie” and its accomplices—the former White Guards, landowners, the clergy, and the like.4 The hunt for “class enemies” finally reached the Chukchi Peninsula. Here, to be sure, there were no White Guards and no “world bourgeoisie.” Instead, there were “proletarian masses” of a sort, in the form of the main portion of the Native populace, and a local brand of “exploiters”: the trade elite; well-to-do reindeer herders; and the Native version of the clergy, the shamans. The new authorities brought their full force to bear on these three categories, and the class war in the Yupik land was set in full flame. In comparison with the Chukchi, and indeed many other Siberian indigenous groups, the Yupik were lucky. They had no rich herd owners simply because as a coastal people they had hardly been involved in reindeer herding. Their trade elite was relatively weak, since the “old rich,” the big bosses like Quwaaren, generally did not live past the collapse of commercial whaling in the early 1900s, and their descendants became individual fur traders and mere fortune seekers (chapter 1). The Yupik essentially lacked these two major brands of potential “class enemies.” This left the shamans. The Siberian shaman, of course, was not an analog of clergy from the more hierarchical religions, and Yupik shamans, in particular, were usually regular hunters or even housewives who possessed what they themselves considered to be the shaman “gift” or “calling” (Bogoras 1975; Tein 1981). We have scarcely touched upon their role owing to its comparatively modest social standing among the Yupik. The status of shamans among the Yupik and Chukchi was neither inherited nor corporate. Nonetheless, in the eyes of the new regime, the image of the all-powerful and openly malignant shaman

Fig. 8.3: Two members of the Eskimo District Executive Committee, Alalawen (1900–1937, left) and Nutawyi (1895–1950) from Imtuk, spring 1929. This is the first known official photo of the new Yupik leaders. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-99)

Fig. 8.4: Alalawen and his wife, Ragtenga, inside their family house, spring 1929. Note the combination of modern and traditional elements in their dress, hairstyle, and interior of the house. Alalawen is writing a report (?) or meeting minutes. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И–115-92)

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was automatically projected onto all the indigenous Siberians, including the Yupik and the coastal Chukchi. Here, however, shamans had to be sought out. Very quickly, the word or, better, label, of “shaman” was applied to any Native person dissatisfied with the new regime and its reforms, or even to any new Soviet activists who failed to garner the approval of their bosses. Early Soviet accounts almost universally depicted the reforms of the 1920s and 1930s as a time of embittered struggle with an unending stream of “shamans.” Among them we occasionally find even the names of some new Soviet activists who had fallen into disfavor. By and large, the Yupik were quite loyal to the regime and provided the Soviet administration with many devoted lower-level functionaries. We are not aware of any examples of serious resistance to Soviet reforms among the Yupik, except for some opposition in Nuvuqaq/ Naukan (Schweitzer and Golovko 2007) and the flight of the Big Diomede residents to the neighboring American Little Diomede Island (chapter 4). Rather, Yupik activists were eager to spread the ideology of the new regime to the maritime Chukchi villages and even to the distant camps of the Chukchi reindeer herders, who were openly hostile to the new policies (Kaltan 2008). The new Yupik Soviet activist and the “malignant” Chukchi shaman became the stereotypical opponents of the day.

Shaman Ekker and the Anti-Shaman Campaign The first major act of the instigated “class struggle” in the Eskimo Native District comprised the actions taken by the Eskimo DEC against the Chukchi shaman Ekker (Aqer, in Yupik; Aker or Akr in the Russian sources), who was the “master” of the walrus haul-out site on Arakamchechen Island. Ekker’s eviction from Arakamchechen Island became the high point of the activity of the committee, which in the process showed itself to be the real instrument of new authority. Ekker was by far the most powerful shaman in the area. Around 1915, under unclear circumstances, he occupied the largest and in essence only walrus haulout site in the southeastern portion of the Chukchi Peninsula. A newcomer from the north, Ekker was a strong and dynamic personality who terrified the residents of the neighboring villages, Yupik and Chukchi alike. Ekker was viewed by one and all as a usurper who violated the established norms of cooperative use of walrus sites and of free meat sharing. “In the past, when there was another master on Arakamchechen Island,” said the Chukchi Ekkurgen, speaking at the First Eskimo Congress of Soviets in 1928, “we, the whole village, would hunt walrus together. The old `master’ only kept people from using guns, he made them use spears. Now that man has died, and Ekker allows no one to hunt, he wants everything for himself. Even if someone finds a dead walrus on the shore, Ekker won’t let him take it. Ekker is a bad person. He must be evicted. Ekker is a shaman. I am an old man and I am afraid of him. He can kill by casting a spell and you die. He knows the right words” (Syomushkin n.d., 34). Ekker’s usurping behavior was also obvious to his Yupik neighbors, Ungazighmiit, who, strictly speaking, did not lay claim to ownership or even use of the site: Aker was the master of the rookery. That’s why people were afraid of him, that’s how I heard it. If he went to a place where nobody was, it meant he was the

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master and he could refuse to permit others to come there [to live]. In the past everyone went there, from Yanrakynnot and elsewhere. But Aker wouldn’t let them hunt there, only he could hunt there. And he’d get people to help him pick up [dead walruses], and only then would he give out pieces of meat. He wouldn’t even let Yatolen and his family, he wouldn’t even let them hunt there, and Yatolen’s son was married to his daughter. I even heard that he took meat from Yatolen’s family if they caught something themselves. He was a shaman. He had all that stuff, the necklaces and the beads, and those decorations you tie on. Aker had a large beard and long plaits, but he wasn’t very big himself, he was an average-sized man (Ivan Ashkamakin 1979, in Krupnik 2000, 489). Even though the Ungazighmiit suffered little direct harm at the hands of Ekker, the Eskimo District Congress issued a decree evicting him from the haul-out site. Matlu (Mallu), the DEC chairman, assumed the responsibility for carrying out this decree. The initial DEC eviction decree was quickly replaced by a compromise resulting from Ekker’s obvious capitulation. From the Minutes of the meeting of the Northern Native District Executive Committee of the Eskimo People of September 18, 1929: Subject: The transfer of the walrus haul-out from Akr to the DEC (Matlu reporting). The haul-out on Arakamchechen Island until present has belonged to Akr, who has allowed no one onto the site. As a result of negotiations between Matlu and Akr, the latter has declared that he will transfer the rights to the haul-out to the DEC, and requests that he be allowed to remain at the haul-out as keeper. He will kill no walruses for himself, and in return requests that he be paid compensation of 5 tusks for each 100 walruses killed and in addition asks that he be given 5 walruses annually, on the occasion of the “festival of walruses, seals, and reindeers.” It is resolved: The haul-out shall be transferred to the DEC for use by the entire population. Akr’s conditions shall be accepted, from this date forth he is no longer the master of the haul-out site, and as the caretaker he is obliged to ensure that there be no uncontrolled hunting at the site . . . and he has no right to scare or kill the animals.5 It is hard to imagine anywhere else in the Arctic in 1929—in Alaska, Canada, or Greenland—where a similar document could have been viewed as a legitimate agreement. Most important was the acceptance by the Eskimo DEC, run by the Ungazighmiit, of responsibility for a territory that had its own nominal master and was not part of the historical Yupik land. Ekker, if even for a speculative reason, appealed to traditional values (e.g., his reference to the “festival of walruses, seals, and reindeers”), whereas Mallu demonstratively rejected them under the rubric of the campaign against the shamans. The opposition of two strong personalities and two ideologies was obvious. Matlu (Mallu) presented it many years later in his autobiography, written in 1941, as follows:

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The shaman Aker, who had used to be the master of the walrus haul-out site on Arakamchechen Island, was getting in the way of our work again. Shaman Aker wanted to kill me with a rifle and wanted to poison me too because I’m the main leader. Shaman Aker wanted to scare off the collective farm workers. Shaman Aker told them don’t you listen to Matlu, he wants to bring in foreign law, Russian law, Matlu has stopped believing in shamans. Matlu’s gonna die soon. Because the elders say that Matlu has gotten crazy. . . . So me and the candidates of the VKP(b) [Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)] took charge and were explaining things. . . . Soon the shamans’ll be exposed (Matlu 1941). “Exposing shamans” in the parlance of the time meant removing Ekker by force. The authorities needed a show of force and a quick victory. Surprisingly, the eviction of Ekker was peaceful: I was around when he was forced from the haul-out. Matlu went there with a lot of men, two boatloads from Ungaziq. Aker had men of his own, three grownup sons, Qallaaq, Teglalawen, and Etugyi; Rentet, the fourth son, was still a boy. And they took them away real easy, they didn’t put up any fight. The sons were left with us at the collective farm in Ungaziq, and Aker and his wife were taken to Lavrentiya (Vladimir Tiyato 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 490). Ekker reportedly lived for some time in Lavrentiya, but in the late 1930s, we lose track of him. His offspring with their families resided in Ungaziq/Chaplino all the way till the 1960s.

The Anti-Shaman Campaign: Shamaness Kawrangaawen Easy success in the bloodless conflict with Ekker spurred the new leaders on to further deeds. Matlu had a similar victory over another opponent, the shamaness Kawrangaawen from the Chukchi camp of Alayon (Alyaevo, in Russian) in the northernmost section of the Eskimo District. This sparsely inhabited area apparently became a center of a little-known Native spiritual movement among the local maritime Chukchi. Like Ekker, Kawrangaawen was not a traditional shaman. Summing up what little was known about her projects an image of a Native prophet or preacher in a traditional society impacted by contacts, similar to the various forms of Millenarian cults of the South Pacific (Aberle 1978; Belshaw 1978; Talmon 1968). Kawrangaawen sought to blend traditional Chukchi beliefs with elements of Christianity and acceptance of trade goods; she was also a charismatic leader. She became the Eskimo DEC’s next target, as Matlu recalled: The shamans deceived us. The shamans ruined the people. That’s why I fought against the shamans. In 1929 the shamaness Kawrangaawen appeared in the village of Alyaevo, where she scared all the local Chukchi people. She told them that the Soviet regime would soon be wiped out. The Americans would come to us and destroy the Soviet order. That’s why I decided to fight the shamans. Soon we were able to expose the shamaness Kawrangaawen (Matlu 1941).

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We do not know what later came of Kawrangaawen. Other opponents of Matlu whose names appeared in the documents from the period were also presented as “shamans who were deceiving the people.” It is noteworthy that the battle against them was neither bloody nor involved brutal purges. The northern Yupik village of Naukan (Nuvuqaq) put up some signs of ideological resistance to the Soviet authorities in the form of a short-term renaissance of Christian preaching and proselytizing (Schweitzer and Golovko 2007). Yet even there, on the doorstep of the district hub of Uelen, with its district administration, court, and police office, we know of no instances of massive punitive actions against those who did not see eye to eye with the regime. Around 1935, a certain Nunegnilan, reportedly the only professional shaman among the Nuvuqaghmiit (actually of Chukchi origin), was arrested and exiled (?). The first Soviet activist in Nuvuqaq, Ipeq, a local Matlu of sorts, also fell victim to purges in the early 1930s. The inspirited “class struggle,” which at that time ravaged the entire country, was relatively mild in the Yupik land. In the upshot, Yupik losses from the mass purges of the Stalin era, from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, were modest when compared to those among the Chukchi, the Sakha, or the Nivkh of Sakhalin Island (Andronov 2008; Forsyth 1992; Gray 2005; Kerttula 1997; 2000; Nuvano 2008; Slezkine 1994). Among the latter, up to 30–40 percent of the adult male population reportedly perished or were exiled in the course of political repressions in the 1930s (Grant 1995). The Soviet authorities faced much more forceful Native opponents on the Chukchi Peninsula, the wealthy Chukchi herders in the interior tundra, against whom the Soviet punitive agencies directed their main efforts. The traditional opposition of the coastal and tundra people did not have to be explained to the Yupik, to whom the social life of the herding camps was alien and poorly understood. The Yupik youth became reliable supporters of the Soviet administration in spreading its influence among the reindeer herders, even to the most distant interior camps.

The Soviet Administration Gathers Strength Beginning in the mid-1920s, the Soviet administration actively planted various types of new institutions that would eventually embrace all of the Native communities. It initiated the first registration of vital statistics in 1925 and started tracking Native births, deaths, and marriages in several large villages, including Nuvuqaq, Ungaziq, Avan, and Imtuk, albeit in a form that was far from complete. A new enumeration of the coastal and nomadic population by village and camp was conducted in the winter of 1926 as part of the state-organized national survey known as the Economic Census of the Polar North (Itogi perepisi 1929; Pokhoziaistvennaia perepis’ 1929). In 1924, the Far Eastern Anti-Contraband Commission intensified the customs guard service on the Chukchi Peninsula and create several new customs and border check points (Revkomy 1973). Soon, small detachments of Russian border guards appeared in the villages of Nuvuqaq (Naukan), Uelen, and Kengisqun (Dezhnev). In 1927 or 1928, a border post with eight Russian guards was set up near Ugriileq in Emma Harbor, inside Provideniya Bay. From its very outset, the Soviet customs and border service disrupted the age-old flow of Native trade and hampered communication among the Yupik and their fellow kinsmen

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on St. Lawrence Island and Little Diomede on the American side. One Yupik delegate from Ungaziq made an outright statement about its impact at the Chukchi “congress” of Native Councils in 1928: There is a border between [St.] Lawrence Island and our village that we are prohibited from crossing despite the fact that all the marine mammals are on their side of the border. The nomads are far away from us, nor can we become nomads. We only have one choice left: to hunt sea mammals. But the hunting is poor because the animals are on the other side of the border. And because we’re not permitted to cross it, many people are leaving Chaplino (Protokoly 1928, 161).

Teachers and Schooling Take Root The first Soviet schools appeared in 1927 in the Yupik communities of Ungaziq and Nuvuqaq (Naukan) and the next year, in Ugriileq (Ureliki) and Imtuk as well. We collected virtually nothing besides the last names of the first Russian teachers: Erzhenin in Ungaziq, Kreidich in Imtuk, and Melnikov and Drobnov in Ureliki. Yet the next cohort of Russian teachers who arrived in 1928–1932—Ekaterina Rubtsova, Aleksandr Forshtein, Georgii Menovshchikov, and Katerina Sergeeva—were all remembered fondly by the Yupik elders in the 1970s.6 All of these teachers later became professional linguists, learned the Yupik language, and spoke it fluently. In the beginning, they lived for months in Native houses alongside their pupils and their parents. The teachers’ living conditions were extremely difficult. “There is no school building,” Ekaterina Rubtsova wrote in her report from Imtuk in 1930, “and 18–20 people cram into 8 square meters of skin tent in their kukhlyankas [reindeer hide coats]” (Rubtsova 1930). Fifty years later, one of the former Yupik pupils described Rubtsova’s school in her memoirs: In 1929 the teacher Rubtsova came. We were so afraid of her we wouldn’t even come near her. . . . We were given Numtagnen’s little American house, and an iron stove was put in and we had classes there. . . . We had nothing more than a blackboard in the classroom. We practiced drawing letters sitting or lying on the floor. When the teacher spoke to us the first time, we didn’t understand a word. One of us had taught himself to understand a bit of Russian, his name was Alalawen, during the lessons he would translate what the teacher said. . . . Rubtsova lived in Alalawen’s yaranga [skin tent], she was given a polog [sleeping chamber] of reindeer hide and seal oil lamps, and she cooked her own food on the lamps. At the time we had not yet seen bread, so we only bought flour and fried flat-cakes in walrus and ringed seal oil. . . . My father very much wanted me to learn to speak Russian, and so I started going to the teacher to practice, and she taught me to speak Russian so quickly, Mikhail Ataata and I were the best in the class. Later we interpreted at all the meetings (Weyi ca. 1975, 1–2; see also Vakhtin 2000, 16).

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Economic “Collectivization”: The First Steps At this same time, the economic transformation of the Yupik communities started in earnest. In January 1926, the Chukchi District Committee established a new economic arm of the administration, the Organizational Bureau of Cooperatives (Garusov 1981). That same year, the first Native trade cooperatives were formed in Uelen and two nearby communities, Dezhnev (Kengisqun) and Naukan (Nuvuqaq). In 1927, similar cooperatives appeared in two southern Yupik villages, Ungaziq and Imtuk. The organization of cooperatives was a planned campaign that relied on the full support of, and funds from, the Soviet government (Revkomy 1973). Consumer cooperatives would later become the basis for what the Soviet leaders termed the “collectivization” of agricultural production, that is, the process of forming collectives or collective enterprises, in which land and production resources were owned by the community and not individuals. In Chukotka coastal villages where land ownership did not exist, collectivization took the form of cooperatives for marine-mammal hunting. All of the first Yupik cooperative production units, called in Russian artels (literally “workshops”), grew out of the Native trade cooperatives that had developed in 1926–1928 (Fig. 8.5). Soviet administration and trade agencies, which had sought new partners in local communities, actively supported Native trade cooperatives, all the more so since competition on the part of the American schooners and traders had already been severed. For this reason, the regular supply of Native villages with vital goods, such as rifles, ammunition, whaleboats, and foodstuffs, as well as the uninterrupted purchase of pelts, walrus ivory, and other Native products (Fig. 8.6), was made dependent upon the success of economic reorganization, that is, the “collectivization” process. The first collective production units, kolkhozes,7 created from Native trade cooperatives were initially called “partnerships for cooperative marine-mammal hunting.” Their members immediately received advantages not enjoyed by other hunters. As early as 1927, the Chukchi District cooperatives bureau offered twelve whaleboats and six whaling guns to the first cooperative hunting crews (Krushanov 1987). In the summer of 1928, ten more new whaleboats were transferred free of charge to the newly created hunting “partnerships” (Vdovin 1965). In the spring of 1928, hunters in Ungaziq acquired on St. Lawrence Island the first American outboard motor. This technology brought about a revolution in marine hunting. At the first Chukchi District Congress that same year, the delegates from Ungaziq demanded that the authorities arrange for the supply of new outboard motors. The Soviet trade agencies responded quickly and delivered the first outboard motors, along with new whaleboats, in the following summer of 1929 (Istoricheskaia khronika 1975). Only the fledging Native cooperatives and partnerships could acquire them, whereas individual hunters were excluded. By 1932, economic collectivization had encompassed all the Yupik villages, primarily the largest: Ungaziq, Nuvuqaq, Avan, Imtuk, Sighineq, and Uwellkal. Cooperative labor had been the basis of the coastal economy, and thus the cooperation instigated by Soviet policies dovetailed with the old Yupik tradition. The hunters who had offered their personal whaleboats to the cooperatives continued to be captains, as before. The distribution of the catch, however, was now recorded by the cooperative. The cooperatives also revoked

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the former right of the boat owners to all the walrus tusks and the major portion of the baleen. Walrus ivory and baleen obtained by the cooperatives was used to pay back the state trade agencies for new whaleboats, motors, and rifles. Other than that, there was no fundamental change in the old patterns to which the people were accustomed. As before, meat and hides of marine mammals caught in cooperative hunting were shared equally among the crews (see Shnakenburg 1939, which cites 1928 data). The free provision of meat to widows, orphans, the aged, and the infirm, customary to Yupik law, became another established principle of the new collective units. The campaign to create collective economic units (“hunting partnerships”) proceeded at a healthy clip, spurred by administrative directives and explicit economic incentives. Native activists traveled from village to village and attracted people to the new collective production format by any means possible. For those boat owners who did not join the cooperatives, channels for selling their products became extremely limited. This prompted people to join the cooperatives and facilitated the relatively smooth course of collectivization in the Yupik villages. This Yupik enthusiasm contrasted sharply with the bitterness of the Chukchi reindeer herders, among whom years of collectivization were rife with conflicts, open and often violent resistance, and punitive measures meted out by the authorities in return.8

The Formation of the “Chukchi National Area” The idea of territorial self-government even for the smallest Siberian indigenous nations quickly became obsolete and by the end of the 1920s, the Soviet leadership all but repudiated it. Instead, the Soviets decided to combine several local indigenous groups into larger administrative divisions with mixed populations. In 1930, the Presidium of the All-Russian Executive Committee decreed the creation within the Far Eastern Region (krai) of the Chukchi, Koryak, and Okhotsk National Areas (okrugs). From this time forth, small indigenous nations ceased to be the subject of direct governmental supervision. Each area (okrug in Russian) received its name from the numerically superior local group. For the Chukchi Area, of course, this was the Chukchi, who were more numerous than all the other Native groups, including the Yupik, put together. In setting up the new Chukchi National Area, the authorities redivided its territory into five new administrative districts. The former Eskimo Native District apparently ceased to exist as a separate entity in the winter of 1931–1932. It was merged back into the enlarged Chukchi District that once again embraced the entire Chukchi Peninsula. The Chukchi town of Uelen, its old administrative hub since 1911, remained the center of the new district until 1942. The creation of the Chukchi National Area in April 1932 completed the process of the Soviet administrative reform. The Native village councils were once again renamed “national councils” (natsionalnye sovety) and adopted the form they would have until the mid-1950s. Administratively and in terms of their political power, the Yupik, again, found themselves in the minority among the more numerous Chukchi. The only Yupik person included in the leadership of the new Chukchi National Area was none other than Matlu, the former head of the Eskimo Native District (Krushanov 1987).

Fig. 8.5: Naukan (Nuvuqaq) cooperative store, summer 1929. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, MAE #И– 115-101)

Fig. 8.6: “Russian trade post at Dezhnev, interior view” (original caption). (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, summer 1929. MAE #И-115-104)

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The New Way of Life Takes Root The short-lived Yupik self-government under the Eskimo Native District (1929–1931) was by far the earliest form of local “Eskimo administration” established in the entire area from the Bering Strait to Greenland. Whether a genuine form of self-government or a short-term political compromise, it constituted one of the many outcomes of Yupik incorporation into the Soviet ideological system. During these same years, the foundations of the future network of governance, supply, education, and medical care were put in place. New institutions utterly alien to the locals, such as Women’s Councils, Communist Youth (“Pioneer”) groups, and Young Communist League (Komsomol) groups, appeared in Native villages. Many of the young adherents to the Soviet regime met these changes with undisguised enthusiasm (Fig. 8.7). Temngaawen, a Yupik woman from Naukan, speaking at the “Second Congress of Soviets of Chukchi and Eskimo” in Uelen in April 1931 offered a whole slew of the new slogans and values of the era: We must strive to get all women to join the [hunting] partnership. We absolutely must have a large, good school. We have many students, but some still have no school to attend. We need another teacher, but not an old woman, a Komsomol member. One who will always help in the women’s brigade [team] and in the Komsomol. We absolutely must have a young Komsomol woman. We need a doctor in Uelen. We need a woman cook so our association can function well. We need to increase the sugar allowance for young children (Syomushkin n.d., 46). The recollections of Georgii Menovshchikov, then the Russian elementary schoolteacher in Sighineq and a twenty-year-old Komsomol volunteer, reflected the speed of change: If in 1929 there was not a single person in Sireniki (Sighineq) who knew how to read and write, by the spring of 1932, 20 hunters had learned, and 42 students were attending school. We had created a hunting partnership, a women’s sewing team, volunteer organizations, a mutual aid collection and distribution point, also a MOPR [International Society to Aid Revolutionaries], and OSOVIAKhIM [Society for the Promotion of Aviation and Chemical Defense Preparedness] village chapters. The hunting partnership got its first outboard motors, and the majority of the residents joined. In the village council, the association board, and in the cooperative store, Eskimos who have learned to write, read, and speak a little Russian were working everywhere (Menovshchikov 1977, 28–29). The new ideology triumphed. Along with the flurry of documents and resolutions filled with similar verbiage, the victory of the new social order was obvious to one and all. It brought with it the beginning of a rapid transition and departure from everything upon which the contact-traditional Yupik society was based. Yet the main events of Soviet modernization lay ahead, for phasing out the elements of the “old society” stretched out over a few more decades.

The New Life Begins, 1923–1933

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Fig.

8.7: “Young Communist League member Uksima” (original caption). Uksima/Uuggsima (1915–1989), one of our key Yupik experts (Fig. 0.8) during her teen years. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1929, MAE #И–115-19)

Conclusion The short period of the early Soviet administration—barely a decade between 1923 and 1933—was unprecedented in the speed of change. Though the new power did not attack the core institutions of the Yupik social order, except for its war against the shamans and other “class enemies,” it put the system under a tremendous level of strain. The first institution to shrivel under this pressure was the Yupik tribal organization— the old network of tribes, tribal communities, and tribal areas. This had already weakened during the late contact-traditional era, and even eroded in some places under the influence of many agents of change (chapters 4 and 5). It took a surprisingly short time and little pressure for a new social form, the mixed multitribal community, to develop. During this same decade, 1923–1933, mixed tribal communities took shape in Imtuk (and soon after in Sighineq), Qiwaaq, and Ugriileq and on Big Diomede and Wrangell islands (chapter 4). On Wrangell Island, this development happened as a result of direct interference of the local Soviet administration in Yupik communal life. Yet many basic elements of the Yupik social system, the clans, lineages, kin-based boat crews, and neighborhoods, were apparently vibrant during the early Soviet era (chapter 4).

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The main local event of that decade, the relocation of 200 people from Ungaziq and the nearby communities to Uwellkal and Kresta Bay, proceeded without any reference to the nascent Soviet administration. Parents continued to raise their children in the values and norms of the old clan and tribal system. In the 1970s and 1980s, we interviewed dozens of elders born during the early Soviet years. Many grew up to become active communists, schoolteachers and low and mid-level officials; yet others stayed in the villages and lived as hunters and housewives. In spite of their individual life stories, they all were perfectly fluent in the language and “grammar” of the former clan and tribal society and were eager to serve as our instructors in the clan and tribal narratives and in the family genealogies of the past. This remarkable cultural perseverance notwithstanding, the balance between the winds of change and the resilience of the Yupik nation was not to last for long.

Notes 1. The term paternalism (which derives from a Latin-English kinship term, “pater,” father) denotes a type of social policy resembling that of a male parent to his child, with the assumption that (a) a child requires assistance and care, and (b) is not fully aware of his role in society and, hence, needs constant guidance (Bennett 1968, 472). 2. The full name of the organization was the “Committee for Assisting the Minorities of the Northern Periphery” (Komitet sodeistviia narodnostiam severnykh okrain; Vakhtin 1994b). 3. On the early Russian administration on Wrangell Island, see Barr 1977; Mineev 1946; Ushakov 1972. 4. See more on the “class struggle” in Siberia in the 1920s and 1930s in Slezkine 1994, 187–204. 5. This document is on file at the Archives of the Chukchi Regional Museum, Anadyr, “Sovetsky period” (Soviet Era section). 6. See Krauss 1974a and Vakhtin 2012 for Rubtsova’s biography; Krupnik and Mikhailova 2006 on Forshtein; and Menovshchikov 1977 on his early teaching years in Chukotka. 7. The former Soviet term for such collective enterprises, kolkhoz, was an abbreviation of the Russian kollektivnoe khozyaistvo, “collective economy.” The accepted English translation of kolkhoz is “collective farm,” which has a connotation with farming, that is, agriculture. Though bizarre in reference to the Arctic hunting communities, the term collective farm is used hereafter alternately with its established Russian equivalent, kolkhoz. 8. On the Chukchi herders’ resistance to the Soviet collectivization of their reindeer property, see Andronov 2008; Forsyth 1989; 1992; Kaltan 2008; Nuvano 2008; Vakhtin 1994b.

Chapter 9

Collective Farm Era, 1933–1955

T

the Chukchi National Area (okrug) in 1932 (chapter 8) irrevocably drew the Asian Yupik into a new pattern of the Soviet state’s power. From this time on, various federal and local agencies controlled by the Communist Party made and introduced all of the decisions regarding the Chukchi Peninsula and its residents. The formation of the Chukchi Area itself demonstrated how deeply the bureaucracy’s roots had extended. Initially, the buildup of the local administrative and Communist apparatus in the area’s capital of Anadyr and in the district hub of Uelen scarcely concerned the Yupik and their neighbors. Perhaps they hardly even noticed it. Yet for the Yupik and for all of the residents of the country, a new era had begun. Changes, both sweeping and staggering, were not long in coming. he creation of

The New Masters of the Russian Arctic: Glavsevmorput and the Gulag In December 1932, the Soviet government established the Main Administration of the Northern Sea Route, also known by its Russian acronym GUSMP or Glavsevmorput (Glavnoe upravlenie Severnogo morskogo puti), a new power in charge of the Arctic regions. Its ambitious mission was to ensure uninterrupted commercial navigation along the Soviet Arctic coastline, from the seaport of Murmansk in the Barents Sea all the way via Bering Strait to the warm-water ports of the Russian Pacific. In 1935, another government decree liquidated the Committee on the North (Vakhtin 1994b). It also transferred all of the industrial enterprises in the Soviet Arctic to the control of Glavsevmorput, including the cultural and economic institutions previously under the Committee on the North (Istoricheskaia khronika 1975, 97). The new orders gave the Glavsevmorput a governmental and administrative monopoly over the entire ten-time-zone area of the Russian Arctic, including the Chukchi Peninsula. At this time, another government agency was spreading on the Chukchi Peninsula from the south. This agency, known by the name Dalstroi (Far Eastern Construction Trust),1 was created in 1931 to develop the gold mining industry in the Kolyma River 243

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basin. From the beginning, Dalstroi’s activities relied on the use of convict labor and the organization was a client of the Main Camp Administration, the notorious Gulag (Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei; Kozlov 1991). Dalstroi was no mere mining and construction agency but rather a sealed world with a special status, system of governance, and overtly punitive laws. Dalstroi and Gulag were officially merged in 1938, when the former was transferred to the People’s Commissariat [Ministry] of Internal Affairs and transformed into the Main Administration for Construction in the Far North (Dikov 1989, 202). Dalstroi was the true symbol of the state-controlled industrial development of the Russian Arctic. To the millions of its inmates, it meant death. In the years that followed, life in the Soviet Arctic may be understood as the interweaving and juxtaposition of the two distinct ideologies and social systems embodied in Glavsevmorput and the Dalstroi-Gulag. Glavsevmorput was the public window of the heroic and romanticized Soviet advance into the Arctic. Songs and movies were produced depicting its workers, air pilots, and mariners as heroes. Among these widely known public figures of the early Soviet era was the Yupik hunter Tayan from Wrangell Island. He delivered fox pelts to the Soviet economy and provided for the Russian personnel wintering on his home island (Gorbatov 1938). Yet Glavsevmorput was every inch a creation of its day. With its semimilitary regimen and unquestioned discipline, the organization brutally fulfilled the tasks placed before it by the state. Last among its concerns were any special interests of the Siberian indigenous people. When the steamer arrived at Wrangell Island in the fall of 1934 laden with supplies for the coming winter, the new island’s boss, installed by Glavsevmorput, banned the local Yupik from hunting walrus until they moved all the property belonging to the Russian polar station to the storehouses. The Yupik families were unable to lay in adequate meat supplies; that winter seventeen people, a third of the small Yupik colony, starved to death (Barr 1977; Mineev 1946, 174–178; Pis’mo 1936). Unlike the widely publicized Glavsevmorput, Dalstroi-Gulag was a secretive, closed world, fenced off by barbed wire and guard towers. By 1941, the territory under its control in Northeast Siberia had grown to 2.3 million square kilometers (890,000 square miles) (Istoricheskaia khronika 1975, 120), the size of Greenland, High Arctic Canada, and Alaska put together. In 1939, all of the mining and prospecting enterprises in the Chukchi Area formerly under Glavsevmorput were given to Dalstroi (Istoricheskaia khronika 1975, 112). Luckily for the Yupik, the arm of Dalstroi-Gulag stopped short at the very doorstep of their land. The Yupik were saved by the proximity of the US border, always a magnet for escaped convicts, and the chance that the Gulag system might be observed from the outside. The labor camp built at the upper reaches of Kresta Bay was the Gulag’s easternmost extension, a few dozen kilometers short of the Yupik towns of Uwellkal and Nutapelmen. In 1976, we saw the remains of its prisoners’ barracks and tumbling wooden guard towers. The northeastern frontier of Gulag expansion to the Chukchi Peninsula was the socalled Iultin Highway, the dirt road built along the Amguema River valley, across a region of tungsten mines and the labor camps that worked them. Like a scar, the Iultin Highway divided the Gulag-controlled zone of mines and camps to the west from the periphery adjoining the Bering Strait that remained under the control of Glavsevmorput and the civilian administration. For this reason, the Chukchi Peninsula retained, albeit for just a

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few more decades, its rural-oriented economy based on reindeer herding, marine-mammal hunting, and fox trapping. Once again in Russian history, the far-flung periphery was left alone by virtue of the unmanageable size of the Russian state.

The Collective Farm Era Judging from the documents and newspapers of the two decades between 1933 and 1955 and from elders’ recollections from the 1970s, the residents of the Chukchi Peninsula lived a picture-perfect Soviet way of life. The collective farms duly met their plan targets for marine-mammal hunting and reindeer stock. Russian teachers instructed their enthusiastic Native students, and Communist Youth members held their regular meetings. In 1938, the population of the Chukchi Area comprised 18,400 people, of whom just slightly more than 3,000 were the Russian-speaking newcomers. The vast majority of these latter resided in the area’s administrative capital, the town of Anadyr (Dikov 1989, 195). The region adjoining the Bering Strait had 6,600 inhabitants, of whom only some 400 were newcomers; again, half of them resided in the district hub of Uelen. In many Native communities, a Russian teacher, village council secretary, or a store clerk was the sole new face, often up to 1950. By 1938, the transformation of the Native coastal communities into collective farms was largely complete, although these “collective farms” were mostly sustained by means of traditional economic pursuits, marine hunting and fishing. As before, hunting crews in skin-covered Native boats and wooden whaleboats went to sea to pursue walrus, whales, and seals. They delivered meat and blubber for redistribution among the farm members according to their participation in the overall communal production. Some of the able-bodied men in the village and farm administration—the chairs and secretaries of the village councils, accountants, cashiers, and store clerks—were relieved of the duties of daily subsistence hunting. These men made up the new Yupik leadership. For their work, they received a hard wage, as well as meat and fish from the collective farm funds. The collective farms were also responsible for sending some of the able-bodied men to work in commercial cargo transportation and for the mail service (by dogsleds); men were also required for trapping, construction, and unloading arriving cargo ships. Government subsidies supported the building of small collective farm enterprises, like blubber-melting plants and sewing shops, to employ local women. Yupik women also went to work at new, European-style institutions: kindergartens, cafeterias, and stores. The majority, though, continued to work in the home, tending for their families as before. The collective farms gradually assumed responsibility for many tasks once performed by boat crews, lineages, and individual families, such as the repair of family houses, sewing of warm clothing for the hunters, and collection of edible tundra plants by teams of women.2 The trappers received food supplies and steel traps from the collective farms in exchange for pelts, and their families were provided with foodstuffs. This time with full justification may be termed the “collective farm” era.3 In the end, the efforts to create a viable commercial economy based on small Native collective farms produced modest results. But the collective farms were extraordinarily successful in inculcating among the Russian Yupik what was commonly referred to as a “spirit of Soviet collectivism,” that is, this form of communal discipline and dependence upon the authorities or,

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more precisely, on centralized production and distribution. The transition came easier to the coastal people, with their traditions of collective hunting and mutual assistance, compared to the nomadic Chukchi herders in the interior tundra or peasant farmers in Central Russia.4 In any event, the collectivization era did not leave among the Yupik memories of wide-scale repression and hardship. On the contrary, the elders nostalgically recalled the collective farm years as a time of justice and concern for one and all. Then, even the poorest were cared for, and widows and orphans did not have to fear what tomorrow would bring.5 The allocation of labor and resources was determined either by general meetings of the collective farm membership or, more often, by an elected farm board, consisting solely of Natives. The national collective farm was a sort of self-governing entity and to some degree continued the traditions of the former village community. How the Yupik community had changed during the collective farm era became clear to the people only later on.

A Second Journey to Ungaziq During the collective farm years, the majority of the Yupik continued to keep to the ancient coastal village sites. On the surface, the old tribal hubs, Ungaziq, Nuvuqaq, Sighineq, and Qiwaaq, more or less preserved their former appearance, with skin- and sod-covered family cabins occasionally interspersed with prefabricated frame houses containing the village council office, small elementary school, and store. To be sure, the appearance of the people, their clothing, food, and behavior, were changing. Many Soviet-era observers detailed these transitions in extremely flattering tones (Leont’iev 1973; Menovshchikov 1956; 1959; Mineev 1935; Selitrennik 1965; Shnakenburg 1939; Smoliak 1957). Fortunately, we have an independent testimony by which we can judge the speed of change, the published narrative of Nelson Alowa (1914–2000), a Yupik hunter from St. Lawrence Island (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 187–219; Fig. 9.1). Alowa visited Ungaziq twice, first around 1930 and again in 1937. His memoirs of the first trip were full of familiar details: a description of the hunt and the hunters, communal dancing and singing in family houses, ball games, athletic competitions, and feasting. Everything in his recollections was reminiscent of the intertribal visits of the contact-­ traditional era (chapter 5). When Alowa landed in Ungaziq in 1937, seven years later, he immediately noticed that all local people were wearing purchased clothing. Two Russians with rifles slung over their shoulders searched the property of the visitors. The presence of the Russians caught the guests off guard: The first time I went there, there were no white men there yet. [This time] there were lots of Russians there. Two of them with rifles and billy clubs patrolled every day. I think they were policemen. . . . During the second trip there were lots of soldiers in Chaplino. So you had to keep on your toes (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 205–207). Alowa noticed many other changes related to the new collective farm arrangement: There were eight boat-hunting crews. The same eight boats would go out every day. At a certain hour, Kingu, the mayor of Chaplino [the chairman of the

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village council?] would tell them it was time to push off. He would tell them to go out even if it was [too] windy. If the weather was not favorable, they would come back empty-handed (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 213). The second time I went, there was no more walrus skin [and blubber] available for food. All you could buy were flippers and black meat [aged, low-quality muscle meat]. Now people had to buy their own traditional food, even if they had stored it in their own meat caches. There was a big scale behind the schoolhouse. Women would fetch meat from their cache, fill a container, and then go to the scale to weigh it. Then they took it home, but they have to go to the store to pay for it (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 215). Alowa noted a new schoolhouse built in the center of the village, a large building “like our new school in Savoonga.” The school had sixteen teachers, the majority Russians. In the schoolhouse, they showed movies for visitors, and then the children did a drill, under the leadership of a Yupik teacher, making fancy turns and clapping their hands. Alowa also described a new bakery, hospital, and lighthouse, all staffed by Yupik. At the village store, the residents bought food and wares in exchange for furs and skins. To the visitors’ surprise, no traditional Native trading was permitted. An event that took place prior to their departure demonstrated the depth of the change: Ataayaghhaq almost got in trouble with baleen [he brought for trade] when he tried to get the mayor of Chaplino to sell it at Provideniya. He was almost arrested, but they let him go. When we were ready to head for home, [we saw] a notice posted. Reindeer hides and some other things were not to be taken to Gambell. . . . So we left for home (Sivuqam Nangaghnegha 1987, 219).

Fig. 9.1: Nelson Alowa (1912–2002), from Savoonga, and Willis Walunga, from Gambell, Alaska. Alowa made two trips to Ungaziq in the 1930s; Walunga’s parents moved from Avan to St. Lawrence Island in the early 1920s. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, Savoonga, 1999)

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Collective Farms and Tribal Areas Initially, the creation of collective farms did not radically alter traditional boundaries of the Yupik land in Asia. The new system of collective farms and village councils mostly corresponded to the network of the former tribal communities and similar local divisions among the coastal Chukchi people (Table 9.1; see Map 8.1). The Sighineghmiit together with the residents of Imtuk found themselves in one village council and the same collective farm called “Shock-worker” (Udarnik), headquartered in Sighineq (Sireniki). The territory of the Avatmiit was made into another village council and a collective farm, Urelikskii, centered in Ureliki. At the old tribal boundary at Cape Chukotski began the territory of the “Soviet Path” (Sovetskii put) collective farm and the Qiwaaq (Kivak) village council, which combined the residents of Qiwaaq and Tasiq with the interior Nangupagaghmiit. Farther to the north, all the way up the Senyavin Strait, was the territory of the Chaplino village council, which embraced the former tribal lands of the Ungazighmiit and the Napaqutaghmiit. They became members of the “Toward the New Life” (K novoy zhizni) collective farm, seated in Ungaziq. The territory of the Nuvuqaq (Naukan) village council encompassed the traditional territory of the Nuvuqaghmiit on Cape Dezhnev, now the “Leninist Path” (Leninskii put) collective farm. In 1940, this latter included also Big Diomede Island, which had previously had a small village council of its own (chapter 4). The villages of the maritime Chukchi had their collective farms and councils organized under a similar principle, as were the Yupik communities in Kresta Bay, Uwellkal and Nutapelmen. The profound differences between the tribal territory and the “collective farm” land soon became obvious. The old tribal territory was open for movement and hunting to any tribal member. Changing one’s residence via marriage, partnership, or migration was a family’s, lineage’s, or even individual’s choice (chapter 4). The collective farm land was exploited according to the economic plans drawn up in the farm offices and the directives of the district authorities. The traditional Yupik community had little power over its members’ mobility. The collective farm, via its leaders and board meetings, possessed this power under the new rules.

One Collective Farm—One Village Beginning in the 1940s, the Soviet authorities began a directed campaign of closing small villages and combining (literally, “fusing”) the weaker collective farms with larger and more successful enterprises (Table 9.2). As a result, in place of the former chain of tribal territories, with several large and small villages and camps, a new system was established. Even without officially changing its boundaries, the Yupik land in Asia transformed into a new model: “one collective farm—one village council—one community.” The transition took place first in Sighineq, then already called by its Russianized name, Sireniki. The relocation to Sireniki of all of the former residents of Imtuk, Singhaq, Asun, and Kenlighaq (chapter 4) made it the largest Yupik community west of Provideniya Bay (210 persons) in 1939 (Svodnaia tablitsa 1947, 34). Shortly after, around 1940–1942, the residents of small hunting camps in Kresta Bay were pushed to move to Uwellkal. Most of their fellow Laakaghmiit tribesmen from Nutapelmen soon joined them. The entire Yupik population of Kresta Bay now resided in one community, Uwellkal (population 200).

Table 9.1: Population of the Chukchi District by village council, 1939–1951 Village Council Coastal Nunligran Sireniki Ureliki Kivak Chaplino Yanrakynnot Lorino Akkani Yandagay Katrytkino Nunyamo Dezhnev Naukan Diomede Uelen Inchoun Chegitun Chetpokairgyn Seshan Enurmino Neshkan Toigunen Koluchin Vankarem Nomadic Kurupka Penkigney Guenon Inymney Yuniveem Kychaun Mechigmen Amguema Total

Number of 1939 Populated Sites Total

5 1 5 3 2 4 6 3 1 2 3 2 1 1 3 4 3 2 4 6 12 5 3 6

172 205 1,099 96 291 137 201 160 93 232 187 92 335 20 539 189 141 46 134 309 269 44 88 187

5 4 10 3 9 7 11 27 163

90 94 126 79 204 124 182 397 6,562

1943 1951 Chukchi Yupik Other Chukchi Yupik Other 251 – 18 37 26 169 171 162 126 131 185 76 2 – 301 191 119 97 112 259 238 150 105 181

– 228 151 41 256 4 – 2 – 14 – 2 313 ? 24 – – – 1 1 1 – – –

8 4 759 1 14 1 3 1 1 128 1 1 12 ? 77 3 4 – 1 15 1 7 – 18

216 27 41 23 37 165 152 155 118 93 133 71 1 – 278 161 98 76 102 230 191 86 112 155

101 – 1 84 – 1 124 – – 82 1 3 154 – 1 115 – 3 132 – 10 397 – – 4,296 1,039 1,079

171 39

– 5 171 3 279 4,000* 66 – 172 16 1 1 – 4 – 2 – 1 29 234 – 1 1 – 278 15 – – 15 40 – 1 3 1 – – 5 2 2 15 – 3 – 1 – 8 – 21 1 –

86 – 75 – 109 – 96 4 243 – 3,540 1,027

– – (closed) 2 2 7 1 – 4,386*

* estimate Sources: For 1939: Materialy po chislennosti n.d., 4–5; for 1943: Svedeniia o chislennosti 1945, 30–32; for 1951: ­Dinamika razvitiia n.d., 2–3.

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Table 9.2: Number of collective farms (cooperative enterprises and associations) and state farms in the Chukchi Area, 1928–1970 Year

1928 1930 1932 1936 1940 1945 1951 1953 1958 1960 1962 1967 1968 1970

Cooperative Associations Collective Average Number State Farms Total Enterprises (tovarishchestva) Farms: Total of Families (sovkhozes) (arteli) per Farm 0 3 3 n/a 0 3 0 9 9 32 1 10 0 23 23 28 1 24 0 65 65 19 1 66 17 59 76 24 1 77 25 38 63 37 3 64 48 1 49 45 3 52 45 1 46 59 3 49 41 0 41 69 3 44 30 0 30 82 6 36 27 0 27 104 6 33 26 0 26 n/a 6 32 3 0 3 n/a 24 27 3 0 3 n/a 24 27

Sources: For 1928–1962: Selitrennik 1965, 16; for 1967–1970: Leont’iev 1973, 43.

Avan, the old tribal hub of the Avatmiit, was next to go. Its residents were removed in 1941, with the advent of World War II in the Pacific, to make place for a Russian gun battery that guarded the nearby port facilities in Provideniya Bay against the prospective Japanese invasion. A few local families moved to Ugriileq (Ureliki; population 100 in 1937), the seat of a local school, a village council, and a store. Next in line was Siqlluk, the last village of the Ungazighmiit north of Cape Chaplin with some fifty residents (eight to ten families). It had a small store and a local branch of the Ungaziq collective farm. Yet in 1950, the local farm division was eliminated and the residents were moved to live permanently in Ungaziq, then known by its Russianized name, Chaplino (population 250 in 1947). The closing of Qiwaaq (Kivak) and Tasiq was the last in this series of relocations. This was a significant event, inasmuch as Qiwaaq had an independent collective farm and its own village council (population 140), together with the residents of Tasiq and the inland Nangupagaghmiit. The elimination of Qiwaaq in 1952 was presented as a “voluntary unification” with the larger Ungaziq collective farm, as stated in a motion by the Executive Committee of the Chukchi Area (Chukotskii okrispolkom 1950–1959, 170). That same day, December 25, 1952, the committee stamped nine similar motions on the dissolution of eleven Native village councils on the Chukchi Peninsula that were declared “nonexistent” or “voluntarily unified.” On the northern flank of the Yupik land, the small community on Big Diomede Island (six families, thirty-five people) ceased its existence in 1948 when its members were relocated to Nuvuqaq (population 330). Finally, in the late 1940s, a handful of Chukchi families from the Arctic coast were brought to Wrangell Island to join its earlier Yupik settlers (Gurvich 1977, 25). The Chukchi arrived with their reindeer herds, bringing a new economy to the island. Although the Yupik remained the pioneers, the island became de facto Yupik-Chukchi land.

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The relocations and farm unifications of the collective farm era were anything but voluntary. We are unaware of any expression of will of the locals to leave their ancestral places and move to other communities. Judging from elders’ recollections, however, these relocations were not viewed as tragedies by most. As a rule, people welcomed the new arrivals, who were mostly their neighbors and kinsmen: When the people from Kivak [Qiwaaq] were moving to join us, our people came out to the shore to meet them with flags and song. We received the people of Kivak in high spirits. We lived together in friendship. I don’t know if they were shown [where to put their tents], or if they chose for themselves. They put up summer tents, they arrived in the summer. There wasn’t the slightest bit of hostility. On the contrary, they were received festively, with enthusiasm (Kavekhak 1981). By the end of the collective farm era, only three large traditional centers remained of the former chain of old Yupik villages—Naukan (Nuvuqaq), Chaplino (Ungaziq), and Sireniki (Sighineq)—plus two later offshoots, those in Uwellkal and on Wrangell Island. In addition, new Native hubs emerged at the main footholds of Soviet power on the Chukchi Peninsula, in Lavrentiya and Provideniya bays.

New Zones of Expansion: The Bays Until the 1930s, the regional centers of the nascent Soviet administration gravitated toward the earlier economic network built around large coastal communities with established trading posts. For this reason, Uelen, the hub of trade operations during the late contact-traditional era, remained the capital of the Chukchi District. In the southern area, Ungaziq played a similar role in hosting the administration of the short-lived Eskimo Native District (chapter 8). The fortification of Soviet power triggered a shift in the local centers of governance, which moved to deep bays suited for docking large cargo ships. In summer 1928, the Soviet administration launched the construction of its first genuine outpost on the Chukchi Peninsula, the so-called Chukchi “cultural base” (kultbaza) on the southern shore of Lavrentiya Bay. Such “cultural bases,” the brainchild of the Committee on the North (chapter 8), were commonly built at new sites, far from traditional Native communities. Each hosted a state-run boarding school, small hospital, store, radio station, public bath, and so on. Altogether, the committee constructed and administered sixteen “cultural bases” across Siberia and the Russian Arctic, one of which in Lavrentiya Bay was aimed at the Chukchi and the Yupik (Komov 1933; Sergeev 1955). A new settlement of some 150 residents made up predominantly of Chukchi and Russian newcomers quickly arose. The only seven-grade boarding school on the Chukchi Peninsula was located there. Such Yupik as there were initially at the “culture base” were school-age students who resided at the boarding school. In 1939, the “culture bases” in Siberia became the property of the local administrations,6 and in 1940, the “cultural base” in Lavrentiya Bay was eliminated. The authorities then moved the administrative offices of the Chukchi District from Uelen to the “culture base” facilities in the bay (Istoricheskaia khronika 1975, 118). The town population swelled to 250–300 people. Half were Russian newcomers who manned the many district offices; but

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there were also twenty to thirty Yupik town residents around 1948. The list of the positions they held was impressive: head of the department of the Communist Party committee, secretary of the district Communist Youth League, registrar of Vital Statistics, bookkeeper for the district administration, payroll chief at the savings bank, police official, KGB officer, newspaper typesetter, and others (Chukotskaia raionnaia inspektsiia 1948). The new local hub in Lavrentiya Bay gained more prominence after 1947 with the addition of a small sea-mammal processing facility (motorno-zveroboinaia stantsiia) on the other shore of the bay, opposite the district center. A mixed settlement of 150, with the Russianized name Pinakul (after the former Chukchi camp of Pinekwen), emerged next to the station made up of Russians, Chukchi, and some Yupik (around twenty to thirty people). These were largely arrivals from Nuvuqaq and a few families from southern villages, Ungaziq, Ugriileq, and Sighineq. During the 1930s, a similar mixed hub appeared in the southern Yupik area around Provideniya Bay. Initially, it gravitated toward the Soviet outpost in Emma Harbor, near the Yupik village of Ugriileq (chapter 4). It had a school, several storehouses, trading post, Soviet border guard post, and radio station. In 1937, the Glavsevmorput initiated the construction of a modern deep-sea port on the other side of Emma Harbor, close to the 1848–1849 HMS Plover wintering site (chapter 7). The new port, the hub for the Northern Sea Route operations, was to service large cargo ships and icebreakers cruising this main transportation throughway along the Russian Arctic shores. In 1938, the town of Provideniya had 214 residents, mainly Russian specialists and construction workers. The new site grew rapidly and by the end of the collective farm era it was the largest Soviet outpost in the Bering Strait region (population 2,000 in 1947). In its size and urban infrastructure, it rivaled Nome on the American Seward Peninsula. The nearby Yupik communities of Avan and Ugriileq (Ureliki) were quickly driven into the sphere of the new Russian hub. First, a small whaleboat and outboard motor repair station servicing the local collective farms was built in Plover Bay, close to the long-abandoned Avatmiit site of Egheghaq. Soon, it was converted into a larger facility on par with the Pinakul Station in Lavrentiya Bay. Some 150 people lived there, the majority Yupik. The men worked as technicians and mechanics repairing outboard motors and whaleboats. Yupik women staffed the institutions of the village and the small blubber-­ melting facility, opened in 1948. With the onset of the Cold War, a peculiar component was added to the new Soviet hub in Provideniya Bay. In 1947–1948, a Soviet Army division landed at Ureliki to strengthen the Soviet military presence close to the American border. Ureliki became a military town, the command center for numerous garrisons scattered across the surrounding tundra. The Yupik community was quickly swept away; its members moved to Plover or left for other villages. Another Yupik town that, during World War II, experienced the Soviet military presence was Uwellkal. In 1942, a military airport was constructed nearby for American airplanes flying to the USSR under the lend-lease program (Dikov 1989, 246–248). After the war, a large Soviet air force unit remained at Uwellkal. Many demobilized veterans and civilian specialists stayed on to live in the neighboring Yupik village, comprising a significant portion of and, later, the majority of its population.

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Life in Bay Towns: Ureliki, Provideniya, Plover, and Pinakul By 1952, some 270 Russian Yupik lived around Provideniya Bay (Dinamika razvitiia n.d.), making it then the second-largest Yupik community in Asia, after Nuvuqaq (Naukan). In both Plover and Provideniya, the Yupik population was of mixed tribal origins. Although the Yupik families nominally identified with their old tribes, clans, and lineages, we did not hear in elders’ stories of a single manifestation of the clan-tribal structure, or even of solidarity. Their narratives about life in Provideniya, Ureliki, Plover, and Pinakul in the 1940s illustrated the mixed character of the bay communities and the absence of locus-­ based institutions. Although the Avatmiit, the nominal “masters” of the land around Provideniya Bay, made up a slight majority (plurality?), new centers had no roots in the old Yupik tribal system. In Plover, the original Avatmiit site, the first to settle were contracted Ungazighmiit workers of the Plover Sea-Mammal Processing Station (Motorno-zveroboinaia stantsiia). In Ureliki, the original Avatmiit villagers had almost all left for Wrangell Island in 1926, and in Provideniya and Pinakul there had been no contact-traditional Yupik presence whatsoever. None of the new communities had or could have had a “founding” clan, “master of the land,” or other traditional community institutions, such as clan- or lineage-­ based neighborhoods. The land was “common,” which meant it belonged to no one. Even in Plover, where Yupik families might select their residence location, close relatives, not to mention people from the same tribe, reportedly settled apart from one another. The Yupik obviously preferred to live next to other Yupik, but that was the extent of it. Life at the new centers, down to the most mundane details, followed new regulations imposed by the Russians. Acculturation, particularly among the youth, advanced swiftly: In Ureliki [ca. 1940] life was quite happy. We used to gather in Angyaleq’s house and carry on together, all of us girls, those from Chaplino and Avan, and me with them. Every Saturday we’d get together and dance Russian dances, the polka and the Cracovienne. Anagikaq would play the accordion. The Russian border guards would come dance with us, there were about fifteen of them. At the time I worked as a nanny for their lieutenant. After dancing we’d go for walks. When the holidays would come, we’d make ourselves new clothing, embroidered upper coats and dresses. These were all Russian holidays, November 7th and May 1st. There weren’t any Eskimo festivals at all (Panana 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 78). For the youth, everyday life in Provideniya was reminiscent of that in a typical student dormitory. In Provideniya there was a technical school beginning in 1938. We went to school there, some of us studied motor engineering, and others, to be captains. Tepeghkaq, Aka, Anagikaq, and others, from various villages. We all lived together in the dorm. Isusen was there, he was a good accordion player. He sang Russian songs and danced. The fur taggers were trained there as well, as were store clerks. Everyone was from somewhere else, from Sireniki, Chaplino, Nunligran, and there were even people from Naukan there. Or course we’d speak Eskimo [Yupik] among ourselves, but we always spoke Russian with the

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teachers and in public. I remember they put together a brass band. My brother played the trumpet. But it was Russian music. They’d play from sheet music every holiday. But there was none of our [Yupik] music (Yurii Pukhluk 1987, in Krupnik 2000, 500). Among the new villages, only in Plover and Pinakul was there anything resembling subsistence maritime hunting, for the station workers had to provide their own families with Native food: They [the station workers] would only hunt on Sundays. They were experienced hunters, the ones who came from Chaplino. They’d bag five to ten seals a day. But during my time they were no longer killing walruses, there weren’t any in the bay at all. There was a small store in Plover, with a Russian clerk and a Russian bursar (Yurii Pukhluk 1987, in Krupnik 2000, 496). Life in Plover and Pinakul changed when the two stations obtained a small fleet of overhauled motor schooners and cutters left over from the pre-Soviet decades. They serviced the nearby collective farms and villages. The Yupik men became captains, ship’s mates, engineers, and navigators. The schooners delivered goods for the collective farms, and their crews were actively involved in hunting for walruses and even whales: We’d take the Ozernaia [schooner] for hunting to the Rudder walrus rookery. I was a sailor, and Kaynguwyi was the captain. There were six of us altogether, all Eskimo, and we spoke only Eskimo, for there weren’t any Russians at all. On the Nunligran schooner they were all Chukchi, and they spoke their own language too. We transported hunters and their skin boats from the villages to the haul-out site in the early summer, from Sireniki and Kivak [Qiwaaq]. We were also hunting walruses, we’d shoot and harpoon them from the schooner. I heard that in Pinakul Napagun was also hunting whales on a schooner like ours, but we didn’t do that. . . . In the winter we lived in Plover, we’d pull the schooner up onto the shore and winter there. . . . We took freight and coal to Sireniki. At the time there were only skin tents and three small buildings, a storehouse, a store, and a school (Yurii Pukhluk 1987, in Krupnik 2000, 502). As the Yupik men proudly bore the title of “captain,” mechanic, and radio operator, the new labels, also, presupposed new models of behavior. Russian was the language of village discourse as a rule. Acculturation was rapid and in rather short order many of the old social norms were crowded out. We need cite but one example. In ten years, 1945–1954, eighty-eight Yupik children were born in Plover. Among these, twenty-six (29.5 percent) had two Native parents; twenty-seven (30.7 percent) were born of unions of Yupik women with Russian men or other newcomers; and thirty-one (35.2 percent) were born of single mothers, of whom many by that time already had three and more extramarital births. Even in families where both spouses were Yupik, parents commonly came from different tribes, so that few unions adhered to the norms of clan and lineage affiliation. Perhaps all that remained of the traditional order, besides the language and the memory of one’s tribal origins, was the custom of giving children a Yupik name in honor of a deceased relative, besides the Russian first name recorded in one’s personal papers.

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Another tradition that survived was the ritual of “feeding the ancestors,” which elders called by the Russian word pominki (memorial feast): In Plover we still observed the pominki. We’d go down to the hill, closer to the cemetery. Relatives would generally observe this individually [that is, in groups]. For example, we would observe the rite with Umqangaawen’s family, along with Aringaawen, and Kayeghhaq, too, all Avatmiit. And the people from Chaplino would go separately. There weren’t any Eskimo festivals any more in Plover, I only saw them as a child in Ungaziq (Olga Mumigtekaq 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 313). Yet neither the transition from hunters to sailors and technicians servicing the Glavsevmorput facilities nor quick mixture with the newcomers transformed the Yupik into “Russians.” The people remained “Eskimo,” that is, Yupik, and they considered their way of life a worthy and valuable component of the greater Soviet system. The new life did not immediately replace the old, but rather edged it out on a wave of general enthusiasm for the transformations.

The Old Society Dies Out Even in the most modernized communities the routing out of contact-traditional Yupik institutions was never an instantaneous process. In the first phase, the old bonds and social patterns ceased to function as a unified system. The spheres of the former social units—the clans and lineages, boat crews, neighborhoods—and of individual leaders, such as the “masters of the land,” boat captains, and shamans, gradually shrank. New forms of social interactions were quick to assume their place. The first victim of Soviet modernization was the former Yupik leadership: boat captains, clan elders, and various influential traditionalists, all indiscriminately dubbed “shamans” by the authorities (chapter 8). The creation of the collective farms deprived them of power and property and made them an object of shameless discrimination on the part of the Russian administrators and Native activists. The following happened in Ugriileq, according to the Russian teacher’s account: In working to eliminate poverty [in Ugriileq], the new boat groups [crews] were organized in such a way that on the motorized whaleboat the poorest, yet the best [?!] hunters made [up] the crew and on that without motor, the paddle-boat, there was a shaman, a former whaleboat owner, and an entire crew of sympathizers of the “old life.” Now, this boat crew had to compete with the first group in a motorboat. [And then we] [c]onducted a unique “levelling out” of the shaman and the “master of the land,” now they get their share of the catch in the same amount as any of the paddlers. Until the fall of 1933 the owner of the boat got two shares, one for his work and one for the whaleboat; the shaman was in the same position. . . . Now, there have been big changes on that front (Sergeeva 1935b, 97). Even if no direct actions were undertaken to alter the composition of the hunting crews, they soon ceased forming along the old lineage and clan lines. It would seem that once the Yupik became collective farm workers, they abandoned hunting with relatives as soon as the clan and lineage had ceased being the mechanisms of cooperation and distribution

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of catch. The many boat crew lists from the collective farm era we recorded in the 1970s (Krupnik 2000, 198–223) were striking in their almost purposeful mixture of members from different clans, tribes, and communities, and, finally, of Yupik and Chukchi hunting together. It is hard to say whether this was done intentionally on the part of the collective farm leadership; yet the transformation was obvious. I started hunting in Kivak [Qiwaaq], with Qillghhun, that was probably in 1935. Kaytu, Eghsughaq [other Laakaghmiit], and others were under him too. But to be sure, not constantly. Each spring many would change boat crews, they’d hunt with other crews. They’d change every year. During my time in Kivak the crews were already small, 4–5 people, no more. . . . All different people would hunt with Ulgugyi as well. It changed all the time. Even Pekuutaq’s children hunted in different boats, even during my time they weren’t a single crew (Petr Nutatagin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 210). About 1935–1940, people ceased observing traditional Yupik hunting and personal festivals. This came about rapidly, usually under explicit pressure or agitation by Native activists. My father didn’t want to pass the festival on to Kayigigun [his eldest son]. This was because the Soviet Union had been created, and people were doing stupid things. Only a few people spoke Russian, like Nutawyi, Qetuwyi, and Alalawen. And these stupid people, who didn’t have a lick of sense, agitated that we ought to stop observing our festivals. They had to be thrown out [abandoned] altogether. And my father got mad and immediately threw out his festival. Everyone in the village of Sireniki threw them all out. . . . They didn’t understand, and they were afraid of the Russians. I heard that Pangawyi was the only one who didn’t do it. He would observe his festival secretly (Andrei Kukilgin 1977, in Krupnik 2000, 266–267). More often, however, the old festivals languished for a while in truncated forms with a small number of participants and invited people. They gradually disappeared as a result of the death of the old “masters” and the lack of interest among the young generation, which had adopted the new ideology (Krupnik 1979; 1990a). The same fate befell many of the community festivals and other similar events, as seen from this story about the last whale festival in Nuvuqaq (Naukan) in 1946: [When a whale was killed] the meat was divided among the crews and given to the collective farm. Then the skin was also divided among the crews. Imeqan took the biggest portion, because their harpoon was first. They took more baleen than everyone else [in accordance with ancient tradition, whereby the crew that harpooned the whale received the largest portion]. Next came those whose harpoon had been second, and all the rest shared equally. The meat was divided and everyone went to sleep. And after a while Imeqan would observe his festival. But they didn’t do the entire festival, only the umasimat, as we call it. The umasimat is an exchange where you can ask anyone else for anything you like. But you have to give something in exchange. This festival lasted an entire day, with dancing. What Imeqan did was not the pola [pualla–the genuine

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festival], he just did the umasimat. And there weren’t any more whale festivals after that (Oleg Einetegin 1981, in Krupnik 2000, 172). The rituals associated with honoring the ancestors transitioned in the same way. On the surface, people mainly preserved the family and lineage rituals of feeding the ancestors, even in some modernized communities, such as Plover. Yet participation in the rituals ceased being corporate and obligatory; it was rather a matter of personal attachment to tradition: My brother and I observed the ritual honoring our father together [in Provideniya around 1955]. We’d go to the lighthouse, up that way. We didn’t put stones in a circle, we just lit a fire. We’d call [feed] our father, our grandfather, and our other Avan elders. Sometimes Ruggtelen from Sireniki [no relation to the speaker] would come with us, and he always invited us to his ritual. Sometimes others would come with us, people who were staying with us on the way somewhere else or in the TB hospital, even people who weren’t our relatives. And other Avatmiit didn’t even come with us. Like N. [name withheld], who is a close relative of ours and who lived nearby, he never came (Yurii Pukhluk 1987, in Krupnik 2000, 502). The rituals of feeding the ancient underground dwellings and whale-jaw poles underwent a similar transition. The old leaders did not pass on their functions along the former lines of descent, and the rituals either were lost because of the lack of new practitioners or, more often, were maintained in scaled-down form by individual traditionalists. Tatega was the last of us who observed the ritual [of feeding the old underground houses in Sireniki], when my father died. I came back from the Army, that was probably in 1950, and he was already quite ill. He said don’t you go [feed] the old houses any more, you’re too young, you don’t know how. You’ll do it wrong. That will endanger your life. And after he died, I didn’t go any more (Stepan Kavakvyrgin 1981, in Krupnik 2000, 316). By all rights, it was Kavakvyrgin (Qawakwergen), the last adult male of the lineage of the “masters of the land” in Sireniki, who should have honored the ruins of the old dugouts. With his failure to perform the ritual, other people stepped in and on the surface, the ceremony still looked profoundly traditional. [In 1954] . . . on the ruins of a large nenglu [subterranean dwelling in Sireniki] the families of the Eskimos Numtagnen, Numelin, Piwra, Yatelen, and Uteghtekaq performed the rite honoring the dead, accompanied by the soft beating of drums, the conversation of elders with the deceased ancestors, and the presentation of sacrifices in the form of food made of the soft mouth parts of a walrus. The rite was concluded with a shared meal (Menovshchikov 1962a, 33). In the “old days,” such a group would hardly have assembled for these activities, according to the list of participants. Its members were mere elderly “traditionalists” from different clans and kin groups. Some had no genealogical ties to the ancient underground houses in Sighineq. Other members of their lineages did not take part in the ceremony, also in violation of traditional norms.

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The Old Society Dies Out: Anthropological Commentary The dwindling of the former Yupik cultural practices during the collective farm era begs for explanation. Anthropologists tend to view culture as an integrated system of norms that governs the life of the society and ensures its survival through the shared body of knowledge called ethnic tradition. This shared knowledge lends the group a kind of solidarity and resilience (Elsass 1992, 176); it produces common concepts, a shared worldview, and standards of social interaction. This is the vigorous unifying bond. During the late contact-­ traditional era, such a system was very much in place among the Yupik; but starting in the 1930s, it began to fall apart. Various elements of old ideology and social order suddenly lost their functions and interconnectedness and, once that cultural cohesiveness was gone, the system broke into separate fragments. Each fragment now faced the struggle for existence individually. As we have shown, many traditional Yupik institutions, like the extended family, clan and tribal endogamy, the clan neighborhood, and patrilineal hunting crew, were already weakened even before the arrival of the Soviet administration in the 1920s. Their transformation, if not disappearance, was only a matter of time. As the traditional bonds of integration weakened, the demise of shared knowledge, of the former norms and values, proceeded swiftly. Often many traditional practices went extinct because Yupik “traditionalists” themselves ceased performing them or did not pass the knowledge to their descendants. It happened in despair, in protest, but more often than not because of the deep cultural rifts within the community.7 The disintegration of the old social system did not lead to a simultaneous, let alone wholesale, breakdown of all of its component parts. The overall trend was obvious; but nowhere, even in the most modernized communities, did the new cultural patterns force out the old ones completely. Real life was a mix of cultural reintegration, in which some patterns replaced or combined with others in odd combinations. In Sighineq (Sireniki), people preserved the traditional rituals of honoring the ancestors (up to the 1980s) but abandoned their clan affiliation and personal festivals (Krupnik 1979; 2000, 292–294). In Ungaziq, Yupik names and clan solidarity were more assiduously maintained and some family festivals lasted till the late 1940s. Yet the old community rituals and the skills to build large skin boats and stretch them with walrus hides were lost. The differences among individual communities may be confusing to an outside observer; but they do not alter the essence of the transition as the overall transformation was by definition chaotic. Certain components of traditional Yupik culture received a different social meaning. During the collective farm decades, traditional Yupik myths gradually ceased being told in public and even in the family circle, although commonplace folk tales and personal narratives sustained. During those same years, newcomer teachers and linguists diligently recorded traditional Yupik myths and folk stories. They published such texts in the Yupik language and for the Yupik audience (e.g., Forshtein 1935; Menovshchikov 1939; 1958; 1974; 1977; Rubtsova 1940; 1954; Sergeeva 1968). They also translated many of the folk stories removed from their mythological context into Russian. Such stories, often colorfully illustrated and in a simplified format, were included in school textbooks as “fairy

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tales.” As the more spiritually focused lore vanished, Native folktales became a popular and actively promoted element of the Soviet concept of “ethnic” culture. The fate of the Yupik communal festivals tells a similar story. In the past, the festivals were all-community events and were always hosted by elderly experts, who monitored the annual cycle of communal rites. The cycle of the new festivals of the Soviet era was determined by the Russian calendar and imported Soviet holidays such as October Revolution Day (November 7), International Workers’ Day (May 1), and the like. The few Yupik festivals, wherever retained, as in Ungaziq and Nuvuqaq in the 1940s, ceased serving as a bond to communal life. The few surviving Yupik festivals acquired a deeply personal character, completely contained within the families of their masters or performed by a few traditionalists. The festival no longer cemented the community; it fragmented it. It is no wonder that the elders refused to pass a debased tradition on to the next generation, which had embraced Soviet acculturation. In the realm of Yupik family patterns, the conjugal family, once the basic unit, had gradually changed its functions. The larger institutions of which it had been a part, the clan and the lineage, had grown weaker. Both institutions were retained, particularly the latter, because genealogical memory was mainly preserved. Children born during the collective farm era (1930–1950), who were the young adults in the 1970s, knew full well to which clan or tribe they belonged. But in remarkable contrast to their parents, they were far from always able to name other members and lineages of their clans. The weakening of this genealogical knowledge was further evidence of the weakening of clan and lineage bonds and of their social influence. No longer an obligatory component of larger kin groups, the Yupik conjugal family gradually transformed into a nuclear family more of the European type. Again, this took place completely imperceptibly to the people themselves, who did not view their society in the terms of social anthropology. The few village family lists preserved from the collective farm era illustrated the transition. In Nuvuqaq in 1954, of fifty Yupik individual households (Smoliak 1954), only one extended family remained made up of married couples of a father and his son. There were no longer any fraternal joint families. Almost half of all families (44 percent) consisted solely of a couple and their children, that is, they were essentially nuclear families. In more modernized Yupik communities, such as Plover, nuclear and fragmented families already constituted the majority.

The Cultural Revolution: The Soviet Yupik School One of the most effective mechanisms of the enforced social transition was the new system of schooling. By 1930–1932, governmental schools were opened in all the large Yupik villages: Nuvuqaq, Ungaziq, Imtuk, Ugriileq, Qiwaaq, and, later, Sighineq, Plover, and Uwellkal, and on Wrangell Island. All the Native schools during these years were elementary schools and four grades: preparatory and grades 1–3. Children from small villages went to school in the larger nearby communities and initially lived with their relatives. The only boarding school at the “cultural base” in Lavrentiya Bay had twenty-eight Yupik students, ages fourteen to nineteen in 1935 (Syomushkin 1935). In the 1950s, the village schools were gradually reorganized from primary schools into seven-year schools.

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The state-run schools propagated the new ideas better than any other institution created under the state policies. In addition to the usual classes in Russian, math, and Yupik (see below), students were exhorted by their Russian teachers to be “active builders” of the new life. For the first time, Yupik youth had the opportunity to be involved in social activism and to criticize the foundations of their culture, often with the open support of the state and the school. Any adolescent protest against the customary norms, against the authority of the family and elders, was welcomed and endorsed: The Kivak [Qiwaaq] schoolchildren don’t know if they have shamans or not, and they’ve never heard of kulaks [wealthy owners]. In the Ureliki school they read in the wall newspapers and wrote in their notebooks that Yarasi, the shaman, is lazy and is a bad hunter. At the Pioneer meeting the secretary of the Young Communist League explained opposition (“wrecking”) by the kulaks and the wealthy to the Pioneers. At the general meeting the student Tepeghkaq was not accepted as a Pioneer member because he is the son of a former “master of the land” (Sergeeva 1935a, 59, from the minutes of a meeting of the Ureliki school, 1934). For this reason, in the small villages, groups of fifteen to twenty students, headed by an energetic Russian teacher, were a significant, often quite aggressive, social force to reckon with.

The Cultural Revolution: Yupik Literacy According to an ambitious strategy developed by the Committee on the North, the Siberian indigenous people were to adapt to the new Soviet life, that is, start going to school, read newspapers and books, and lead their own administration, wherever possible, in their native tongues. In 1930, a special meeting of the Committee on the North in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) approved a list of the Siberian indigenous groups for which scholarly experts were tasked with developing written languages (Sevil’gaev 1985). The Yupik were included in that list, most likely owing to the influence of Waldemar Bogoras, who was one of the committee’s leading figures. The development of the first Yupik primers and readers made it possible in 1933 to begin teaching the Yupik language at schools to children and adults.8 In accordance with the policy of the Committee on the North, the experts created written languages following the principle “one people—one literary language,” regardless of the actual differences among local languages and dialects. For the Yupik, apparently again at the behest of Bogoras, their new written language was based on the Chaplinski dialect, the tongue of the Ungazighmiit. It became the only approved means for instruction in the Eskimo schools in Chukotka in 1933–1934 and was used for all subsequent publications for the Russian Yupik: from collections of children’s tales to school textbooks to translations of speeches by Joseph Stalin.9 The dreams of the pedagogues from the Committee on the North were not to be. The vast majority of the Soviet Yupik were to adapt to the new life not via their mother tongue, but in Russian, which became the true language of literacy and reading. Literacy soon came to be synonymous with “literate in Russian,” whereas literacy in Yupik usually extended no further than the ability to sound out a few schoolbooks syllable by syllable. A situation

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called diglossia (Dorais 1989, 200), the combination of two languages, soon developed, with one of them, Yupik, used in everyday discourse and the other, Russian, dominant in formal instruction, written literature, and official documentation. Since the Russian officials could not read Yupik and did not accept documents written in it, the Yupik activists had to speak and write in Russian to them. The efforts of some zealous young teachers to compose collective farm plans, meeting announcements, and wall newspapers in Yupik (Sergeeva 1935b, 96) met with no success. In the profusion of archival materials from the era, there are but a handful of pages written in Yupik, and these were mostly personal recollections or short stories written at the request of linguists or ethnographers.10 Yet up into the 1950s, the Yupik language remained the chief means of communication in all the Yupik communities. For this reason, the schools had special preparatory classes, in which children learned basic Russian. Education in their native tongue did not continue past the first years: there were not enough schoolbooks, teachers, or developed curricula. After the first three grades, the teachers and the pupils switched to Russian, in which further classes were conducted. Yupik served as the secondary tongue that teachers used to communicate with the youngest of children, and many of the Russian teachers were somewhat fluent in Yupik at that time. Although Russification was not an openly declared goal of the new educational policy, the emerging diglossia was a clear first step in that direction.

The Building of the Soviet Eskimo “Nation” The creation of literacy for the Yupik was, nonetheless, an important political symbol. The written language substantiated the formation of the new nation and legitimized its place in the official list of peoples of the USSR. The first Soviet census of 1926 recorded 195 ethnic groups living in the country, including forty-five in Siberia and the Russian Arctic (Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ 1928). Shortly after, the Committee on the North developed a special list of the “small peoples of the North” made up first of twenty-seven and, later, twenty-six indigenous groups. This list figured in all subsequent Soviet censuses, state decrees, and legal acts (Sergeev 1955). The Yupik were included on this list, which, obviously, legitimized the creation of an “Eskimo Native District” for them in 1929 (chapter 8). Soviet nation-building in Siberia led to the creation of many artificial indigenous “nations,” which were faced with acquiring unity and the appearance of a common culture. The Yupik, with their prominent linguistic differences and the lack of a common ethnic identity, were a good example. The transformation of the Yupik into a new Soviet “nation” required one more step: they were to change their official name as well. In 1930–1932, the Committee on the North undertook a campaign to change all the former ethnic names of the Siberian indigenous peoples, which were called “imprecise,” even “offensive.” All the northern nations were duly issued new names formed, as a rule, from the word “man” or “people” in each respective Native language. This was then viewed as a symbol of the political tact of the Soviet state and of its sensitivity toward the minority peoples (Sergeev 1955). The Chukchi officially became Luoravetlan, the Koryak, Nymylan, the Aleut, Unangan, and so on. The Asiatic Eskimo came to be called Yuit. This term was apparently thought up by that very same Bogoras, using the word yu(u)k (pl., yuget), meaning “person” or “man” in the Chaplinski Yupik language (Bogoras 1934a, 105–106). The new name was comprehensible

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to the Asiatic Eskimo, though the spelling was wrong and did not correspond to their own designation for themselves, yupiget, which literally means “real people.”11 This change in name was quite ironic. Having lost their nascent self-government after the liquidation of the Eskimo Native District in 1931, the “real people” (Yupiget) became simply “people” (Yuget), with even an incorrect spelling (Yuit). In return, they received the official status of a minority nation with a corresponding set of features: a place in the list of the country’s ethnic groups, a recognized written language with literacy and schooling, and a new “correct” name. The name, incidentally, was short lived. As with many other ethnic names created by the Committee on the North, it did not catch on, and by 1939, it had disappeared from official records. The Yupik once again came to be called “Eskimo” in Russian, including in their personal papers and federal censuses.12 A more significant event was the sealing of the Soviet-American border in the Bering Strait and the cessation of Yupik contacts with their fellow kinsmen in Alaska and St. Lawrence Island in 1948. One can only be surprised that this had not happened earlier. By 1936, any unrestricted movement along the entire length of the Soviet border, from Norway to the Pacific Ocean, had been completely cut off. Only in the Bering Strait did the local Natives miraculously retain the right to cross the border and to exchange visits with the Alaska Eskimo (some 100 people a year from each side) under the Soviet-American agreement of 1938 (Krauss 1994, 368). Despite the restrictions, the visits supported traditional community and family ties and the sense of solidarity with the inhabitants of St. Lawrence Island, Little Diomede, and the Seward Peninsula (Kingston 2000; Kaneshiro 1975; Schweitzer and Golovko 1995). This too put the Yupik in a unique position compared to all the other peoples of the USSR with relatives abroad. The onset of the Cold War in 1947 made a quick end of that miracle. The last visits of the Russian Yupik to St. Lawrence Island and Nome and of the Alaska Natives to Naukan and Big Diomede took place in 1947. In 1948, the Soviet-American agreement on contacts was annulled (American Eskimos 1948; Krauss 1994, 369–370), and an Ice Curtain descended over the Bering Strait for the next forty years. The sealing of the border marked the abrupt cutoff of age-old relations with the kindred families on St. Lawrence and Little Diomede islands. It also coincided with a general whipping up of anti-American hysteria in the USSR. Any reference to the Yupik’s cultural kinship with the Native people of Alaska and the North American Arctic vanished from the public domain, though it remained in the purview of the Soviet secret police, the KGB. The latter transition altered the status of the Russian Yupik in the most fundamental way. It converted the Soviet Eskimos, the westernmost section of the large Eskimo/Inuit family with cultural and language ties from Bering Strait to Greenland, into a tiny minority group at the eastern edge of Russia. They were now an isolated people without relatives: “[N]ot a single [Soviet] Eskimo textbook contained a map showing the distribution of the Eskimos, even the Soviet Eskimos; never were the Eskimos themselves mentioned, nor was the word even used; nor was there mention of any other subject capable of strengthening Eskimo self-awareness as something separate from the common Soviet identity” (Krauss 1973, 819). This new feeling of cultural “loneliness,” the perception of themselves as a minority among minorities, was every bit a product of Soviet political engineering, to which the Russian Yupik now had to oblige.

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The Soviet Modernization: A Summary Exactly twenty-five years had passed from the establishment of the first Soviet administration on the Chukchi Peninsula (1923) up to the closing of the US-Soviet border in the Bering Strait (1948). In this quarter century, a group of tribal communities transformed into “Asiatic Eskimo,” then into “Yuit,” and finally “Soviet Eskimo.” The transitions that befell the Yupik nation were hard to overestimate. For the first time they were absorbed into another world poorly known to them, which governed their lives. Unlike in the Arctic tundra or the endless Siberian forest, in the Yupik land in Asia there was no refuge where people could escape the watchful eye of the authorities. The “new life” did sever the foundations of traditional institutions and culture, but this came about spontaneously and often imperceptibly to the people themselves. In many ways, as we have tried to demonstrate, the transition took place with their direct, often voluntary, contribution. We know of no efforts of Yupik traditionalist opposition during the collective farm era, such as those encountered earlier in the persons of Aker or Kawrangaawen (chapter 8). There is no record of Yupik resistance comparable to the Chukchi herders’ flight to the remote inland areas or open military confrontation, like the Siberian Nenets “mandalyda” movement or the Kazym Khanty rebellion of the 1930s (Golovnev 1995; Leete 2004; Nuvano 2008). The transition altered Yupik values to the extent that devotion to the old ways became a symbol of backwardness, even political incorrectness. Clothing, the interiors of homes, music and songs, language, forms of leisure, hygiene habits—in all of this the people tried to follow the newcomers, and not without success. Perhaps they saw this as the best way to adapt to the changes. This view is readily apparent in a radio message sent by the Yupik from Wrangell Island to the Communist Party daily Pravda in 1937: Earlier, before Soviet power, there was darkness in our minds, like in the great winter night. We were not taught and we had no schools. Now we are literate. We now have a school. We read books in our Eskimo language. . . . We all see that we have become different. We hunt better, and we live better. Now we go to the baths, seek healing only from doctors, wash our dishes clean, and know how to bake bread. We have taken to liking wearing underwear, and we wash it. We now have European clothing, and we wear it. . . . We are no longer aliens [inorodtsy], as we were called before the Revolution. Now we are citizens like everyone else who lives and works hard in our Soviet land (Sovetskaia vlast’ 1936, 44–45; Zelenin 1938, 44). Soviet policies were successful in transforming Yupik society and without visible social disturbances or oppression, at least during the collective farm era. Collective farms, village councils, and Communist Party cells replaced the old tribal communities, all filled with their new Yupik leaders genuinely devoted to the Soviet system. State-run schools and village culture centers (“houses of culture”) became the new channels of socialization, while Soviet holidays and collective farm meetings took the place of tribal and lineage festivals as the climax of communal life. Yupik villages of the time were reportedly free of petty crime, violence, and mass drunkenness; and the new social relations seemed almost idyllic.

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This, in any case, is how elders nostalgically remembered the collective farm era in the interviews we recorded in the 1970s and 1980s. It also seemed that the Soviet state had found a successful path to modernization in moving the Yupik to mechanized sea hunting and the technical servicing of small vessels and facilities processing sea products. The new hubs with mixed population, such as Plover and Pinakul, and district centers gradually drew in Yupik youth and created a cohort of semiurban, acculturated Natives. It seemed for a short while that the small Yupik nation was to be modernized via a gradual relocation to small towns, like Plover and Provideniya, and reoriented toward semiurban life and industrial labor at the expense of the traditional village periphery. Of course, the situation was more complex. The main backdrop of the collective farm era was the geographic isolation of the Chukchi Peninsula. Its people resided in the most distant periphery of a huge country, ten time zones away from its core areas. Their lives continued in the shadow of the powerful agencies that were the emblems of the Soviet system, such as Dalstroi-Gulag and Glavsevmorput. Having articulated the path of the transition for the Yupik, the Soviet state invested only moderate resources in its implementation. For these reasons, Yupik society was transformed at “low cost” and under comparatively mild conditions. This explains why the years 1933–1955, the most dreadful in Soviet history, remained the subject of nostalgic recollections of many Yupik elders who were young people at the time. Soviet modernization during the collective farm era sought primarily to establish administrative control at all levels and to disseminate new values, primarily among the young people and the new Yupik leadership. It never explicitly targeted the body of Yupik cultural norms as a whole. With the exception of shamanistic performances and some traditional marriage practices, such as polygamy or spouse-exchange, the old cultural practices were not subjected to outright prohibition, but rather to ridicule.13 No Soviet directive of the time demanded that Yupik activists eliminate the village neighborhood structure, or cease hunting at sea, or forsake their Yupik names, or stop talking in Yupik. Nonetheless, it made many institutions of the contact-traditional society, like lineage boat crews, clan neighborhoods, clan and lineage regulation of marriage, and many others irrelevant and obsolete. No public expression of clan and lineage solidarity was tolerated, and we have hardly any record that old clan ties remained a factor of community life. The Yupik people of the collective farm era, as we know them from photographs, official records, and personal stories, displayed various combinations of the “old” and the “new.” Most continued to live at the ancestral village sites, next to the old underground houses used by their forefathers. They had significantly simplified, though not fully abandoned, the shared body of their cultural knowledge. Yet they were overall culturally “mixed.” The following narrative, which dates to 1945–1948, illustrates that mixture: The last magician [shaman], Aglu, died quite recently. He was a powerful magician. Once, the chair of the village council of Sireniki, Tatega, arrived in Ureliki. He had a satchel with the money he had just received for the collective farm, the farm’s entire payroll. But he stopped in Ureliki for the night. And there was wild drunkenness that night. And he lost the satchel with the money and all the village council documents. He is outside, crying. Aglu happened to

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walk past. Tatega says, help me, you know how to play well, how to do magic. Help me find my bag with the money, and I’ll get you vodka. . . . Well okay, Aglu says, go buy some vodka and look for a [harpoon] line. Tatega, the chairman, goes to the hunters and gets a line. Then he went to a store and bought a liter of spirits, which he brought with him. That night Aglu beat his drum and sang, and made everyone else sing. He tells the chairman: you sing too. Then he took the line and made a noose. He says, open the door, and then he throws the noose out onto the street. He sang again, and then yanked and pulled hard. And with the noose he pulls in the satchel, and everything’s there, the farm’s money and the documents. That’s how I heard it (Aleksandr Ratkhugwi 1975, in Krupnik 2000, 484–485). The collective farm era of 1933–1955 was a time of rapid transition; yet it lacked any dramatic events. The new patterns of cultural behavior replaced the old “Yupik order,” though it remained unclear whether the old institutions were gone forever or people might resurrect them in the event of a crisis. Time was critical to the success of modernization offered to the Yupik, but neither the Soviet administrators nor the Yupik activists gave thought to how long it would take to build a “new society.” Of course, they could not retrieve the old integrity intact, like the village chair’s satchel, and the Yupik were to pay direly at the next shift in state policies that broke the remnants of their old system once and for all.

Notes 1. The full name of Dalstroi was the “State Trust for Industrial and Road Construction in the Upper Kolyma Region” (Gosudarstvennyi trest po promyshlennomu i dorozhnomu stroitelstvu v raione Verkhnei Kolymy). 2. Aivangu (1985, 62–80) offers lively description of various collective farm activities as recalled by a young Yupik activist of the time. 3. The name “collective farm era” for the period was introduced by Anna Smoliak (1957, 3–19); see also Dikov 1989, 276–277. 4. For a similar statement with regard to another Siberian minority people, the Nivkh of Sakhalin Island, see Grant 1995, 90–91. 5. Cf. Kerttula 2000; see similar nostalgic memories about the early Soviet years among Chukchi and Itelmen elders in Gray 2005; Koester 2003. 6. See http://russiasib.ru/kultbazy-kulturnye-bazy/ (accessed January 11, 2013). 7. This happened many a time to hundreds of indigenous nations in different parts of the world, though in some cases the process was reversed by the “grandchildren” generation, often over the resistance of more acculturated senior cohorts. See Kan 1989 for this “reversed” transition among the Tlingit in southern Alaska. 8. On the history of Soviet literacy efforts for the Yupik, see Budnikova 1990; Krauss 2006. 9. See the lists of early Soviet publications in Yupik in Krauss 1973; 2006. In 1937, the Latin alphabet first used for the Russian Yupik written language was replaced by the Cyrillicbased alphabet.

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10. For the only extensive collection of personal writings in Yupik, with Russian translation, see Aivangu 1985. It was produced in the early 1960s, upon request of a visiting linguist. 11. See Krauss 2006, 120, on Bogoras’ poor handling of Yupik phonetics for their ethnic name. 12. The name “Yupik” for the Asiatic Eskimo reemerged in the early 1990s as an outcome of Yupik political activism, renewed contacts with their fellow kinsmen on St. Lawrence Island, and the inclusion of the Russian Yupik in the pan-Inuit political movement (Achirgina-Arsiak 1992; Krauss 1994; Rasmussen 1990). 13. Any seeds of Christianity among the Yupik, Russian Orthodox or otherwise, planted in the early 1900s (Schweitzer and Golovko 2007), disappeared under the pressure of Soviet atheist propaganda.

C h a p t e r 10

The End of “Eskimo Land,” 1955–1960 The “Great Reform” The ten years between 1953 and 1962 constituted a much-remembered period of renewal in the history of the former Soviet Union. This was the time of the political and ideological “thaw” following thirty years of domestic oppression and vitriolic confrontation with the West. After the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, sweeping and rather vague ideas of renewal and liberalization quickly spread throughout the country. These ideas formed the ideological basis for a series of political and administrative reforms of the time. The changes of the 1950s triggered a dramatic reshaping of Soviet society; it also delivered a final blow to the remnants of the traditional social system of the tiny Yupik nation. The changes actually started in late 1953, the very year of Stalin’s death, as the Soviet government set about making a decisive shift in the management of its Arctic and Siberian regions. On December 3, 1953, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR created the new Magadan Province (oblast), set up with the province administrative structure typical for the rest of the country. In addition to the entire Dalstroi zone along the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk and in the basin of the Kolyma River, the new province also included the Chukchi Area (which was formerly within the Kamchatka Province; Dikov 1989, 287–289; Sovety 1982, 219). Shortly after, the all-powerful Dalstroi, in whose shadow the indigenous people of Northeast Siberia had been living for two decades (chapter 9), lost its administrative grip. It became a mere mining agency under the federal Ministry of Nonferrous Metallurgy. Yet its days were numbered: on May 29, 1957, Dalstroi was dissolved, and its property was transferred to other governmental agencies (Dikov 1989, 288, 460; Istoricheskaia khronika 1975, 208). Changes were not limited to the system of governing but also bore upon the ideological and economic debates about the future of Siberia. From the moment of Siberia’s annexation to the Russian state in the 17th century, Russian society and its ruling elite struggled with fundamentally different views of the role of the nation’s huge Asiatic territories (Slezkine 1994). One vision held Siberia to be a colony in the fullest sense of the word, a source of valuable resources and raw materials (at first, furs, followed by timber, minerals, fish, and later energy) for the enrichment of the European core of the country. Another 267

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view saw in Siberia the “land of the future,” one that, owing to its boundless expanses and resources, could bring prosperity and progress to all of Russia. Yet another view relegated Siberia to the role of a far-flung periphery, a backwater area for the disposal of the country’s social sins.1 The creation of the Stalinist Gulag and the dispatch into Siberia of millions of convicts and exiles between 1930 and 1953 served to further equate Siberia with penal labor and the “frozen wasteland” in the Russian mind. The liberalization of political life following the death of Stalin and the new orientation of Soviet society required these stereotypes to be changed or dropped altogether. Integrating the vast Siberian expanses into the “regular” state structure became the motto of the day. The new vision was captured in various governmental programs, as well as in public and literary writings advocating the development (Russian osvoenie, “mastery,” “opening-up”) of Siberia. The implementation of this otherwise reasonable task was relegated to the highly centralized government bureaucracy, whose priorities were never in regional development but always in a more advantageous exploitation of Siberian resources. Any scenarios of modernization generally envisioned economic plans crafted for vast regions, millions of square kilometers or even the entirety of Siberia. The ideology of the era viewed the development of industry and, especially, of the mining industry, metallurgy, and construction, as well as rapid urbanization, as the only appropriate paths to progress. Correspondingly, smallscale economies, like local agriculture, reindeer herding, fishing, and fur trapping, had notoriously smaller chances of being included in the state modernization plans for Siberia. These factors came fully to bear on the post-1953 changes in administrative and economic policy with respect to the Chukchi Area. In the plans of the reformers, this most remote part of the country inhabited by indigenous people—the Chukchi, Yupik, Even, and others—had to be swiftly “developed.” In the language of the government administrators, this meant the construction of new cities and towns and the rise of the mining and mineral extraction industry plus a shipping and communication network to integrate the area into the national economy. Accordingly, the indigenous population of the area had to be “developed,” that is, urbanized and turned to industrial labor as the only genuine path to progress (cf. Boiko 1980; Mal’kov 1981; Table 10.1).

The Reform and the Native People The ideological implementation of the governmental plans with regard to the Native people was a new policy dubbed, in the jargon of the day, the “concentration and specialization of agriculture.” As elsewhere across the country, it meant the creation of large state-run agricultural enterprises by streamlining the existing network of small and economically limited collective farms (Vakhtin 1994b). Following this new strategy, the Magadan Province authorities resolutely began dismantling the former system of Native economy and settlement by the closing and relocating of Native villages and the merging of small Yupik and Chukchi collective farms into large multivillage associations. This had been practiced before (chapter 9) but never on such a grand scale and with such vast infusions of resources. As a result, the overall number of Native collective farms in the Chukchi Area dropped by nearly half, from forty-six to twenty-six, between 1953 and 1965 (Selitrennik

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Table 10.1: Population of the Chukchi Peninsula: growth and urban-rural distribution, 1951–1979 Total Population Native Chukotkans Newcomers Urban Native Chukotkans Newcomers Rural Native Chukotkans Newcomers

1951

1960

1965

1970

1975

1979

8,265 4,566 3,699 3,989 442 3,547 4,276 4,124 152

10,209 4,303 5,906 5,974 519 5,455 4,235 3,784 451

12,547 4,652 7,895 7,361 564 6,797 5,186 4,088 1,098

13,612 4,722 8,890 8,239 428 7,811 5,373 4,294 1,079

15,292 4,691 10,601 8,968 394 8,574 6,323 4,296 2,027

14,727 5,036 9,691 8,587 627 7,960 6,140 4,409 1,731

Notes: Native Chukotkans include Yupik, Chukchi, and other indigenous peoples. Urban population includes residents of the towns of Provideniya, Ureliki (excluding military personnel), Plover, and Lavrentiya. Sources: For 1951: Dinamika razvitiia n.d.; for 1960–1975: Volfson 1979, 68–77; for 1979: Malye narodnosti 1979.

1965; see Table 9.1). On the Chukchi Peninsula proper, the number of Native villages contracted by 60 percent, from twenty-eight to thirteen (Materialy o sostoianii 1953, 1; Svedeniia o chislennosti 1946, 35). An average rural settlement now had 400–500 residents, sometimes more. In Native towns, the reform began with the creation of a new economic structure that included a great many elements that were new to the Yupik and Chukchi: first and foremost, commercial fur farming. The first silver fox fur farm on the Chukchi Peninsula was built in 1955; by 1962, nineteen Native collective farms in the Chukchi Area were engaged in fur farming (Dikov 1989, 352; Leont’iev 1973, 70). Under the same state-sponsored development programs, Native villages quickly became bustling construction sites. Next to the new fox farms, small electric power generation facilities, bakeries, post offices, hospitals or medical stations, public saunas, schools, and other facilities were built. The scope of change was staggering. In Sireniki in 1950, there were but a few plank houses, and the majority of the residents lived in skin-covered cabins. In 1959, less than ten years later, the community featured several new structures, including dozens of residential houses, a new village council building, a school, medical station, post office, village store with a storehouse, and a fox farm. In addition, the collective farm possessed a new blubber-melting plant, six whaleboats with outboard motors, a cutter, and a tractor (Godovoi bukhgalterskii otchet 1958; Sergeev 1958–1959). Another manifestation of the reform for the Yupik people was the transformation of their old system of residence as it existed during the contact-traditional era. The authorities had been quietly closing Yupik villages and camps for at least two decades since the 1930s and moving their residents to larger communities (chapter 9). Villages of the maritime Chukchi were also subject to closure and relocation.2 Many coastal communities, both Chukchi and Yupik, had to accept reindeer Chukchi families from the tundra camps under the state policy of “sedentarization” of nomadic herders (Gray 2005; Kerttula 2000, 26–27). Following the earlier closing of several traditional villages (such as Avan, Imaaqlliq, Nutapelmen, Siqlluk, Qiwaaq, and others), the Yupik land in Asia was reduced to five enclaves: Sireniki, Ungaziq (Chaplino), Nuvuqaq (Naukan), Uwellkal, and Plover.

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Each of them was home to a mixed multitribal community of some 300–400 people. Though predominately Yupik, each town also had a growing number of Chukchi, Russian, and mixed families (Table 10.2). In the 1950s, the Soviet administrators focused on the transformation of these last pockets of Yupik life.

Patterns of Relocation According to the Yupik accounts and records of the time, around 1953–1954, the district officials began to prepare residents of the two largest Yupik communities, Nuvuqaq/ Naukan (Yupik population of 300) and Ungaziq/Chaplino (Yupik population 250), for the changes to come. Visiting administrators staged numerous public meetings at which they outlined plans for large-scale modernization and pressed the inconvenience of both sites for new construction. The logic of the Russian administrators was often convincing. To satisfy the new plans, it was necessary to develop the economy, erect modern houses and enterprises, and better people’s lives. Unfortunately, the old villages suited these goals poorly. Nuvuqaq (then officially called Naukan) stood atop a steep cliff, where it would be hard to deliver equipment and move Table 10.2: Population by selected native communities, 1951–1979 Villages Sireniki* Native Chukotkans Newcomers Uelkal* Native Chukotkans Newcomers Lorino Native Chukotkans Newcomers Uelen Native Chukotkans Newcomers New Chaplino* Natives Newcomers Naukan* Native Chukotkans Newcomers Nunyamo* Native Chukotkans Newcomers

1951 201 198 3 n/a n/a n/a 156 152 4 333 293 40 225 209 16 293 278 15 134 133 1

1960 371 343 28 263 209 54 466 447 19 447 418 29 329 321 8 closed – – 408† 294 114

1965 505 368 137 357 199 158 773 565 208 570 483 87 402 342 60 closed – – 454† 290 164

1970 546 381 165 521 234 287 1,004 765 239 729 494 235 408 339 69 closed – – 355 275 80

1975 639 353 286 516 239 277 1,201 832 369 873 452 421 474 358 116 closed – – 288 231 57

1979 701 475 226 471 241 230 1,409 943 466 849 492 357 416 294 122 closed – – closed – –

* Communities where Yupik constituted a majority (plurality). † Includes residents of the nearby community of Pinakul, with its mixed population of Chukchi, Yupik, and the ­newcomers. Sources: For 1951: Dinamika razvitiia n.d., 1; for 1960–1975: Volfson 1979, 68–77; for 1979: Malye narodnosti 1979.

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construction materials for modern housing. Ungaziq (then known by its Russianized name, Chaplino) was located on a low-level spit and was constantly threatened by storms and high surf. In addition, it had little freshwater. The officials, reportedly, claimed that there was no point in modernizing either village—so everyone would have to move to a new site. The address given by a certain Skvortsov, the Russian deputy chairman of the Chukchi Regional Executive Council, at the Naukan village meeting in October 1957 presented a typical set of official arguments for the relocation: The majority of the people in your village still live in yarangas [skin-covered houses] that are cold and damp. And it is no accident that we raise the issue of new housing. But we still have to think about where and when to build. There are 49 houses on this cliff, and they need stoves. About 4.5 tons of concrete has to be brought up here by hand. This will be very hard for you to do without equipment. It is proper to raise the question of relocating the village, but we have to select a site where it would be easier to build. The old site where you are living now is a good spot for sea hunting. But you wouldn’t be losing it, you could still have a hunting base here. Some collective farms go 50–60 kilometers to hunt. . . . Of course people are accustomed to where they were born and raised, but we also have to think about the future development of the collective farm. To be sure, a place like where you’re living now is hard on your health, especially the kids (Ispolkom Naukanskogo 1958, 73–74). One cannot rule out that security considerations, never mentioned publicly, were a critical factor. Both Naukan and Chaplino (Ungaziq) were located at the sites closest to the SovietAmerican border in the Bering Strait. During the Cold War era, all communications with the Alaska Natives across the Bering Strait were severed (Krauss 1994, 369; chapter 9); border guards and the military closely monitored and increasingly restricted the movements of local residents in the border area. The standard tactic widely used by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s and 1940s was to remove all of the residential population from a border zone.3 This policy was first implemented in Chukotka on Big Diomede Island, following the closure of the Soviet-American border in the Bering Strait in 1948 (chapter 9). Elders recalled how the arrival of district officials and the meetings they summoned to discuss the prospects for relocation created an atmosphere of uncertainty and wild rumors: When we were still living in Naukan, [I remember] some expedition arrived, and we were told that there was a fault extending down from the mountains, and that this fault would reach our village. We have a creek there, the village council was on one side, and there was a ravine nearby. Well, the ravine collapsed and very many people died.4 After that there was a meeting and we were told we’d have to relocate (Maria Kovan [Qavan] 1981). I returned to Chaplino in 1954. At the time people were saying that the village was totally without water. We would go collect water from shallow pits on the surface outside the village that we had dug into the spit, and sometimes we would even get salt water. There was a lake there, one with freshwater, and in the winter we’d get ice from there, but for some reason no one brought water

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from it in the summer. Anyway, there was talk that there was a very small isthmus there, and that it was washing away, and at any moment the lake might join with the sea. Then there’d be practically no water at all. Someone brought this story from the district. Who, I don’t know (Aleksandra Sokolovskaya 1987). Under the influence of persuasion and arguments put forth by the visiting officials, the people first came to terms with the idea that it was imperative to move to a new site. At the village meetings, they nominated special committees to select new sites for future residence. These committees were made up primarily of the Native appointees—village council chairs, Communist Party members, Communist Youth League activists—people obligated by their career to implement the decisions of the authorities and even tasked with promoting the idea of the relocation among their fellow villagers. To step up the pressure, the district authorities threatened to cut financing to the villages, and they routinely delayed construction of new houses and the repair of old ones. Then they presented to the people elaborate architectural outlines of a future residence with renditions of its modern buildings and streets.5 Finally, when the residents consented to move, they were brought to a different site, often with housing construction already in full swing. At the time, no state agencies or legal procedures were available to Native communities to lodge complaints or to challenge the relocation. Under the Soviet communist ideology, the overpowerful state did everything “for the betterment of the people,” and the very idea of insubordination or appealing to the courts to redress the violated obligations would not have even occurred to anyone. Moreover, no Soviet court in the 1950s would have ever heard such a suit. In addition, the Yupik were not merely passive victims in the events that unfolded. Many of them had accepted the administration’s reasoning on the need to develop the economy and the way of living. The new generation raised during the collective farm era openly welcomed the idea of economic growth and improved living conditions. People would talk of sea-mammal hunting, but they also wanted to live in modern housing that was no worse than that of the Russians who had arrived. There were few advocates for the preservation of the old way of life. If there were such voices, they left no records in the minutes of the village councils and public meetings from the era. Wouldn’t you know it, everyone who had spoken at the meetings died. In Ungaziq, I don’t know whose idea it was, but it became clear that we were supposed to relocate. Probably this was decided somewhere up north [i.e., in Lavrentiya, the district center at that time], probably on account of the surf. The waves were really high. I don’t know, maybe it was for some other reason. Maybe someone up there knows (Kura 1987). By the 1950s, Yupik communities no longer had any authoritative leaders other than the new generation of collective farm and communist activists. To a certain extent, the closing of the traditional settlements was carried out at the hands of the Yupik village leaders of the time—Utoyuq, Uyghaq, and Umka in Naukan, Nanughtaaq and others in Ungaziq— whose names figured repeatedly in the narratives of relocation. They all took an active part in the meetings advocating for the move. Their fate, incidentally, was no less tragic than that of their fellow villagers. In Kura’s words, “wouldn’t you know it, everyone who had spoken at the meetings died.”

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Farewell to Naukan The relocation of the community of Naukan at Cape Dezhnev in 1958 (Leont’iev 1973, 31–32; Menovshchikov 1988; Pisigin 2001; Teplilek et al. 2008) affected a distinctive group, the Nuvuqaghmiit, with a language and distinctive cultural tradition of its own. Anthropologist Boris Chichlo (1981) rightly called the closing of Naukan “the death of a nation” (la fin d’une ethnie). In the nostalgic reminiscences of its former residents, Naukan/ Nuvuqaq always figured as an isolated aerie in the mountains populated by brave people, who were proud of their customs and language (Leonova 1997; 2008; Nenliumkina 1975; Pisigin 2001; Teplilek et al. 2008). Yet by the 1940s, it was a regular Siberian Native community, with the standard institutions of Soviet rural administration. Its residents were loyal members of the local collective farm as depicted in people’s memoirs and visitors’ accounts (Smoliak 1957). When the district authorities introduced the idea of relocation, they first appealed to the scenario of fusing the Naukan community with the neighboring reindeer Chukchi camps into one village, a common practice of the time (Kerttula 1997; 2000). The Naukan Yupik leaders were quick to recognize the advantages of a stronger multisector economy in which the larger Yupik group would play the chief role. Nowhere in the minutes of the Naukan village council meetings of 1955–1957 that we checked did we find evidence of any reservation on this account. One of the Naukan Yupik leaders, Umka, stated the following at a community meeting in 1957: The future plans for the collective farm were drawn up unsatisfactorily, and nothing is being built. Since 1928 our collective farm has been developing [too] slowly. I think that if we stick with the one sector of activity [marine-mammal hunting], the collective farm will not move forward. Therefore, I think that we need to obtain reindeer. Even at the cost of marine-mammal hides, especially walrus. Basically we’re using them to cover the yarangas, but we should be selling them instead, that is, turning them into money (Ispolkom Naukanskogo 1958, 73). Many villagers could have accepted the prospects of a mixed maritime–reindeer herding community as a continuation of traditional partnership between the Yupik coastal people and the Chukchi herders, with some additional material blessings and promised modern housing. The image of a brand-new residential site of modern houses removed but a few kilometers from the native cliffs was indeed very attractive. Although the first resettlement proposals by the authorities in the early 1950s were soundly rejected by the villagers, in 1954 the Naukan all-town meeting approved a prospective move to the nearby village of Dezhnevo (Kengisqun, also known as Dezhnev in the 1920s–1930s), some 15 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of Naukan (Ispolkom Naukanskogo 1958). This site once housed the Mikhailovsky Station of the Northeast Siberian Company and one of the first Soviet border posts, where Knud Rasmussen, the Danish-Greenlandic explorer, had been detained in 1924 (chapter 1; Rasmussen 1927, 366–370). Its former Chukchi residents (seventy people in 1950) had abandoned their area and, under similar pressure from the authorities, moved to the neighboring community of Uelen.

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The villagers’ decision to part with Naukan was not arrived at easily. As far as the Yupik were concerned, Dezhnevo (Kengisqun) was a “Chukchi land.” It was never stated openly; instead, people conveyed their reservations by other means: At first, they [the authorities] wanted to move Naukan to Kengisqun. But this didn’t work out, because they [the residents of Naukan] refused. They said it’s muddy there. At a meeting everyone spoke, standing up and saying that they didn’t want to go there. It’s muddy there, they said (Nina Akuken 1987). Yet there was no way out. Following people’s consent to move, no new houses were built in Naukan between 1955 and 1957. Most likely, by 1957 the provincial administrators had been already leaning toward a different plan. The original pledge to build a new residential site at Dezhnevo was quietly abandoned and in summer 1958, the residents of Naukan were moved some 60 kilometers (37 miles) away, to the Chukchi community of Nunyamo, at the northern entrance to Lavrentiya Bay. An iconic narrative of the time (Menovshchikov 1988) presented the reasons people were moved to another place. When the steamer with the construction materials for the new housing in Dezhnevo arrived in summer 1958, there was a great storm. The ship could not unload its cargo at the open beach off Dezhnevo and, instead, entered the safe Lavrentiya Bay, where the freight was brought to shore at Nunyamo. No laborers or equipment were then available with which to move it to Dezhnevo, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) to the north, and the new residence had to be built literally near the piles of unloaded boards and lumber. It was no accident that the selected site at Nunyamo, an age-old Chukchi village visited by James Cook in 1778, was located across the bay from the district hub of Lavrentiya. Here the settlers from Naukan would be under the watchful eyes of the district authorities and at their easy reach. According to the recollections of former residents of Naukan, their relocation to Nunyamo was headlong and ill prepared, as if the authorities raced to complete it before the people could come to their senses. The move in the summer of 1958 took place in barely two months.6 Shortly after, on November 20, 1958, the Chukchi District Executive Committee formally dissolved (“liquidated”) the Naukan village council, and a month later the Chukchi Area government confirmed the decision by a special decree.7 It also eliminated the Naukan collective farm and appended its territory to the nearby Uelen collective farm. An earlier pledge to preserve Naukan as a seasonal hunting camp was not followed up on and the surrounding area was officially declared “uninhabited.” Due to the tightening of regulations on movement in the border zone, the former village site and nearby cliffs became off-limits and were transformed into a no-man’s land. The former residents of Naukan recall these days with chagrin: The relocation was handled by the village council, by the board. I don’t even remember who our leader was at the time. It’s completely slipped my mind. Many were sent off by barge and by cutter. And we left on July 12, by whaleboat. We went on a Nunyamo whaleboat. Chenkau was the captain. Both their whaleboats and those from Naukan followed after us. . . . I remember crying the entire way, when I started weeping on the shore, I didn’t look at anyone, only back,

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I looked back, and that was all. I didn’t need anyone, I didn’t talk to anyone (Nina Akuken 1987). Naukan was literally deserted: In Naukan we lived in a lumber house, not in a yaranga [skin-covered house]. And the houses, everything was left exactly as it had been. A lot of stuff was still there, barrels, all kinds of skillets, kerosene stove—we left absolutely everything. . . . Everyone said goodbye to Naukan in one’s own way, before we left. There were still things going on when we left . . . [that] I don’t know! Everything was in such a tizzy, all the packing. People didn’t go to the graves to bid farewell, people fed their ancestors at home. And that was it (Nina Akuken 1987). Virtually nothing in Nunyamo was ready for the new arrivals and the relocation itself fell far short of the promise of a bright new residence. The Naukan Yupik (293 people in 1950) had hardly any former ties with the Nunyamo Chukchi (134 in 1950). Suddenly they were forced to live as one community of two different languages and traditions (Leont’iev 1973, 32). The Yupik accounts portray their ordeal: We disembarked in Nunyamo from the whaleboat onto the shore, and there was nowhere for us to go. Then a house was vacated for us, and we moved in there together, the occupants had moved into another house. We had arrived to find unfinished houses. Nothing was plastered, and there was no stove. And we were put together, you know, in such huge families! . . . That’s how we lived: our family, Gullguwyi’s family, and Narngengaawen and her children; Imeqan’s family; both Ayategen and Inghhelen; and Gotghergen, who was ill, was put in with us too. What did we do the first night we arrived? Absolutely nothing. First they figured out where we would work. I started working in the collective farm too. Construction was under way there. We carried boards in crews, mixed clay, and made plaster, we did everything. We also carried water. And later they took me on as the cook at the kindergarten (Nina Akuken 1987). The unification was evidently no less traumatic for the residents of Nunyamo. People had to accommodate the settlers and divide their scant resources among the twice-larger population. Again, Menovshchikov (1988) recalled: The homes of the native residents of Nunyamo were located on a small, dry hill. There was no room for the people from Naukan on the hill, so their houses were placed in a swampy lowland between the old village and the mountain glacier, from which rivulets of meltwater would flow in the summer months. To go between the houses and to get to work one had to walk on bridges made of planks and rocks. The material and living conditions became intolerable and the dissatisfaction the people from Naukan felt was entirely justified. The former residents of Naukan quickly realized that they had been deceived. Some people, including the past leaders of the disbanded village council, opted to move with their relatives to the district capital of Lavrentiya. The former chair of the Naukan council, Utoyuq,

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an older man, was one of the last to remain in Naukan, and later moved to Uelen. This started the dispersion of the former Nuvuqaghmiit, which continued for two generations. The response of the majority was to weather for a few years in Nunyamo and to wait for a miracle to take place. In the years following the relocation, that miracle rescue option was the Pinakul Marine Hunting Station, a state-supported facility a few kilometers off Nunyamo, with its mixed population of some 140 Russian, Chukchi, and Yupik (chapter 9). To many of those exiled from Naukan, this land that belonged to no one seemed to be their best chance to gather again and even to rebuild their community anew. For most of the displaced residents of Naukan it was a tall order. To reassemble in Pinakul, they needed permission from the authorities and their financial assistance. All the same, a young Naukan schoolteacher, Tasyan Tein (Teyen), risked an appeal to the chairman of the Magadan Province Executive Committee (the province governor), to which the Chukotka Autonomous Region was then subjected. He penned a letter with a request to permit the Naukan people to leave Nunyamo and to assist them in gathering in Pinakul (see Menovshchikov 1988). Several former residents of Naukan then living in Pinakul cosigned Tein’s appeal, which was submitted in 1967. For the architects of the relocation, to approve Tein’s petition and to permit the Naukan people to gather in Pinakul would have meant an admission of their mistake and of the very real negative consequences of their past policies. This was unacceptable. Instead, an investigating commission was sent to Pinakul; it accused Tein and his cosignatories of “bourgeois nationalism” (Menovshchikov 1988). At a height of desperation, two Naukan elders in Pinakul committed suicide. Tein himself was not charged, but he was exiled for a few years to serve as a schoolteacher on the remote Wrangell Island. The village in Pinakul was swiftly closed in 1969, and in 1977 Nunyamo was closed as well (Chichlo 1981, 38). The people of Naukan were set to search for yet another new residence—the second and, for many, the third time in less than twenty years. Any efforts to return to Naukan were put aside for a long time. The forsaken village site eventually became an exotic destination for passing sailors and scientific teams, and it gradually turned into an archaeological site (Figs. 10.1, 10.2). We first visited it in summer 1971. A polar station that supported summer navigation in the Bering Strait provided a glimmer of life. The Russian workers at the station had looted all sorts of useful utensils from the abandoned Native houses, which were rapidly deteriorating. During our last visit to Naukan in 1981, there was little to suggest that people had recently lived there. The heaps of garbage had disappeared, and the stone foundations of the abandoned old dwellings were laid bare. The sun-bleached poles of whale jaw on the edge of the ravine lent a prehistoric feeling to the entire landscape. The polar station was by this time abandoned as well, and its building was falling to ruin. In the late 1970s, Tein, now a professional archaeologist, undertook excavations of the old dwellings in search of cultural artifacts of the distant times (Tein 1977). In the decades since 1958, most of the relocated Nuvuqaghmiit never had the chance to visit their old site, except for a few families who resided in the nearby Chukchi community of Uelen. They could reach Naukan over land by hiking for six hours across the steep mountains and ravines. In the 1980s, one of them, Lyudmila Tuluqaq, a young girl at the time of the relocation, came to be a “master of Naukan” of sorts. She frequented the old

Fig. 10.1: Ruins of abandoned family houses in Naukan. (Photo by Sergei Bogoslovsky, summer 1981)

Fig. 10.2: View of Naukan, summer 1981. (Photo by Sergei Bogoslovsky, courtesy Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya)

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site during the summertime, maintained order in the sole standing cabin, and tended to the old graves. Her actions were then the sole symbol of the continuing Yupik presence in their abandoned homeland.

Our Beloved Ungaziq In the same year that Naukan was closed and relocated, 1958, a similar fate befell the second-largest Yupik community, Ungaziq at Cape Chaplin, commonly known by that time by its Russian name, Chaplino. Surprisingly, many of the elements in this relocation scenario repeated the events in Naukan: rumors of a natural catastrophe threatening the village, pressure from the authorities, the selection of a new village site, and the subsequent relocation to a different place. They came from the district with all their talk, who, I don’t remember. Anyway, there was a meeting, they got together, and went and picked out a spot. And all the residents decided that it would be best to build down from hills, on the northern side [in Teflleq]. Because the hunting was good on the northern side there. Well that’s what they decided. The final decision was in favor of the northern side. The district authorities had proposed Tkachen at the time. They said it’s a good bay, it was calm and there was easy access to it. But they [the Eskimo] decided, here’s how they put it, that that bay was a dead bay. There were no sea animals there. I was present at that meeting. And I remember that phrase, dead bay. I left in 1955, and they decided to relocate to the northern side (Aleksandra Sokolovskaya 1987). As in Naukan, the decision to leave the ancestral homeland was painful. Initially, people approved the decision to have their new community built at the old village at Teflleq, some 10–12 kilometers (6–7 miles) away. This was a reasonable compromise. It was a well-known place to which the residents of Ungaziq used to move in the lean years, the last time having been in the 1910s and 1920s (chapter 4). Settling there would have ensured the use of the familiar territory off Cape Chaplin. When the relocation became inevitable, the first two families moved from Ungaziq and overwintered in Teflleq in 1957–1958. The beginning of housing construction in summer 1958 at a different site in Tkachen Bay that people had rejected a few years earlier caused an outburst of dissatisfaction, even resistance. At first people didn’t consent to move here to Tkachen because of the long distance required to hunt. Yagwa and Anuuqen [elder Ungaziq crew captains] got together and refused to move here. Because it was so far to hunt. But in the end they did agree, and the site was chosen. Because even though they refused, nothing could be done about it. Because of the surf in Ungaziq, they said, heavy surf. It would at some point suddenly flood the village. They were afraid (Kavekhak 1987). The general passivity of mind, social apathy, and common bonds eventually won the upper hand. This element of passivity was apparent in elders’ recollections of the events of 1958:

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It was unlikely that anyone would reject the decision. Maybe others didn’t want to either. It was probably decided at the meetings. But we just heard that it had been decided. In the end, everyone moved (Kura 1987). Eventually, people tended to accept the relocation to the “dead” Tkachen Bay that was so poorly suited for marine hunting. The residents of Ungaziq were already drawn into the orbit of the nearby district town of Provideniya, with its port, modern services, and the administrative offices. Also, in contrast to the move from Naukan, the people from Ungaziq moved all together within their historical home territory, and their relocation was far better organized: Our move took two years: the first people moved in 1958, and we went in 1959. Living space was assigned at the collective farm by an application process. People would move as soon as their building was completed. Each family knew where it was going in advance. People would always move on Saturdays and Sundays, by whaleboat. Their belongings went by car (Kura 1987). Parting with the old site and one’s home was a painful experience: In the morning I was walking along the shore, I had been cooking. They ran up and told me, after lunch, in the late afternoon, a whaleboat would come for us. And move us, while the weather was still good. And that was all there was to it: we quickly got ready and went down to the shore. We even left the laundry, our clothing, and the dogs. We left our little dog. We even left the soup standing there. When we left it was already dark, and there was a dense fog. A whole whaleboat full, with small children. . . . We sat on our belongings, but there was other people’s stuff too, from people who had already gone (Kavekhak 1987). After ten hours of travel, a new village under construction opened before their eyes: The school was already finished, and the store was ready. And the children even set out for school. New houses were being built. They weren’t done yet. They gave us ours for November 7,8 students from the technical high school had worked on our house. We moved in to our new place just in time for the holiday, the plastering wasn’t even done. We quickly hung wallpaper and celebrated. The electricity was on already (Kavekhak 1987). The people of Ungaziq were indeed fortunate, as they moved their community, including the village council and collective farm, mostly intact. At the new location, those in charge saw to providing housing and work for the settlers in an orderly fashion. The village collective farm and its Russian chairman, Ilyin, were the key social force involved in moving the people and getting them settled. The residents of Ungaziq also received more assistance from the state compared to the Naukan exiles, who were dumped in Nunyamo in groups of fifteen to twenty into the homes of the local Chukchi. At the new site in Tkachen Bay that in 1960 received the official name “New Chaplino,” contracted Russian crews carried out housing construction according to the architectural grid of lined streets of duplex family residences (Figs. 10.3, 10.4).

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Although the new residence in Tkachen Bay in no way met people’s expectations of a new life or of convenient sea hunting, it was their site to live in. Surprisingly, no traditional Yupik institutions, such as clans, boat crews, or kin groups, figured in elders’ recollections of the relocation. Even the names of the boat captains who transported people from Ungaziq to Tkachen Bay go unmentioned. The old social basis of Ungaziq built upon the former clan sites and neighborhoods was never restored. To some, the new residence probably did fit the image of the bright future, as seen from the writings of one of the Yupik activists of the time, under the emblematic title “Our Beloved Ungaziq” (Nash rodnoi Ungazik): Now our village has a new name, New Chaplino. And it is indeed new, for nothing of the old is left. All the Eskimos live in pretty, comfortable frame houses. The village looks smart. A big school has been built. Now pupils live in the boarding school, supported completely by the state. Preschoolers attend nurseries and kindergartens that are paid for by the government. The village has a good store and a post office. Soon there will be a hospital. The collective farm has built a ranch, and is raising blue fox. The plan targets are already being met. A spacious club has been built, and a large, mechanized butchering facility [for marine mammals] has been built (Aivangu 1985 [1961], 56). Contrary to Aivangu’s adulatory statement, Tkachen Bay proved to be a “dead site” for the Yupik. The bustling construction activities quickly turned former sea hunters into unskilled laborers: In Ungaziq we had six of our own [boat] crews: those of Uutgga, Ayaanga, Pikesaq, Utataawen, Silleqa, and Yatelen, all older, experienced crew captains. When the people of Qiwaaq were relocated in 1952, there were ten crews altogether. And when we were moved to Tkachen, only five were left: Ayaanga, Utataawen, Anuuqen, Yatelen, and Ulgugyi. Nothing was right, somehow. I didn’t hunt anymore, I was installing stoves. And the others, too, were largely in construction. After 1958, Ayaanga and Utataawen didn’t hunt any longer. Their crews ended [were disbanded], and everyone was put into construction. I resumed hunting only in 1965. At that time there were only two crews for all of [New] Chaplino: Naptaq’s and mine (Vladimir Tagitutkak 1981, in Krupnik 2000, 218). Tightened border regulations curtailed the hunters’ opportunities to use their former site and its familiar hunting grounds, let alone to travel freely to Cape Chaplin. It was no longer easy—as Ayaanga and Utataawen likely predicted—to set out each day for a hunt some 50–60 kilometers (31–37 miles) away. There was hardly any hunting in the “dead” Tkachen Bay and along the adjacent seacoast. The new areas for the crews from New Chaplino to exploit were located along the inlets and islands of Senyavin Strait, at the northern periphery of the old tribal land of the Ungazighmiit. It was that shift that, apparently, contributed to the undoing of the skilled Ungaziq boat captains, who, in New Chaplino, quickly turned into retirees. It was also no accident that the two remaining boat captains of the 1960s cited in Tagitutkak’s story were the former hunters from Siqlluk. When we first visited both Nunyamo and New Chaplino in summer 1971, a feeling of depression and homesickness was common to both. At the site of the deserted village at

Fig. 10.3: Street in the village of New Chaplino, summer 1976. (Photo by Yurii Rodnyi)

Fig. 10.4: Rows of family houses from the 1950s and 1960s built in New Chaplino. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, August 1977)

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Cape Chaplin, a polar station, a border post, and a Russian military unit remained. The Russians vandalized the remains of abandoned Native houses and the village rapidly fell into disrepair. During our later visits to Ungaziq, the place left a dreadful impression. The house ruins became garbage heaps, and rusty oil drums and abandoned equipment were strewn everywhere. Tractor tracks scarred the ground. The border guards had dug trenches cutting across the old village in case of the “American invasion.” The old cemetery was a wreck. For decades, the border guards prohibited people from visiting their old site. The few who managed the trip returned with stories of desolation. Naturally, elders were sick and depressed over the state of their former homeland: You could tell, people were already homesick. Of course, I lived there [in Ungaziq], we left our home, although there was heavy surf there. We were still getting used to the location in Tkachen, but once people got their new houses, there was nothing for it. I wasn’t going to stay on by myself, I was used to living with everyone else. I stopped going, I haven’t set foot in Ungaziq since 1959. Someone brought up the idea of going there this summer, but I declined (Kavekhak 1987). Today, fifty-five years after the relocation, only a handful of people retain personal memories of the old life in Ungaziq, cast in a distinctly nostalgic tone (Sal’ika 2008). The middle-aged and the younger generations that grew up in Tkachen Bay consider it their home. What the residents of New Chaplino, young and old, do share in common is the memory of the trauma they experienced, a decision once taken by the community that left no room for individual choice.

The Plover Tragedy On May 25, 1957, an avalanche of snow thundered down from the mountains onto the residential area and marine-mammal factory at Plover Bay. It claimed the lives of seven Russian border guards and eight Native residents, of whom five were small children. The authorities quickly seized on the tragedy as the pretext to close the town and to transfer its residents and the Plover marine-mammal factory to the nearby district hub of Provideniya. The Plover avalanche put an end to the existence of the Avatmiit as a distinct tribal and residential community. Having endured the closing of Avan in 1941 and the eviction from Ureliki by the Russian Army in 1948 (chapter 9), the Avatmiit caught hold in Plover Bay, their last refuge within the old tribal territory. The avalanche and subsequent relocation triggered the disintegration of the third-largest Yupik community that had begun to form around Provideniya Bay. Unlike in Naukan and Chaplino, the closing of Plover was implemented without any consultations with its residents, even symbolically (Krupnik 2000, 83, 85). The authorities simply shut down the marine-mammal station and the factory in operation since the 1930s and moved it to a new site in Provideniya, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) inside the Provideniya Bay fjord. When the Plover marine station closed down, its employees, Yupik, Chukchi, and Russians, were given new jobs in Provideniya. Here they also received new living quarters, again, by administrative assignment. Even before this happened came the closings of the

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Plover elementary school, local store, and medical station. The town was simply commanded out of existence, and it died without any resistance. In winter 1959, 195 people still resided in Plover, the majority of them Yupik. By 1961, only two Yupik families stayed, guarding the abandoned warehouses and equipment. Soon they too were gone (Krupnik 2000, 84–85). In Provideniya, the former residents of Plover shared the fate of other Native families who had settled there in the preceding decades. In the 1960s, Provideniya experienced a construction boom; its population made up of Russians and other newcomers had reached 6,000, including the nearby military hub in Ureliki. Life in Provideniya was oriented toward the deep-sea port, nearby military installations, and district municipal services, all dominated by the newcomers. The former residents of Plover became a barely noticeable minority among the rapidly expanding town population. Most of them did not fit into this world, and they were simply put adrift. The closing of the marine processing facility at Plover coincided with the crowding out of Native marine hunting by the state-operated fisheries introduced by the “Great Reform.” The small cutters and schooners manned by Native crews from the Plover and Pinakul stations were no match for the larger state vessels that stayed for a few summer months, arriving from the southern ports of the Russian Pacific region. These state-owned ships quickly took the lion’s share of the marine catch from local hunters in cutters and whaleboats.9 Often the state vessels resold to the Native collective farms the very animals they had hunted in front of the Native villages. The ships also transported the catch to their shore bases along the Russian Pacific coast in Kamchatka, Sakhalin Island, and the city of Vladivostok. There, walrus and seal meat was processed into frozen feed for the fox farms. Walrus ivory was sold to the staterun souvenir workshops. Seal hides went to the fur factories, and walrus skins to leather and footwear enterprises to produce soles for boots for the Russian Army. Yet the new boom of commercial hunting off the Chukchi Peninsula was short lived. By the mid-1960s, seal and walrus stocks crashed, due to overhunting. Village crews’ catches also fell to a trickle.10 The flotillas of state catcher-boats moved back to the southern waters, leaving Native collective farms with a decimated resource base. The number of Native crews and employed hunters in all Chukotka communities plummeted and the small shore hunting factories, such as the Plover and Pinakul stations, came to a standstill. The newly constructed facility for the relocated Plover Bay factory in Provideniya functioned for merely a few years. It was closed in the late 1960s, a decade after the Plover avalanche, and its Yupik employees were out of work again. Most families with able-bodied men preferred to move to the nearby Yupik communities of Sireniki and New Chaplino. Their high professional qualifications helped them adapt smoothly. The men received new employment in servicing small village power plants and generators, telephone stations, boilers, and blubber-melting equipment. Many joined local hunting crews, again, as mechanics and motor operators. The women took qualified positions at village sewing workshops, fox farms, and boarding schools. Among those who remained in Provideniya, the elderly, unemployed, and single families now predominated. The town authorities, concerned by the high rate of alcoholism and social disorders among this group, began to shift the troublemakers to the nearby rural communities. By 1975, the Native population of Provideniya shrank from 300–400

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to 150–200, that is, from 7 percent to 3 percent of the town residents (Volfson 1979). The local Yupik families during our survey in 1975 were made up primarily of retirees, teachers, and low-level personnel at the town’s boarding school, kindergarten, hospital, and municipal services. These people could not even visit their old site in Plover because there was no overland route to the bay. The regulations imposed by the Russian border guards banned all private motorboats and traveling in the Provideniya Bay area. The abandoned town at Plover Bay long remained a phantom place. When we visited it in 1981, the ruins of deserted houses and repair shops, and the hulls of cutters on the beach, were still visible. History had run a full circle at this site that for a hundred-odd years served as a destination for early explorers, Yankee whalers, Russian patrol boats, and science expeditions (chapter 2). A hundred-some years after the HMS Plover visit in 1848, Plover Bay, again, was laid uninhabited. Its former Yupik residents, now called the “Plover Eskimos,” dispersed and ceased to exist as a community. Plover Bay itself and the much larger fjord of Provideniya Bay and the adjoining ocean shore fell out of Yupik use and of the “Yupik land.”

The Aftermath The outcomes of the events that befell the Yupik in the late 1950s were staggering. In three years, about 800 people, three-fourths of the small nation, were forced to leave their home sites and moved to other communities (Map 10.1). They found themselves as “displaced people” in their native land, many for two generations running (Fig. 10.5, 10.6). Some families had to change their place of residence three to four times over a few decades. This was a trying experience. The age-old villages were closed, people’s homes were hastily abandoned, and family property was left behind. Over the next decades, people subjected to relocations, their children, and even grandchildren had to cope with the memories of their life once shattered and threats of new relocations looming on the horizon. Of course, the Yupik in Chukotka were not the only indigenous Arctic people displaced by the state during that time.11 Other Arctic powers—the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway—had been also closing indigenous villages and camps and moving their residents via various relocation programs. Nor was the story of the Yupik relocation somewhat exceptional in Russia’s recent history. They proceeded with no reported violence and under benign promises of economic modernization, better housing, and state-run social services for indigenous people. In the 1930s and 1940s, millions of Soviet citizens had been moved by various state agencies as deportees, political convicts, and forced laborers. Many large ethnic groups, like the Chechens, Volga Germans, Kalmyks, and others, were uprooted from their home areas and exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, often with staggering human losses (Bugai 1989). The official Russian sources never disclosed the full story of the Yupik relocations.12 The closing of the Yupik communities and of dozens of other indigenous settlements across the Russian North was no secret to the locals, but the topic was quickly sealed as “classified” information. No accounts of the relocations and their social outcomes could reach the public, besides simple references to the fact that the people had moved from their home sites (Gurvich 1973; Gurvich and Fainberg 1965; Krupnik and Chlenov 1979, 27; Leont’iev 1973, 32; Menovshchikov 1959, 124).13 At the same time, popular accounts

iP

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Tasiq

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Little Diomede I.

Existing communities Closed villages Modern towns and district hubs Population moves and migrations

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Imaaqlliq (cl. 1948)

Big Diomede I.

Naukan (cl. 1958)

Uelen

Nunyamo (cl. 1977)

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Qiwaaq (cl. 1952)

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New Chaplino (est. 1958)

Plover (cl. 1959) Avan (cl. 1942)

Sireniki

R.

M ap 10.1: Yupik relocations on the Chukchi Peninsula, 1940–1977

GULF OF ANADYR

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Fig. 10.5: A group of Yupik residents of New Chaplino, each with a long personal story of relocations. Left to right: Qiiwutkaq (1912–1998, born in Avan, moved to Ureliki to Plover to Provideniya to New Chaplino around 1970), Vasilii Sivugtekaq (1936–1985, born in Avan, moved to Ureliki to Plover to Provideniya to New Chaplino around 1970); Rentenga (1925–1996, born in Qiwaaq, moved to Ungaziq to New Chaplino in 1958); Qura (1915–1990, born in Ungaziq, moved to New Chaplino in 1959); Numengaawen (1915–1984, born in Siqlluk, moved to Ungaziq to New Chaplino in 1959). (Photo by Levon Abrahamian, September 1979)

of the Caribou Inuit relocation in Canada (Mowat 1963a; 1963b) and that of the Thule Inuit in Greenland (Malaurie 1973) were translated into Russian and printed in thousands of copies. Western anthropologists became aware of the Soviet Yupik relocations several years later (Hughes 1965; 1984b; Krauss 1973; 1974b), though no firsthand testimonies were available for decades. The lack of proper documentation has long been lamented (Schweitzer 1997, 402). When we worked among the Russian Yupik in the 1970s, stories of the relocations were very much alive and painful. All of the people we interviewed have since passed away. There are, perhaps, a few dozen survivors with a personal memory of the events; all of them should be over sixty years of age. Their numbers and the overall body of memories about Yupik life prior to relocations are shrinking rapidly. Nonetheless, emotional ties to the former homelands remain strong (Leonova 1997; 2008; Pisigin 2001; Sal’ika 2008; Teplilek et al. 2008). Russian government officials never acknowledged the damage done to the Yupik or to other Siberian indigenous nations by state relocation programs. They offered no apologies and no restitutions to compensate the people for the loss of land and property or for the emotional traumas inflicted. Unlike other tragedies that befell the former Soviet citizens in the 1930s and 1940s—like the enforced collectivization, engineered famines, and massive purges that sent millions to the labor camps and subjected entire nations to forced deportation—Siberian indigenous relocations have not been topics of media coverage or museum exhibits. Nor did the survivors’ activism catch up until recently (cf. Leonova

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Fig. 10.6: Petr Napaun/Napagun (1912–1983). The last child born in Egheghaq, he grew up in Avan, lived on Wrangell Island, and served as captain of a small cutter in Pinakul m ­ arine-mammal station in the 1950s, before relocating to Provideniya and later to Sireniki. (Photo by Igor Krupnik, 1977, Sireniki)

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1997; 2008; Sal’ika 2008; Teplilek et al. 2008). There has been no Russian equivalent to the Canadian acknowledgment of the Tammarniit (“Mistakes”; Tester and Kulchyski 1994), no court hearings to award compensation (Anonymous 1999), and no official government apologies, as in Canada and Denmark to the Inuit families moved by their nation states at the same time.14 Since the forced relocations of the 1950s were not publically renounced, no mechanism was put in place to prevent it from happening again. Upon our every visit to Chukotka between 1971 and 1990, we learned of yet another government plan to close another Native community and to move its residents elsewhere (Chlenov 1980; Chlenov and Krupnik 1987; Kostrovitskii 1989). Fortunately, people were spared further moves after the closing of Nunyamo in 1977, the last Native relocation of the era (Chichlo 1981; Holzlehner 2008; 2011). Native communities in Chukotka survived even the worst decade of the 1990s, when several Russian mining towns and military outposts, including the 2,000-strong military hub in Ureliki, were abandoned and their residents ordered to leave.15

Conclusion The relocations of the 1950s, products of the Great Reform, changed the lives of the Yupik people irrevocably. They literally marked the end of the Yupik system of residence and community social network. One of the key consequences of the relocations was the physical and psychological breaking of the “Eskimo land” in Asia. The former idealized image of a chain of Yupik tribal, and, later, collective farm territories, had passed into the past. For the Yupik, this was a profound trauma. Their worldview always included the existence of neighbors, with whom they had partnerships, marriage ties, and frequent visits, and it supported their belonging to a broader body they viewed as Yupiget, “the real people.” It took more than thirty years for the Russian Yupik to begin restoring ties among long-parted communities and with their fellow kinsmen on St. Lawrence Island on the wave of the political activism of the 1980s and 1990s. The sheer scope of the relocations and their very target left many people bewildered. One could perhaps accept the logic of the governmental closing of small distant outposts and bringing nomadic families to the settled life by offering new housing and employment in large modernized settlements. The communities of Naukan, Ungaziq, and Plover closed in 1958–1959 had been the magnet for such policies for decades (chapter 9). They had the most viable economies and the most advanced village services in the region. Their members historically contributed the core of Native cadres and the most ardent supporters of modernization. Yet it was these most modernized Yupik communities that became the target of the Great Reform. The psychological shock of the relocations, of bidding farewell to one’s homeland, and the shutting down of old villages curtailed people’s ability to resist further governmental actions. These were soon to follow. After 1958, all Native children were ordered to be placed in state-run boarding schools and daycare centers, according to the new education policies (Fig. 10.7). Outsiders became bosses at every level of local governance. Native subsistence whaling in Chukotka was banned in the late 1960s (Ivashin and Mineev 1981; Krupnik 1987a; Krupnik et al. 1983), and Yupik language programs were curtailed at local

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schools after 1970 (Vakhtin 2005). To an even greater degree, the once popular values of the new “Soviet life” (chapter 9) were compromised. With them collapsed the faith in the village council as a new form of Native self-governance and in public activism as a socially meaningful conduct. Members of the Soviet Yupik elite, the village council and collective farm leaders, and low-level communist functionaries failed to shield their communities from government deception. Apathy and withdrawal were now the norm of the day. Not incidentally, the relocations of the 1950s marked the end of the contact-­traditional Yupik society and its institutions, as described in this book. No semblance of clan solidarity, or of clan and kin residential neighborhoods, emerged in New Chaplino or among the former Nuvuqaghmiit in Pinakul and Nunyamo following the relocation. The Yupik families that moved to other communities received state-built housing without any regard to their former origins and ties. The new places of residence did not have traditional “masters of the land” (as in Pinakul, New Chaplino, or Lavrentiya) or those statuses now belonged to the local families, as in Nunyamo and Uelen, where the Nuvuqaghmiit were to reside. Other elements of the former Yupik social structure, such as clan- or neighborhood-­ affiliated burial sites or kin-based meat caches and storage areas, did not take off at new residential sites. The Yupik did not lose their cultural identity, language, family ties, food preferences, and everyday habits in the aftermath of the relocation. Nor did they become “Russian,” even if that was the authorities’ dream. Family solidarity, food and resource sharing, and the memory of the former group identity endured, even among the second and third generation of people uprooted from their home place. An impressive body of traditional

Fig. 10.7: Yupik daycare center in New Chaplino, ca. 1975. (Unknown photographer; Igor Krupnik’s personal archive)

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ecological knowledge and memories related to the traditional lifeway remained strong in the 1970s and 1980s (Bogoslovskaya et al. 2007; Bogoslovskaya and Krupnik 2008; Krupnik 2000; Krupnik and Vakhtin 1997). Yet recollections on the functioning of the “old society” were fading. In Sireniki and among the Avatmiit and the Qiwaaghmiit in New Chaplino and Provideniya, the memory of their old clan system all but disappeared, except among a few elderly experts. It was completely lost among the Yupik living on Wrangell Island, whom we met during our fieldwork; they had hardly any understanding of the old Yupik tribes or clans. The knowledge of the old clan system survived in a muchblurred form in Uwellkal and most strongly among the many middle-aged and elderly people in New Chaplino and the former residents of Naukan. Yet the pool of experts had been shrinking rapidly. The memory of an individual clan or tribal affiliation, even when retained, had little integrative role. People could no longer observe patrilineality, the previously dominant social norm, due to the growing number of offspring of mixed marriages with the newcomers and the Chukchi. These people could trace their Yupik clan affiliation through their mothers’ side only, as did the children of single Yupik mothers. Essentially, this changed the very meaning of the Yupik clan as a self-sustainable social unit. The gradual replacement of patrilineality by acknowledged matrilineality of many of the Russian Yupik sealed the transition of the clan system to a purely symbolic social element, fading everywhere but among the elderly. The Yupik lineage underwent another transition. The lineages themselves came more and more to follow matrilineal norms, unifying a growing number of mixed, fragmented, and matrifocal families (cf. Cruikshank 1971; Smith 1971). The former statuses of senior men as clan and lineage leaders all but disappeared, due to the new role of middle-aged and elderly women who were now the main keepers of kin ties and cultural memory. Nevertheless, lineage as a group of closely related kin survived as the main social cell to support the old rules of mutual aid and solidarity in large and ethnically mixed modern communities. The state-controlled housing and construction policies made many of the foundations of the contact-traditional Yupik society obsolete, namely the ability of individual loci to migrate and to make new aggregations with other loci by creating new communities and tribes. No significant group, such as an entire lineage, and certainly not a clan or even less so a residential community, could now act as a coherent unit and make a decision mandatory to its members. Whereas the old Yupik social system ensured the integrative functions of its major constituent units—clans, neighborhoods, lineages, and boat crews—the post­ relocation community transitioned into an aggregation of related, but alienated and often openly conflicting groupings. Of course, individuals and small families could change their place of residence and move to other communities, but at their own risk. What we learned about the “old Yupik society” indicated that its life had been rife with competition, conflicts, rivalries, and individual tensions. All the same, it was capable of acting in unison when confronted with an outside pressure. The disintegration of traditional Yupik locus organization, which started in the early 1900s, led to the gradual loss of structural cohesion. The relocations of the 1950s completed that process. The ­contact-traditional society had run out its course, and a new social order built around mixed modernized towns, in which the majority of the Yupik now resided, was firmly in place.

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Notes 1. Bassin 1988, 16, 21. On the conflicting Russian images of Siberia, see also Diment and Slezkine 1993, 8–10; Gibson 1993, 67–69; Grant 1993, 229; Wood 1991a, 2, 11; 1991b, 117–121. 2. Hereafter we use the term “resettlement” when speaking about an assisted migration that is encouraged by the state. A “relocation” means an enforced move, when people are pressed to change residence by a government decree or special policy. An extreme case is “deportation,” when a migration is carried out by the actions or presence of the police or military force. 3. Following deliberate population cleansing, particularly in the Russian Far East, Central Asia, and Transcaucasia, the vast areas along the Soviet border were transformed into “closed” zones controlled by the military and border guards (Bugai 1989). 4. No other elders confirmed this statement. 5. We saw some of these phantom architectural renderings in the State Archives of the Chukotka Autonomous Region in Anadyr in 1987. 6. Russian anthropologist Sergei Arutiunov (pers. comm., 2007) visited Naukan in June 1958 and did not recall any anxiety among its residents as a sign of pending relocation. 7. Chukotskii okrispolkom 1950–1959, 207; Reshenie Chukotskogo Raiispolkoma 1958, 64. 8. November 7 is the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and was the main state holiday at the time. 9. In Sireniki in 1958, the recorded harvest of 388 walruses included 150 carcasses delivered by the crew of the state catcher-boat (Godovoi bukhgalterskii otchet 1958, 13). Two years prior, another state-run vessel brought 537 (!) killed walruses to Ungaziq. The boat twice exceeded its quota target, while the Yupik hunters were able to catch only ninety-­ seven animals. 10. See Krupnik 1984, 215, for the marine catch records of the 1950s and 1960s. 11. Recently, the study of indigenous relocations in the Arctic has received new momentum, thanks to the international project “Moved by the State: Perspectives on Relocation and Resettlement in the Circumpolar North” (2007–2011; see http://www.alaska.edu/move/; also Csonka 1995; Holzlehner 2008; 2011; Kingston and Marino 2010; Kohlhoff 1995; Marcus 1992; 1995; Schweitzer 2010; Tester and Kulchyski 1994, and others). We hope that the recollections we recorded in Chukotka thirty to forty years ago will be of value to modern researchers and the young generations of Russian Yupik. 12. The only known public response to Yupik relocations in the 1950s was a fictional novel called Nunivak (Rytkheu 1963). It featured a happy life in new communities despite the intrigues of some grumpy “traditionalists,” who were eventually defeated. 13. Vladilen Leont’iev (1973, 32) called the closure of Naukan a “premature and ill-advised action.” This was the strongest condemnation of the government relocation policies published in Russia prior to 1988. Leont’iev made several other public and written appeals on behalf of the deported residents of Naukan (none of them reached the public; see Leont’iev 1980; 1994), as did Georgii Menovshchikov and as did we (Chlenov 1980), to no avail.

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14. In 2010, the Canadian Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs offered “a full and sincere apology on behalf of the Government of Canada and all Canadians . . . to Inuit for the relocation of families from Inukjuak and Pond Inlet to Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay during the 1950s” (http://www.sikunews.com/News/Canada-Nunavik/ Inuit-receive-an-apology-7904). In September 1999, then Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup-Rasmussen offered an official apology “on behalf of the Danish State” for the relocation of some 100 Inuit from Uummannaq in North Greenland in May 1953 to make way for the US air base in Thule (http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/ icc_president_welcomes_danish_apology_for_thule_relocation/). 15. See http://dead-cities.ru/city/Ureliki; Krupnik and Vakhtin 2002.

Epilogue

O

ur narrative has come to a close. We have brought it to the year 1960, which opened

a new chapter in the history of the Yupik people in Russia. By removing the three largest Yupik communities, about 70 percent of the small nation, from their home sites, the Soviet state gained a new level of control over Yupik economy, residence, internal connections, and communication with the outside world. The sweeping shift in power relations concluded the last transition of the contact-traditional era in the Bering Strait started by the arrival of the first Soviet administration in 1923. In fact, it brought the contact-­traditional Yupik society described in this book to its end. By the time we started our work among the Russian Yupik in the 1970s, people born during the collective farm era still held vivid memories of the “old society.” The elders, children of the early 1900s, eagerly talked about the old villages, clans and tribes, community events, and social relations. Our study cited many of their stories, albeit we were able to document but a fraction of people’s memories. Even a smaller portion has been published.1 Yet it was obvious even forty years ago that the “old society” had passed the point of no return. The crush inflicted by the state was too overwhelming and too painful. It was little surprise that after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, hardly any efforts in resuming Yupik self-governance or restoring abandoned villages were successful. Recent reports from the Yupik land in Russia speak of apathy, social divisiveness, and weakness of grass-roots initiatives.2 No signs of revival of the Yupik institutions from the old days are in sight, such as clan solidarity, lineage-based crews, marriage regulations, and clan leadership (still vibrant on St. Lawrence Island), not to mention clan neighborhoods or locus mobility. Modern Yupik society has new forces and drivers, and today’s transitions lie beyond the scope of this study. For our part, in concluding this book, we would like to return to the question posed on its first pages. What does the story of a small Arctic nation contribute to the global legacy of contacts? Although the experience of the Yupik people in Russia was, to a certain extent, unique, the attitude of the Soviet state that led to the demise of the Yupik social system was typical. Moreover, the politics of domination and paternalist engineering of indigenous societies had very much in common across the Russian and North American Arctic. Also broadly similar were the responses of the minority Arctic groups to the state-induced social stress, including the breakdown of traditional institutions and social bonds, alcohol abuse, “poverty culture,” and intergenerational conflict. Despite their different histories of interactions with their respective nation states, indigenous peoples of 293

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the North experienced many a common transition. And these we would like to examine using the Yupik example as a model.

Survival Mechanisms and Patterns of Resilience We believe we have enough evidence to argue that the Yupik people in Chukotka were able to preserve many of the institutions of the contact-traditional society into the early 20th century. The Russian Yupik were spared major population catastrophes that befell many neighboring groups in Northeast Siberia (Gurvich 1966; Krupnik 1990a), in Northwest Alaska (Burch 1975; 1980), the Norton Sound area (Sheppard 2000), Seward Peninsula (Ray 1975), and on St. Lawrence Island (Krupnik 1994). Nor had they to face till the 1920s significant pressure from intrusive government administrators, hordes of prospectors, missionaries, teachers, and other resident outsiders, as happened in Alaska, particularly in its southern areas with the more tumultuous history of colonial interactions (Burch 1994; Koutsky 1981b; Lührman 2000; Partnow 2001; Pullar 1992; 2001). Also, we were not the first to seek interpretation of the transitions that befell the Yupik through decades of contact encounters by invoking popular anthropological paradigms, such as “change,” “survival,” or “survival strategies” (cf. Balzer 1980; Champagne and Abu-Sa’ad 2003; Elsass 1992; Taylor and Pease 1994; Weinstein 1983, and many others). Nonetheless, the example of the Russian Yupik is illuminating in that it reveals how patterns of group resilience and inclusion (“survival strategies”) might change, often repeatedly and even within a generation. During the late contact-traditional era of 1890–1950, the Yupik used a series of consecutive strategies to preserve their social order, while being exposed to, and keeping active contacts with, the larger world. Initially, their survival strategy relied upon the strength and resilience of their “locus institutions” and engaged the combination of traditional social units of various levels described in our book—the tribes, clans, clan neighborhoods, hunting crews, and lineages. These (and other) social cells could move, disassemble, and then reconfigure in new combinations. Migration and reintegration was a prime mechanism to cover the losses, exploit new opportunities, and expand into the more promising niches, that is, to survive. The flexibility of basic social structures (i.e., of the locus institutions) provided the Yupik with the ability to endure stress brought by the outside world—during the late contact-traditional era, as well as in the more distant past (chapter 7). Nonetheless, for the Yupik (and in many situations elsewhere), inclusion into the larger socioeconomic system was not a gradual transition. Rather, it advanced in abrupt surges or leaps followed by periods of relative stabilization, even retreat. Each new advance targeted a different line of defense of the Yupik society. The stress brought by the contacts consequently weakened local institutions one by one, as if tearing off the society’s protective shells. In so doing, it also opened up and stimulated new mechanisms of resilience and survival. By the late contact-traditional era, any memories of the past intertribal or intervillage military and political alliances, the highest known social structure among the Yupik, were relegated to the realm of lore. The social system that included such institutions, the socalled warfare society, was the product of more violent early colonial interactions with the Russians in the 1700s and of the earlier precontact era (chapter 7). When the development

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of commercial whaling introduced more peaceful patterns of contact in 1850–1900, the Yupik shifted to different social strategies. Their most effective defense mechanisms were their group solidarity, the social integrity of the Yupik tribes, and sheer numbers. Simply speaking, the Yupik had been more numerous; they apparently had more villages, boat crews, and adult men (chapter 2). They also interacted with a particular segment of the world capitalist system, the crews of passing whaling schooners, prospectors and traders, visiting governmental agents, missionaries, scientists, and adventurers of various origins. While intrusive, often rowdy, these outsiders (except the missionaries) did not try to recast the social structure of the Yupik communities according to an alien ideology. The impact of the whaling era was profound and was most visible at the tribal level. Of the six known contact-traditional Yupik tribes, only two, the Ungazighmiit and the Nuvuqaghmiit, survived as viable social units into the early 20th century (chapter 4). Yupik neighbors on the American side of Bering Strait fared even worse. Their former tribal (“society”) structures disintegrated after the 1880s across Northwest Alaska, the Seward Peninsula, and in the Norton Sound area (Burch 1975; Ray 1975; Sheppard 2000). In the early 1900s, resident traders replaced the whalers as prime agents of contact; soon they were themselves driven away by the representatives of the Russian and, later, Soviet administration (chapter 1). During a short interval between 1910 and 1930, the most effective defense institutions for the Yupik were smaller kin units with a high degree of solidarity: the clans. Clans and large lineages put forth their leaders, who relied on support of the clansmen. The “strong men” of clans and small villages regulated migrations and trading trips and determined the course of interaction with the outsiders. Naturally, it was the clans and clan leaders that succumbed to the next social transition with the consolidation of the Soviet administration in the Yupik area (chapter 8). By the beginning of the collective farm era after 1930 (chapter 9), the clan and its local projection, the clan neighborhood, was greatly weakened, except for the two largest Yupik communities in Chukotka: Ungaziq and Nuvuqaq. Other elements of the clan-­lineage structure quickly disappeared along with the clans: clan and lineage hunting crews, festivals, marriage regulations, and so on. The clan social equivalent in Northwest Alaska, the system of communal men’s houses (qargi, qazhgi) and associated bilateral men’s groups, became extinct a generation earlier (Burch 1975). The only place where the Yupik clan system survived in force, albeit not intact, was St. Lawrence Island. There the clans became primarily kinship and subsistence regulators that did not interfere directly with the overall acculturation process and Yupik inclusion into the larger society (Hughes 1960; 1984c; Jolles 2002; Krupnik 1994; 2004; Wicker 1993). Bereft of the shield of tribal and clan solidarity, the residential community emerged as the new defense line for the Yupik. During the collective farm era of 1930–1950, local communities were conglomerates (mixtures) of the former residents of many villages, often from several old tribes, organized economically around small collective farms (chapter 9). The mixed residential community, albeit a new institution of the early Soviet decades, preserved a sense of autonomy, Yupik solidarity, and local economies based on marine hunting and familiar subsistence activities. They also functioned as a form of local governance of sorts, via collective farm and village councils of predominately or exclusively Yupik membership. A far cry from the traditional social milieu, they nonetheless helped

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preserve the Yupik language, family interactions, subsistence food, dances and storytelling, and other pieces of traditional life that coexisted with the elements of new ideology (Fig. 11.1). This process could probably have brought to the Russian Yupik some sort of new social consolidation, as happened in rural communities in Alaska or Greenland during the same (or earlier) decades. The “Great Reform” of the 1950s marked the next acculturation onslaught for the Russian Yupik. Established villages were closed, their residents resettled elsewhere, often several times in people’s lifetime (chapter 10). The Yupik were packed into a few towns, together with the reindeer and maritime Chukchi and the Russian-speaking newcomers. This wave of stress produced an unprecedented level of social disorders in the form of mass abuse of alcohol, loss of traditional values, a high incidence of suicide, and a growing number of children born out of wedlock. With the demise of tribes, clans, kin-based boat crews, residential communities, and neighborhoods, the family remained the last viable social structure of the small Yupik nation. Yet under the increased grip of paternalistic state policies, even the family became an endangered institution. The authorities pushed hard to gather all Yupik children in state-run boarding schools and daycare centers, and the spreading economy helped fill formerly all-Native villages with dozens of male newcomers, all potential marriage and sexual partners. During our fieldwork in the 1970s and 1980s, even the nuclear family consisting of two Yupik spouses and their children had started to fall apart. In the most affected communities, it all but vanished (Krupnik 1987b), to be supplanted by the extended matrifocal family led by senior “matriarchs,” usually widowed or single mothers. In the absence of

Fig. 11.1: “Student Alperakh” (original caption). Allperagtenga (ca. 1913–1933) at the Naukan village school. The new world has been opened to the Russian Yupik, in Russian and under the Communist hammer and sickle. (Photo by Aleksandr Forshtein, 1929. MAE #И-115-20)

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fathers, the burden of caring for the children shifted to the women, the elderly, and peripheral relatives. Other new institutions emerged as venues of socialization, including various peer groupings, such as teen and sibling groups, male “bachelors’ clubs,” and the like. Neither of these new post-traditional institutions had roots in the earlier contact-­ traditional Yupik society. Yet the new channels of socialization were capable of supporting the Yupik cultural identity for several more decades. In the course of the hundred-some years of transitions described in this book, the prime venues for social integration and resilience among the Yupik shifted from the tribe to the clan, to lineage to residential community, and, finally, to matrifocal family and peer groups. No sooner did the Yupik enter some sort of stabilization in the 1980s than the signs of restoration of their social network became visible. The first signals included a slight increase in stable marriages among the Yupik youth, a growing number of all-Yupik (all-Native) nuclear families, and a corresponding decrease in births out of wedlock (Krupnik and Chlenov 1990). The resurgence of solidarity of the residential community, ultimately, in the form of opposition of its Native members, Yupik and Chukchi, to the newcomers, became obvious (Kerttula 2000; Morgounova 2007). As the Yupik demonstrated, restoring the viability of family and a community network is an ultimate step toward reconsolidation and revival.

Survival and Patterns of Diversity Naturally, continuity cannot proceed without renewal, that is, the reintegration of certain elements of the old social order, or even its strengthening in the course of stabilization. Again, the story of the Yupik offers good illustrations of how these processes work. The Yupik contact-traditional system, as in any aboriginal society, operated as an integrated system, in which components were interconnected in one way or the other. During periods of acute stress or contact shock, the interrelatedness of social norms and institutions weakens and may ultimately disappear. Such periods are extraordinarily demanding. The old order seems senseless and destined to disappear rapidly. The youth cease to honor the parents’ values and seek to emulate other models. A set of typical social reactions arises, such as cultural nihilism, breakup in kin solidarity, suicide, and alcohol abuse, which are common across and beyond the Arctic (Bachman 1992; Lurie 1971; Lynge 1985; Schaefer 1976; Shkilnyk 1985). Under conditions of great stress, the elements of the social system often lose their integrity not only internally, but also spatially. The society breaks into territorial ­fragments—small communities, residential and family segments, and so on—that are weakly connected, if connected at all. Each individual component of the disintegrating social network struggles for survival. Cross-community marriage and kin obligations, visitations, joint festivals, and exchange of information weaken or cease altogether, as happened among the Russian Yupik in the 1940s, as well as between the Yupik in Chukotka and on St. Lawrence Island after 1948. The nation of 1,500 once seeking strength in its numbers transformed into a set of isolated hubs barely a few hundred people strong. The isolation gave rise to a situation in which one group retained one element of the old system, a second, something different; and in a third, virtually everything disappeared beyond

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elders’ memories. During our fieldwork in the 1970s, the Yupik in Sireniki maintained an active sea-mammal hunting culture, the ability to construct large skin boats (Fig. 11.2), and the fall ritual of honoring the ancestors. None of these elements was then visible in New Chaplino; instead, the memory of the former clan system was still strong, as were the use of Yupik names and traditional dances (Fig. 11.3). The former Nuvuqaghmiit, exiled from their home place, lost the ability to live as a unified group but excelled in their level of education and cultural activism. Each group possessed a part, from which it would be difficult to re-create a whole. Yet the process of cultural transition proceeds in bursts interspersed by periods of relative stabilization that give the social system a chance to revitalize. Split population segments build new connections; marriages and alliances are forged, and children with these new identities are born and raised. The system reconfigures itself. The sources of this renaissance often remain a mystery, yet stabilization may eventually bind the surviving or transformed elements into a new system. Many cases of Yupik social “reconfiguration” described in this book—Imtuk, Uwellkal, Plover, Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in the early 1900s—were, in essence, social “mutations.” These reconfigurations required time to develop stability and resilience characteristic of the established social forms. Whenever they had such a chance, they succeeded. Linguists have a concept of “language extinction” and developed methods to predict its progression. Unlike languages, people who make up linguistic communities do not disappear. When they cease to speak the old language, they switch to a new one. In the same way, cultures may change their appearance, yet prove to be resilient. By the year 1890, a small Yupik tribe, the Sighineghmiit, of some 100 people seemed to be on the brink of extinction (chapter 2). Fifty years later, in 1940, about 200 Yupik lived in the town of Sireniki, the former Sighineq. They spoke another Yupik language, Chaplinski Yupik, and had a vibrant community of several old tribal elements. In 2004, another sixty-four years later, they numbered 270 (Morgounova 2007:184). Their way of life has changed and most of their cultural legacy was lost or reconfigured. The majority of them were of mixed ancestry; virtually all now spoke Russian as their mother tongue. Nonetheless, they refer to themselves as “Yupik,” Eskimo, and “Sirenikians” (sirenikovtsy). Apparently, the changes in language, identity, and appearance may proceed at different speeds, but it does not alter the course of a group’s continuity and survival. There is a temptation to see in contact a “great equalizer” of sorts, a source and the driver of diminished cultural diversity. In fact, the shock-stabilization-revival cycles, as experienced by the Yupik, commonly created a set of new local variations; each was capable of creating new cultural variety on the ground. The cycling of the shock-stabilization-­revival phases helped maintain local diversity, often for many generations. During the late contact-traditional era, the difference between individual Yupik tribes, such as the Ungazighmiit, the Nuvuqaghmiit, and the Sighineghmiit, could be seen on the basis of their social institutions (chapter 4). Yet the distance had remained every bit as evident in the 1930s, when the old tribes were folded into the respective village councils and collective farms (chapter 9). It had by no means faded away by the 1950s, when people moved from the old skin-covered dwellings to framed houses in modernized towns and,

Fig. 11.2: Three generations of Yupik hunters in Sireniki. Left to right: Vladimir Ankalin (born 1956), Aleksandr Typykhkak (born 1955), Vladimir Akka (born 1922), Victor Tatega (born 1943), Valerii Laulau (born 1949). (Photo by Sergei Bogoslovsky, 1980; courtesy Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya)

Fig. 11.3: Native dancing team of New Chaplino holds a spontaneous Sunday performance. (Unknown photographer, ca. 1975; Igor Krupnik’s personal archive)

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particularly, when the former Ungazighmiit and Nuvuqaghmiit were forcibly resettled to new sites (chapter 10). Nor did it wane in the postresettlement era, as the three groups staunchly maintained separateness from each other. In the 1990s, when the Russian Yupik resumed trips across the Bering Strait, their traditional competition acquired a new articulation. Chaplino and Sireniki forged sister-city ties with two similarly competing Yupik communities, on St. Lawrence Island, Gambell and Savoonga (made up literally of the same sociocultural components), whereas the former Nuvuqaghmiit leaned toward Nome and Kotzebue on the Alaska mainland. The change brought about by contact transitions may often act as a driver in the preservation, even strengthening, of cultural diversity.

The Bering Strait Reunion We were fortunate to witness proof of some of the ideas about the role of contact, transition, and continuity by the end of our fieldwork among the Russian Yupik. Since the late 1980s, dramatic changes had been sweeping the Russian Yupik area, thanks to the resumption of international connections across Bering Strait, political liberalization in the former Soviet Union, and the following collapse of the communist state. It was an irony of sorts that a small indigenous nation has outlived the all-powerful ideology, which contributed so much to its decline. The first official crossing of the Russian-American border in the Bering Strait that put groups of Russian Yupik in direct contact with fellow Native Alaskans took place in summer 1988. Twenty Yupik people from St. Lawrence Island took part in the so-called Friendship Flight from Nome to Provideniya (Garrett 1988; Krauss 1994). Many encountered their Chukotkan kinsmen for the first time in their life.3 In July 1990, we came across a group of Yupik visitors from Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, in New Chaplino. Young Chaplino Yupik activists invited several guests with Avatmiit roots on a symbolic tour to their ancestors’ home site of Avan, the first tribal reunion of sorts. A few weeks later, a group of thirty Russian Yupik flew the other way, from Chukotka to Fairbanks, Alaska, to participate in the Inuit Studies Conference. By 1991, a string of visitors who traveled in both directions turned into a stream (Krupnik 1991a). Yet few of the many reunions of that era was as symbolic as the one we witnessed in summer 1991 in the Alaska Inupiaq community of Shishmaref. Five boats with guests from “Siberia” arrived on a three-day visit carrying the former Naukan Yupik and Chukchi from the Chukotka towns of Lavrentiya, Uelen, Lorino, and Inchoun on their first summer trip across Bering Strait to Kotzebue. As was common in the past, two boats from Little Diomede accompanied the Siberian visitors. In the not-so-distant past, such trips—whether military raids, trade journeys, or family visits—were common on both sides of Bering Strait (Kingston 2000; Schweitzer and Golovko 1995). Yet three generations of isolation and integration into the national states led the people away from one another, reinforcing, not lessening, cultural differences between them. The visitors, the “Chukotkans,” arrived in time-honored fashion. They came by the sea, in open wooden whaleboats known since the era of the American whalers (Figs. 11.4, 11.5). The men and women in dark-gray quilted pea jackets and canvas raincoats had completed a long journey. They brought with them skin drums and ancient Yupik and

Epilogue

301

Chukchi songs. On the Shishmaref beach, the visitors took turns dancing to the old melodies. In that summer of 1991, they were the state farm employees, Soviet citizens, and even card-carrying members of the Communist Party. On the shore of the Chukchi Sea, the residents of Shishmaref in brightly colored parkas greeted the Siberian boats. They were the “Inupiat,” “Native Alaskans,” and “Americans.” On the land of their village corporation, they could move, hunt, fish, and trap as they saw fit. Yet their children and youth did not know their native Inupiaq tongue and could converse in English only. In the gymnasium of the Shishmaref school, the visitors staged an emotional dancing performance for their hosts, shaking the hall with the thunder of the Siberian drums. In response, a church choir of Shishmaref elders welcomed the guests by singing Lutheran hymns. Two generations prior, Christian missionaries had forbidden the people of Shishmaref their “heathen” drum music, dances, and songs. Now but a few elders were able to attempt the rhythms of the visitors’ dances.4 The meeting, after many decades of isolation, was imbued with a spirit of joyous excitement. The people scarcely understood one another, yet both sides fully realized how much they had in common and how much they had lost. Hosts and guests were members of two vast and different systems. They were jubilant with the feeling of what they shared, but constantly ran afoul of their new differences. What both sides demonstrated with pride was that they had retained their foundations and were reunited not as “Russians” and “Americans,” but as relatives, Native Inuit and Chukotkans from the two shores of Bering Strait. Their history had come full circle, and this circle ultimately proved to be the path of contact and revival. And in this we see the greater meaning of the many “Yupik transitions” we explored in this book.

Fig. 11.4: Shishmaref residents greet Siberian whaleboats, July 1991. (Photo by Igor Krupnik)

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Fig. 11.5: Siberian visitors and their whaleboats in Shishmaref, Alaska, July 1991 (Photo by Igor Krupnik)

Notes 1. Chlenov and Krupnik 2012; Krupnik 2000; Krupnik and Chlenov 2007. Substantial information from elders’ stories was also cited in our earlier publications (Arutiunov et al. 1982; Chlenov and Krupnik 1983; 1984a; 1984b). 2. For post-Soviet assessments of the Yupik and other indigenous peoples’ life in Chukotka, see Achirgina-Arsiak 1992; Bogoslovskaya and Krupnik 2008; Gray 2005; 2007; Holzlehner 2011; Kerttula 1997; 2000; Krupnik and Vakhtin 1997; 2002; Morgounova 2007; Nielsen 2007a; 2007b; Oparin 2012; Schweitzer 1999, to name but a few. 3. As one of the Yupik participants in the Friendship Flight from Nome to Provideniya recalled, “Shortly after I stepped off the plane, a Native man came up to me and said in Yupik, ‘I’m from the Kivak [Qiwaaq] clan [ramka?]. Which clan are you from?’ I was speechless. Here was a man from a different country, speaking my Native language, telling me he was from the same clan I was!” (Darlene Orr, of Nome, Alaska; www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/ features/croads/modeskim.html; accessed August 17, 2011). 4. Since 1991, the practice of Native dancing has been revived in Shishmaref, in large part as a result of later visits of the Chukotka Yupik performers to Shishmaref and Kotzebue.

Appendices

Appendix 1

List of Yupik Contributors

M

contributed to our study and to this book over the forty-some years of our project (1971–2011) as narrators, knowledge experts, proofreaders, critics, field assistants, and supporters. The list below includes only those people whom we cite or acknowledge by name in our narrative. All elders born between 1900 and 1940 originally received one personal Native name. Sometimes, a name could be changed or replaced during a person’s childhood years; but usually it was kept for life and was normally used in communication in one’s Native language with family members, fellow villagers, and tribesmen. As people grew up, attended school, and interacted with Russian administrators, doctors, and teachers, they received (were given) additional Russian first names (or English names, for the Yupik on St. Lawrence Island). In the 1930s and 1940s, people’s Native names were converted into formal family (given) names. These were applied in Russian official documentation and personal papers and were transliterated, usually rather poorly, according to the rules of the Russian language (or English, on St. Lawrence Island). As a result, most, though not all, of the elders we interviewed in the 1970s and 1980s had an original Native name, a European first name, and a last name invented from one’s poorly transliterated personal name. Some people also had artificial Russian-style patronymic names, commonly created from imaginary Russian first names of their fathers. On St. Lawrence Island, the conversion of personal Yupik names into Anglicized given names took place a few decades earlier, so that today’s elders raised there have their fathers’ names as family names. Naturally, one’s many names were applied selectively and were “code-switched” according to the situation and language context. We list our Yupik contributors here in alphabetical order, according to their official (given) and first names in Russian or English transliteration, followed by their Yupik name, tribal affiliation, and year and place of birth and death. The time and place of our interviews or recording sessions are listed in parenthesis. English transliteration of St. Lawrence Island Yupik names follows the standards developed by local teachers and used systematically in the local documentation since the 1930s. Russian Yupik last names are transliterated phonetically, according to the system developed by the National Image and Mapping Agency (NIMA, formerly the US Board of Geographic Names; see Preface). For Russian Yupik personal names of Russian origin we decided to follow the same NIMA any local partners

305

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phonetic system, rather than that of the Library of Congress (LC). We believe that the NIMA system is better suited to the transliteration of Cyrillic/Russian first names and sidesteps many of the idiosyncrasies of the LC system. We also checked how Russian personal names are cited in today’s popular search engines (Google, etc.), so that the forms most familiar to the majority of our English readers appear in this book. Yupik tribal and group abbreviations are as follows: At = Atqallghhaghmiit; Av = Avatmiit; Ch = Chukchi; Im = Imtugmiit; Ng = Nangupaghaghmiit; Np = Napaqutaghmiit; Nu = Nuvuqaghmiit; Qi = Qiwaaghmiit; Si = Sighineghmiit; Sv = Sivuqaghmiit; Un = Ungazighmiit. Agnalkvasak, Vera

Aghnallqwasaq; Un; 1928, Uwellkal–1983, Anadyr (1976, Uwellkal; 1977, Anadyr) Ainana Aynganga; At; 1906, Imtuk–1987, Sireniki (1977, Sireniki) Ainana, Lyudmila Aynganga; Un; 1934, Ungaziq–Provideniya (1971–1990, Provideniya) Akilkak, Kim I. Aqelqaq; Un; 1916, Ungaziq–ca. 1990, Uwellkal (1976, Uwellkal) Akuken, Nina Akuqen; Nu; 1934, Nuvuqaq–2005, Anadyr (1987, Anadyr) Alowa, Nelson Qaghaqu; Sv (1999, Savoonga) Alpen Allpen; Nu; 1905, Nuvuqaq–1976, Anadyr (1976, Anadyr) Anaka, Zinaida Anaqa; Un; 1921, Ungaziq–1994, New Chaplino (1977, New Chaplino) Ankana, Anna Angqanga; Si; 1916, Sighineq–2000, Anadyr (1975, 1977, 1979, Sireniki) Ankatagin, Vasilii Angqatagen; Av; 1925, Avan–1979, Provideniya (1975, 1977, 1979, Provideniya) Apatiki, Ralph Anaggun; Sv; 1926, Gambell (1999, 2000, Gambell) Arinaun Aringaawen; Av; 1900, Avan–1985, New Chaplino (1977, New Chaplino) Ashkamakin, Ivan Ashkamaken; Un; 1911, Ungaziq–1991, Provideniya (1977, 1979, 1981, Provideniya Atelkun, Dmitrii Atellqun; Un; 1919, Uwellkal–1984, Uwellkal (1976, Uwellkal) Ayatkha Ayatghha; Un; 1915, Ungaziq–ca. 1980, New Chaplino (1976, 1977, New Chaplino) Einetegin, Oleg Eyngetegen; Nu; 1933, Nuvuqaq–1986, Lavrentiya (1981, Lavrentiya) Galgata, Sergei Galgata; Im; 1919, Imtuk–1985, Inchoun (1975, Ureliki; 1976, Yanrakynnot) Gapana Gapanga; Un; 1913, Ungaziq–1993, Provideniya (1981, Provideniya) Iena, Semen Yinga; Un; 1939, Siqlluk–1979, New Chaplino (1977, New Chaplino) Iirgu, Clarence Miinglu; Sv; 1913, Gambell–2010, Nome (1991, Nome) Imaklik Imaaqlliq; Nu; 1900, Nuvuqaq–Lavrentiya (1976, Lavrentiya) Ippi Ipi; Un; 1914, Ungaziq–1993, New Chaplino (1976, 1977, 1979, 1981, New Chaplino) Kaigilkun Qaygellqun; Un; 1906, Ungaziq–1984, New Chaplino (1977, New Chaplino) Kavakvyrgin, Stepan Qawakwergen; Si; 1930, Sighineq–1987, Sireniki (1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, Sireniki) Kavekhak Kaviighaq; Un; 1914, Ungaziq–1991, New Chaplino (1987, New Chaplino) Kovan, Maria Qavan; Nu (1976, Lavrentiya) Kukilgin, Andrei Kukilgen; Im; 1923, Imtuk–1985, Sireniki (1975, 1977, 1979, Sireniki) Kura Kura; Un; 1915, Ungaziq–1990, New Chaplino (1987, New Chaplino) Kutkhaun, Ekaterina Qutgaawen; Un; 1914, Ungaziq–1992, Uwellkal (1976, Uwellkal) Leita, Nikolai Legta; Un; 1910, Ungaziq–1976, Uwellkal (1976, Uwellkal)

List of Yupik Contributors

Mumi, Sergei Mumigtekaq, Olga Nakazik, Gleb Nanok, Vasilii

307

Mumi; Un; 1926, Imtuk–1976, Sireniki (1976, Sireniki) Asuya; Un; 1933, Ungaziq–ca. 2000, Sireniki (1977, Sireniki) Nakaziq; Un; 1943, Ungaziq (1977, 1979, 1987, New Chaplino) Nanuq; Un; 1924, Ungaziq–1995, New Chaplino (1971, 1977, 1979, New Chaplino) Napaun, Petr Napagun; Av; 1912, Egheghaq–1983, Sireniki (1975, 1977, 1979, Sireniki) Nasalik, Klara Anashkanga; Np; 1936, Ungaziq–1977, New Chaplino (1971, 1976, New Chaplino) Nutatagin, Petr Nutatagen; Ng; 1923, Tasiq–ca. 2000, New Chaplino (1977, 1979, 1981, New Chaplino) Oozeva, Conrad Akulki; Sv; 1925, Gambell (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2010, Gambell) Oozevoseuk, Estelle Penaapak; Sv; 1920, Gambell–2010, Nome (1999, 2001, 2002, 2008, Gambell) Panana Panganga; Si; 1919, Sighineq–ca. 2000, Sireniki (1975, 1977, Sireniki) Parina, Aleksandra Paringa; Si; 1923, Imtuk–1987, Sireniki (1975, 1977, Sireniki) Pivrana, Vera Piwranga; Qi; 1916, Qiwaaq–1991, Lavrentiya (1976, 1981, Lavrentiya, 1977; Provideniya) Pukhluk, Yurii Puuglluk; Av; 1922, Avan–ca. 1995, Anadyr (1987, Anadyr) Ragtina Ragtenga; Si; 1914, Sighineq–1991, Sireniki (1977, 1979, Sireniki) Ragtina, Zina Ragtenga; Un; 1924, Imtuk–1985, Uwellkal (1976, Uwellkal) Ratkhugwi, Aleksandr Ratgugyi; Si; 1906, Sighineq–1977, Sireniki (1975, Sireniki) Rynana, Anna Renganga; Un; 1924, Ungaziq–1992, Uwellkal (1976, Uwellkal) Saivak Saywaq; Si; 1906, Imtuk–1979, Sireniki (1975, Sireniki) Sighunylek, Marina Mimlenga; Un; 1933, Ungaziq–ca. 2000, New Chaplino (1976, 1977, 1981, 1987, New Chaplino Slwooko, Beda Avalak; Sv; 1919, Gambell–2009, Nome (1999, 2001, 2002, Gambell) Tagitutkak, Vladimir Tagitutkaq; Np; 1922, Napaqutaq–1999, New Chaplino (1981, New Chaplino) Tein, Tasyan S. Teyen (Tegen); Nu; 1933, Nuvuqaq (1976, 1979, Magadan) Tiyato, Vladimir Tiyata; Un; 1921, Ungaziq–1984, New Chaplino (1977, 1979, New Chaplino) Tumgina Tumgenga; Ch; 1905, Kurupka River–ca. 1980, Sireniki (1975, Sireniki) Uksima, Ukhsima I. Uuggsima; Un; 1915, Ungaziq–1989, Provideniya (1977, 1979, 1981, Provideniya) Ulgugwi Ulgugyi; Qi; 1912, Qiwaaq–1993, New Chaplino (1977, New Chaplino) Umrina Umrenga; Qi; 1921, Qiwaaq–1999, Provideniya (1976, Lavrentiya; 1977, Provideniya, New Chaplino Umryrgin Umrergen; Qi; 1920, Qiwaaq–1988, New Chaplino (1976, 1977, 1979, New Chaplino) Utykhtykak Uteghtekaq; At; 1914, Imtuk–1976, Sireniki (1975, Sireniki) Walunga, Nancy Aghnaghaghniq; Sv; 1928, Pugughileq (1999, 2000, 2001, 2010, Gambell) Walunga, Willis Kepelgu; Sv; 1925, Savoonga (1999–2011, Gambell) Wongkitillin, Nick Uqengeliighaq; Sv; 1904, Gambell–1999, Nome (1991, Nome) Wyia, Valentina Weyi; Si; 1917, Imtuk–1997, Sireniki (1975, 1977, 1979, Sireniki) Yatylin Yatelen; Np; 1906, Napaqutaq–1979, New Chaplino (1977, New Chaplino) Yatta, Vladimir N. Yata; Un; 1933, Ungaziq–1997, New Chaplino (1971, 1977, 1979, New Chaplino)

Appendix 2

Central Siberian (Chaplinski) Yupik Kinship Terminology Recorded by M. Chlenov, 1971; see Chlenov 1973. Key: F = father; M = mother; B = brother; Z = sister; H = husband; W = wife; S = son; D = daughter. Yupik Term 1

2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

English Designation (Notation)

Father’s father (FF), mother’s father (MF), father’s father’s brother (FFB), father’s mother’s brother (FMB), mother’s mother’s brother (MMB), father’s father’s sister’s husband (FFZH), MFB, MFZH, MMZH, FMZH (every male consanguineous relative in +2 generation) apaqaghhqaq Father’s mother’s husband (FMH), mother’s mother’s husband (MMH); every male affinal relative in +2 generation nengyuq Father’s mother (FM), mother’s mother (MM), father’s mother’s sister (FMZ), father’s father’s sister (FFZ), MMZ, MFZ, FFBW, MFBW, FMBW, MMBW (every female consanguineous relative in +2 generation) angayuqaq Parent (father, mother, F, M) ata Father (F) ataakaghhqaq Mother’s husband (MH) naa Mother (M) naakaghhqaq Father’s wife (FW) ataata Father’s brother (FB), father’s collateral brothers asak Father’s sister (FZ), father’s collateral sisters angak Mother’s brother (MB), mother’s collateral brothers anaana Mother’s sister (MZ), mother’s collateral sisters anglegun Sibling, brother, sister (B, Z) anglilgun Maternal half-sibling, mother’s son (MS), mother’s daughter (MD) anglegutqaghhqaq Step-sibling, father’s wife’s son (FWS), mother’s husband’s son (MHS), father’s wife’s daughter (FWD), mother’s husband’s daughter (MHD) anengaq Male Ego’s elder brother nayak Male Ego’s sister aakaq Female Ego’s elder sister apa

308

Central Siberian (Chaplinski) Yupik Kinship Terminology

309

Yupik Term

English Designation (Notation)

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

kugeq uyughaq atalgun aghnalgun ilughaq ighneq ighneghhqaq ighneraq panik panigkaq paniraq qangigaq

31

uyghu

32

an’gaghaq

33

nughhaq

34

eltughaq

35

eltughaghhpaq

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 46 47 48

ugi ugingwaaq nuliiq nuliighhwaaq nuliipik nukaghaq sakiiq sakiighaq saki ngurngighuq nulighqalgun agi

49

nengaa

50

ukaaq

51

nuziq

Female Ego’s brother Younger sibling of the same sex with Ego Patrilateral parallel cousin (FBS, FBD) Matrilateral parallel cousin (MZS, MZD) Cross-cousin (FZS, FZD, MBS, MBD) Son (S) Stepson (HS, WS) Son from exchange wife (S) Daughter (D) Stepdaughter (HD, WD) Daughter from exchange wife (D) Brother’s child for male Ego (BS, BD), nephew or niece of a man through his brother Sister’s child for male Ego (ZS, ZD), nephew or niece of a man through his sister Brother’s child for female Ego (BS, BD), nephew or niece of a woman through her brother Sister’s child for female Ego (ZS, ZD), nephew or niece of a woman through her sister Grandchild (SS, SD, DS, DD), every consanguineous relative in -2 generation Great-grandchild (SSS, SSD, SDS, SDD, DSS, DSD, DDS, DDD), every consanguineous relative in -3 generation Husband (H) Exchange husband (H) Wife (W) Exchange wife (W) First wife in polygynous marriage (W) Second wife in polygynous marriage (W) Spouse’s consanguineous or affinal relative in +1 generation Wife’s brother (WB) Husband’s sister (HZ) Woman’s husband’s brother’s wife (HBW) Man’s wife’s sister’s husband (WZH) Affinal relative in Ego’s generation of opposite sex to Ego, i.e., brother’s wife (BW) for male Ego, husband’s sister’s husband (HZH), also WZ, HB, WBW, ZH for female Ego Husband of every female relative in descending generations for female Ego (i.e., DH, DDH); husband of every female relative in Ego’s generation and descending generations for male Ego (i.e., ZH, etc.) Wife of every male relative in descending generations (for male Ego); wife of every male relative in Ego’s generation and descending generations (for female Ego) Child’s spouse’s parent, i.e., son’s wife’s father (SWF), son’s wife’s mother (SWM), daughter’s husband’s father (DHF), daughter’s husband’s mother (DHM)

Appendix 3

Naukanski Yupik Kinship Terminology Recorded by M. Chlenov, 1971. Key: F = father; M = mother; B = brother; Z = sister; H = husband; W = wife; S = son; D = daughter. Yupik Term

English Designation (Notation)

1 2 3 4

petqa apaghhpak apaghhlluk apaghhpak apa

5

petqa emaghhpak

6 7

emaghhpak ema, emaanga

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

ata ataggkaq aana aanaggkaq ataata asik angak anaana anellggute, anellggun anengaq aakaq angutgguneq, angutngnguneq nayak nayagaq

Every male relative in generation equal or more than +3 Great-great-grandfather; every male relative in +4 generation Great-grandfather; every male relative in +3 generation Grandfather; every male relative in +2 generation (FF, MF, FFB, FMB, MMB, MFB, FFZH, MFZH, MMZH, FMZH) Great-great-grandmother; every female relative in generation equal or more than +3 Great grandmother; every female relative in +3 generation Grandmother; every female relative in +generation (FM, MM, FFZ, FMZ, MFZ, MMZ, FFBW, FMBW, MFBW, MMBW) Father (F) Stepfather (MH) Mother (M) Stepmother (FW) Paternal uncle; father’s collateral brother (FB) Paternal aunt; father’s collateral sister (FZ) Maternal uncle; mother’s collateral brother (MB) Maternal aunt; mother’s collateral sister (MZ) Sibling of the same sex; male Ego’s brother, female Ego’s sister Male Ego’s elder brother Male Ego’s elder sister Female Ego’s elder brother

20 21

Female Ego’s elder sister Male Ego’s younger sister 310

Naukanski Yupik Kinship Terminology

311

Yupik Term

English Designation (Notation)

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

uyughaq angutggunaghruq nayaghruq ngaughyele angutelgute, angutelgun aghnalgute ilughaq angutggute ighneq ighneghhqaq panik paniggkaq qangiaq uyghu elltughaq

37

elltughaghhpak

38

petqa elltughaq

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

ui nuliaq nukaghaq saki sakighaq taakaalgek ukualngute nengaa

47

ukuaq

Younger sibling Female Ego’s male cousin Male Ego’s female cousin Female Ego’s female cousin Patrilateral parallel cousin (FBS, FBD) Matrilateral parallel cousin (MZS, MZD) Patrilateral cross-cousin (FZS, FSD) Matrilateral cross-cousin (MBS, MBD) Son Stepson (HS, WS) Daughter Stepdaughter (HD, WD) Patrilateral nephew or niece (BS, BD) Matrilateral nephew or niece (ZS, ZD) Grandchild; every consanguineous relative in -2 generation (SS, SD, DS, DD) Great grandchild; every consanguineous relative in -3 generation (SSS, SSD, SDS, SDD, DSS, DSD, DDS, DDD) Every consanguineous relative in generation equal or more than -3 (SSS, SSD, SDS, SDD, DSS, DSD, DDS, DDD) Husband Wife Second wife in polygynous marriage Parent of spouse (father-in-law, mother-in-law) (HF, WF, HM, WM) Spouse’s sibling (HB, HZ, WB, WZ) Wife’s sister’s husband (“brother-in-law,” WZH) Husband’s brother’s wife (HBW) Male in-law: daughter’s husband, sister’s husband, etc., literally “related through marriage” (DH, ZH, BDH, ZDH) Female in-law, from “ukughhaq” bride: son’s wife, brother’s wife, brother’s son’s wife, etc. (SW, BW, BSW, ZSW)

Appendix 4

Waldemar Bogoras’ Census of the Village of Ungyin (Ungaziq), Spring 1901

B

ogoras’ census of

Ungaziq provides the earliest known list of any Yupik community in Asia with people’s given names and family relations. Bogoras conducted his survey of the Ungaziq families during a five-week stay between May 2 and June 7, 1901. The handwritten list was attached at the very end of his diary kept during his trip from Novo-Mariinsk (Anadyr) to Ungaziq/Cape Chaplin and back, in spring-summer 1901 (Bogoras 1901, 103–118). It was recovered in 1980 at the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In summer 1981, we brought a copy of Bogoras’ records to Chukotka to work with our local Yupik experts, in order to identify people listed in the census. The identification and correction of people’s name spellings were completed in several sessions in New Chaplino and Provideniya, with the assistance of Ivan Ashkamakin (1911–1991), Gapana (1913–1993), Ippi (1914–1993), and Ukhsima I. Uksima (1915–1989). The full list with names and elders’ comments was first published in Russian (Krupnik 2000, 458–475). While conducting his village census, Bogoras recorded the names and ages of the male heads of the households only, and sometimes also those of the heads of other families living in the same house. The record thus provided personal information on adult males aged twenty-five to sixty only. Individual age estimates were Bogoras’ approximations. From genealogies and elders’ identifications, it is clear that Bogoras tried to follow the actual location of family houses within the community, though not always systematically. His census therefore is a valuable source to identify local neighborhoods and clan residence “clusters” in the community, as described in chapter 4. The first families enumerated in Bogoras’ list (nos. 1–17) were primarily from the Sanighmelnguut clan, starting with Quwaaren, the clan leader. The census then covered the neighborhoods of the Armaramket, the Laakaghmiit, the Akulghaaghwiget, and a few families from the Sighunpaget and the Nengluvaget clans. Bogoras, who was fluent in Chukchi and had some passing knowledge of the Yupik, could have produced the village list on his own; but he most certainly had some local 312

Waldemar Bogoras’ Census of the Village of Ungyin (Ungaziq), Spring 1901

313

assistant(s) to help with people’s names and family relations. Bogoras’ transliteration of people’s names was more often than not understandable, despite his awkward practice of mixing Cyrillic and Roman letters in one line, often in one word, interspersed with some phonetic symbols of his own making. Nonetheless, some eighty years later, the Ungazighmiit elders, who were born ten to fifteen years after Bogoras’ visit, identified most of the people on his list and offered detailed comments on the composition of the families and their genealogies (see more details in Krupnik 2000). In the list below, people whose clan and family affiliation were identified by elders or via genealogies are marked with an asterisk; modern Yupik transliteration of their names is given in brackets. Clan name acronyms are as follows: Ak = Akulghaaghwiget; Ar = Armaramket; La = Laakaghmiit; Ne = Nengluvaget; San = Sanighmelnguut; Si = Sighunpaget; Ug = Ugaliit/Uwaliit.

Ungyin, Census, Spring 1901 [Bogoras’ title] 1. Kuwar [Quwaaren, San],* age 60; wife, 60; grandson, 6; three daughters age 18, 14, and 12; 2 males, 4 females. 2. Uyqak [Uyghaq, San],* 30; his mother 55; his wife, 25; 1 male, 2 females. 3. Keyngen [Kayngen, San],* his wife and three daughters; 1 male, 4 females. 4. Talker, interpreter at the [Russian?] post; his wife and small son. With him resides [name unclear], with his two daughters, in a separate sleeping chamber [Russian polog, Yupik aagra]; 3 males, 3 females. 5. Nomyekhi [?], his wife and nephew; 2 males, 1 female. 6. Tahlimak [Tallimak, San],* age 60; his wife, his wife’s son; his little son and daughter, age 15. With them also Vakat* [Ar?], 50, and his wife; 4 males, 3 females. 7. Chaurin [?], 35; his wife, two daughters and two sons. With him Ahytka [Agetqa, Ar],* his wife, two sons, one daughter; 6 males, 5 females. 8. William Bayleys, also Kavavvi [Qawawyi, Ar],* 30; his wife and two daughters. With him resides Elngewtak [Alngyutak, Ar],* 30, with his wife, two sons, younger brother and his sister; 5 males, 5 females. 9. Pengettekhyn [Pangatagen, Ar],* 45, his wife, three daughters, one son; 2 males, 4 females. 10. Naneky [Naneq], 45; his wife, his little son and one daughter; with him resides his brother Ynaqay [Enaqayin, Ar],* his little son, his wife and daughter; 4 males, 4 females. 11. Numylyn [Numelen, Ar],* 35, his wife, two daughters, two sons; with him Kefky [Qiifqun, Ar], his father-in-law, with two sons; 6 males, 3 females. 12. Pan’ewhi [Pangawyi, San],* 28, with two wives and one son; with him resides a widow with two sons; 4 males, 3 females. 13. Kawal [?], 30, two wives, one son, one daughter; 2 males, 3 females. 14. Aleqat [Aliiqan, San],* 30, with his wife; 1 male, 1 female. 15. Apyty [Apeta, San],* 30, with two wives and one daughter. His mother, younger brother, brother’s wife, his sister. With him resides a woman-widow with two sons, and one son’s wife; 4 males, 8 females. 16. Tanoty [Tanuta, San],* 59, his wife, one son; 2 males, 1 female. 17. Pekhkhen’ki [Paghyanqa, San],* 25, his wife, his mother, younger brother, sister, his uncle. With him resides Peukurkhyn [?], his wife and son; 5 males, 4 females. 18. Tymuvg’e [Temuwyi, Ar],* 30, his wife, his daughter, son, his sister with a little boy; 3 males, 3 females.

314

yupik transitions

19. En’ilky [Ayngallqun, Ne],* 30, his wife, two daughters, younger brother, his wife’s auntie with a little boy; 3 males, 4 females. 20. Nutatkhu [Nutetwha, Ar],* 30, his wife, son and daughter; 2 males, 2 females. 21. Leut [?], 50, his wife; his married son with his wife and little daughter; other son of Leut and daughter of Leut; 3 males, 4 females. 22. Wuwayu [Wuwayuu, Ak],* 35, his wife, two sons, his father-in-law; 4 males, 1 female. 23. Ukikah [Uqiikaq, Ak],* 30, two wives, his three brothers, sister, stepmother; 4 males, 4 females. 24. Tuteli [Tutali, Ar],* 30, his wife, son; younger brother, brother’s wife, her two sisters, her brother; 4 males, 4 females. 25. Pen’elk’ut [?], 30, two wives, his sister and her little son; 2 males, 3 females. 26. Lalah’u [?], 50, his wife, one son, one daughter; his nephew with his wife; 3 males, 3 females 27. Kamuwyk [?], 50, his wife, two sons, daughter, one nephew; 4 males, 2 females 28. Ireky [Iyraqi, La],* 40, 3 wives, 3 sons, 3 daughters; 4 males, 6 females. 29. Eieg’yu [Ayaghyu, Ne],* 25, two wives, one daughter; his married cousin with his wife; their sister; his orphaned nephew age 18; 3 males, 5 females. 30. Ahmahtyka [Agmaghtekaq?], 25, his wife, little son, young girl (his cousin); 2 males, 2 females. 31. Kamy’yrgyn [?], 25, two wives; younger brother. With them lives Akqayan, 80, his wife’s relative; 3 males, 2 females. 32. Ojoh’a [Uyugha, La],* 45, 3 wives, one daughter with son-in-law; son’s other wife; 2 males, 5 females. 33. Ila [Ila, Ar],* 25, his mother, a shamaness; three brothers, sister; his Mom’s sister with her daughter; 4 males, 4 females. 34. Kami [other name Qayighigun, La],* 25, his wife; his elder brother, his wife, their little son; 3 males, 2 females. 35. Nomkak’ [Numetkaq?, San],* 30, his wife, their daughter; his younger brother; 3 sisters; his mother; 2 males, 6 females. 36. Ngilighghik [?], 35, his wife, two sons, one daughter; 3 males, 2 females. 37. Lewtyn’ik [?], 25, his wife, one daughter; one relative; one young girl; 2 males, 3 females. 38. Ukyh’etaq [?], 50, his wife, 3 daughters, two sons; 3 males, 4 females. 39. Chelohta [Sallughhtaq, Si],* 25, his wife, two daughters; his sister with her son; his nephew; 3 males, 4 females. 40. Ukuwhi [Ukugyi, Guggugyi, La],* 25, his wife, two sons, one daughter, two younger brothers. With him resides his cousin K’ak’y [Qaaqa, La],* 30, his wife, his little daughter, his uncle; 7 males, 4 females. 41. En’lopyski [Anglupa, La],* 35, his wife, two sons, two daughters; with them resides (name unclear) with his son; 5males, 3 females. 42. Valata [Walata, La],* 25, his wife, his little son, one daughter; nephew, niece. With him his cousin Rkamak [Erkamaq, La],* 30, his wife, two daughters, one son; his wife’s son; his mother; 6 males, 7 females. 43. Lelaky [Lilaq, La],* 60, his daughter; 1 male, 1 female. 44. Nutenli [Nutanli, La],* 30, his wife, two sons, one daughter; his married nephew with his wife; his relative Nask’ok [Nasquq, Ak],* 50, his wife, one son, one daughter; 6 males, 5 females. 45. Nekazik [Nakaziq, La],* 50, his wife; his married son with wife; his daughter with a little boy. With them resides his nephew Cheghu [Sighu, La],* his wife and two daughters; 4 males, 6 females.

Waldemar Bogoras’ Census of the Village of Ungyin (Ungaziq), Spring 1901

315

46. Cheh’loky [?], 45, his wife, one son, one daughter, one married cousin with his wife and two sons; one relative with his wife and little son; 7 males, 4 females. 47. Wutahak [Ughutaq?, La],* 40, his wife, two sons, one daughter; 3 males, 2 females. 48. Eeh’ty [Ayaghta, La],* 45, his wife, three daughters; one married son with his wife and his little son; 3 males, 5 females. 49. Atan’aw [Atangali, La],* 30, his wife, three sons, younger brother; 5 males, 1 female. 50. Tatko [Tatku, La],* 25, his wife, one daughter; his cousin with his wife and daughter; 2 males, 4 females. 51. Nenek [?], 45, his wife, three sons, one daughter; with him one relative with his wife and his sister; 5 males, 4 females. 52. Kejn’uwhi [Kayngywyi, Ak],* 35, his wife, two sons, one daughter, his mother; his married sister with her husband and two nephews; 6 males, 4 females. 53. Apatak [Apaataq, Ug],* 30, his wife, his sister, younger brother; 2 males, 2 females. 54. Memylk’aj [Mimellqay, Ak],* 45, his wife, three sons, one daughter, son’s wife, one niece; 4 males, 4 females. 55. Yah’pilhyn [Yaghpilgen, Si],* 50, two wives, two sons, five daughters, one nephew; 4 males, 7 females. 56. Kamiilik [Qamiylek, Si],* 30, two wives, one daughter, his mother, younger brother; 2 males, 4 females. 57. Alyki [Aleki, Ak],* 40, his wife, two sons, two daughters, one niece, one son-in-law; 4 males, 4 females. 58. Kaju [?], 50, his wife, two sons, one daughter; 3 males, 2 females. 59. Angu [Angu, Ak],* 45, his wife, two sons, one niece. With him resides his sister with three sons and one daughter; 6 males, 4 females. 60. Ah’nan’ih’ak [Aghnangiigaq, La],* 25, his wife, son, his wife’s sister; with him resides Tanen’a [Tanenga, Si],* 45, two wives, one son, one daughter, one young guy from the American village [Gambell?]; the rest of Tanen’a’s family lives in Nepekutak [Napakutak]; 5 males, 5 females. 61. An’akak [Anakaq, Ne],* 45, his wife, two daughters, one son, one son-in-law, his little daughter; son-in-law’s mother, his brother, his sister; 4 males, 6 females. Altogether, 442 people in 61 yourts [houses]; average number is 7 ¹/³ per yourt [house] [Bogoras’ note].

Appendix 5

List of Gambell (Sivuqaq) Residents, St. Lawrence Island: Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900

T

Gambell (Sivuqaq) on St. Lawrence Island were enumerated in summer 1900 for the Twelfth US Census by R. N. Hawley, who visited the island with the summer Coast Guard patrol boat USS Bear. It took Hawley three days to take the census of the village, from July 27 to July 30. We have no record on whether any local people assisted him in this task. Hawley’s census enumerated people by houses and also by individual families; however, the order of houses in the census sheets did not follow the local village geography of the time (cf. Krupnik 2004). The census taker did not record individuals’ age, though in most cases he listed personal relations to the family head that could not have been done without some local assistance. Igor Krupnik and Willis Walunga of Gambell identified people’s names in Hawley’s census sheets and clan affiliation in 1999–2000. Modern Yupik name spelling was inserted by Walunga in 2000 (Krupnik et al. 2002, 101–112). Because of the poor name spelling in Hawley’s handwritten sheets, several people remained unidentified. he residents of

Key: M = male; F = female; Mr = married; Sg = single; Wd = widowed; Ad. = adopted. Names of the family heads are given in bold. Clan name abbreviations: Kan = Kangiighmiit; Kiw = Kiwatangaghmiit; Mar = Maramakut; Mer = Meregtemiit; Nan = Nangupaghaghmiit; Nas = Nasqaghmiit; Nen = Nengiighaghmiit; Pug = Pugughileghmiit; Qiw = Qiwaaghmiit; San = Sanighmelnguut/Aymaramket; Siq = Siqllugmiit; Uwa = Uwaliit.

316

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

1

2

3

2

3

Imughayoon Ananomga Belwinkhuh Unmuktuh Mughuyuk Savlu Moonhangun Soowaree Appalu Yaghoh Pelasse Ungkowee Akhlunga (wife of Appalu) Napagayu Aghinapektuk Anagalungu Yunge Emungawoon Kallowee Toogoowoon Koloo Poo-wak Aningayoo Raghinu (?) Akisook

Family # Recorded Name

1

House #

Imengaawen Kalaawyi Tuusugun Kuulu Puguuq Anengayuu Riighnak Akesuq

Imegyuun Ananaanga Petgenghhaq Unmeggaq Meghyuq Saavlu Mekakangan Sewhaari Apaata Yaghaq Pelaasi Maligutkaq Aallenga Napaghya Aghnapiggaq Anaghaatanga

Yupik Name M F M M M M F F M M M M F M F F F F M F M F M F F

Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Wd Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Son Son Son Head Wife no. 1 Wife no. 2 Son Son of 2nd wife 1 Son Son D.-in-law Head Wife Daughter Daughter Daughter Son M.-in-law Br.-in-law W. of Koloo Ad. son Daughter Daughter

Relation to Head

Mer

San

San

Kiw

Clan

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

3

4

5

4

5

Nukhiyook Apaycu (?) Bettowook Noweya Burro (?) Yemeekikuk Mokwik Inglugoun Mokwuk Iyvowiksan Palaleeyu Nukmeegun Aghotukuh Rakok Weeyu Ovzeevustook Banga Kabung Shoolook Ungolla (?) Angealou (?) Tellungu Attookka Oowootillum Keysik Sughiluk Seatook (?) Escakkwa Tungatoo Yaree

Family # Recorded Name

3 (?)

House #

Siluk Isikwha Tangatu Yaari

Telenga Ateka Uwetelen Qiyasiq

Raaquq Wiya Uzivusiq Paanga Qipenga

Ayugighsaan Pataatiya Nuqneghun

Neghyuk Apayaa Pilowugpalluq Nuugigaknguq Peru Yumiggaq Muuggaq Iintagnen

Yupik Name M F M F M F F M F M F F F M F M F M F M F M F M F M M M M F

Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Wd Wd Sg Sg Sg Mr Sg Sg Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Son Daughter Son Daughter Daughter Son Daughter Brother Sister-in-law Niece Niece Head Mother Brother Daughter Brother Wife no. 2 Son of 2nd wife D. of 2nd wife Head Wife Son D.-in-law Son Son Son Son D.-in-law

Relation to Head

San

San

San

Pug

Pug

San

San

Clan

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

6

7

7

Toosuk Mezzikka Keeluktokogyuk Topangu Ikmaltoowa Akka Pazzuk Aghvosa (?) Keeluk Sakomeek Angkatungonoween Kaloo Oingling (?) Inguru Evagahma Pittumuktuk Akulky Attyuu Atteleak Annasook Aghooza Eyuuqkeak

Family # Recorded Name

6

House #

Akulki Aghhaaya Atleghuq Anasuk Ageza Iyengqiq

Tuusaq Mezeka ?/Tuquuyaq Tupanga Iqmaluwa Aqaa Paazak Ageza Aghilluk Sagqumik Angqatenganwan Qaalu Singlenga [died in 1900] Ivaghiima

Yupik Name M F F F M F M F M F M M F M F F M F M F F M

Mr Mr Wd Sg Sg Sg Mr Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Mr Sg Mr Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Mother Daughter Son Daughter Son Daughter Brother Sister-in-law Nephew Nephew Niece Boarder Wife of Inguru D. of Inguru Head Wife Son Ad. daughter D.-in-law Grandson

Relation to Head

Pug

Pug

San

San

Clan

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

78 79

9

10

10

8

Kito (Sam Sli . . . ok) 2 Beetoon Enuk Gootina Atargun (Alargun) Ghoongiukak Akka Owlangu Gelowyirigun Nughaghuk Aveeysohuk Ataka Alanga Tangootook Oomahuk Nayaha Naghayee

Meklehak Iknakenuk (w. of Pazzuk) Aginattitowook (?) Kawarron Toony Ananningwa Wakeutaka Akinapup Aviskitep (?) Aloowa Kowwowee

Family # Recorded Name

9

8

House #

Qaalu Piitun Inuuq Kutema Atargen Nguungaya Aqaa Awliinga Galaagerngen Kingikaq Aviyuwhaq Ataqa Alanga Taangutuq Umiighhaq

Avelqiiq Aluwa

Ananimgwaaq

Yupik Name

F M F F M F F M M M F M M M M F M M M F M M F M F M

M F Mr Sg Sg ? Sg Sg Sg Sg ? Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Wd Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Sg

Mr Mr

M/F Mr/Sg

Daughter Son Daughter Boarder Son Daughter Daughter Son Boarder Head Wife Son Son Son Head Wife Daughter Son Son Mother Brother Brother D.-in law Grandson Wife no. 2 Son

Head Wife

Relation to Head

Qiw Qiw

Qiw

San

Mar

?

Clan

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 124 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

11

12

13

12

13

Okungalatuk Athlutuguk Kisluk Kaghok Elgasseemu Seempu Kainuktuguk Wegha Peenyyn Nukpoon Apagina Upa Iyoklik Toghisigluk Kowarrum Avaltuk Poosee Ityhatuk Konota (?) Akineto Iyatuk Tatowee Ookukheluk Nooneen Nakooluk Napak Ozzuk Kasooka Angtokwapuk Anagapuk

Family # Recorded Name

11

House #

Napaaq Uusneq Kusukaq

Nuugna

Tatuwi

Uqengeliighaq Allitekaq Kesliq Qaghiiq Ilagaasima Siingpa Kaneghteghyaq Wiigha Pinaaya Neghqun Apaghna Apaa/Kenuuqu Ayiqliq Tagaluk Quwaaren Avalak Pusaa Ataayaghhaq Kunuka Aghnilu

Yupik Name M F F F M F M F M M F M F M M F M M M M M M F M F F F F M F

Mr Mr Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Daughter Ad. daughter Brother Sister-in-law Nephew Wife no. 2 Son of 2nd wife Head Wife Son Daughter Son Head Wife Son Son Son Son Son Son Daughter Brother Sister-in-law Niece Niece Niece Nephew Niece

Relation to Head

San

San

San

Qiw

Qiw

Clan

150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

16

16

17

15

15

17

14

Papoogayook Mukkatanga (?) Oyaghapuk Akeyuh Poppey Oozuk Matuk Papoogah Anayook Ungawatuk Bovlon (?) Soonkhanga

Megootuk Tailikuk Muklumnuk Papak Menuk Hwawin Ooyinguk Koninga Yagto Gittughutu Nannakyuk Aninga Mazika Angaka

Family # Recorded Name

14

House #

Sunqaanga

Uuzak Miitaq Papegaaq Anagyuk Negaghpak (?)

Anenga

Gategata

Minaq Uwhaawen Taliqnaq Quun-nga

Yupik Name

M F M F F M F F M M M F

M F M F M F M F M M F M F M Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg

Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Wd Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg

M/F Mr/Sg

Grandson Granddaughter Brother Sister-in-law Ad. daughter Head Wife Wife no. 2 Son Son Son Daughter

Head Wife Father Mother Head Wife Son Daughter Father Head Wife Son D.-in-law Grandson

Relation to Head

Uwa

Pug

San

?

Clan

162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185

18

19

20

21

19

20

21

Avayook Anaalook Ungawtuk Iyapa Massyyoo Okowa Agha Luktu Typoghama Iyaketan Meetu (?) Raktok (?) . . . ora (?) . . . etunga (?) Angiyuk Topanga Metuksuk Okuphayagan Koyalaak Mungina Akinastuk Toonapa Ootygook Gtoomy (?)

Family # Recorded Name

18

House #

Angaayaq Tupaanga Meteghlluk Ukeghyaghaan Quyalaaq Mangena Aghnalqwaaq Yuwaaghpak Uutaayuk Kelumi

Qenaaghaq Anaghasuuk Negaghpak Ayapaa Masaayu Ukughwa Agha Lugtu Tupeghmii Ayakitaan Nuqneguhun

Yupik Name M F M F M F F M F M F M F M M F M F F M F M M M

Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Boarder Wife Head Wife Daughter Son Daughter Brother Sister-in-law Head Wife Son Head Wife Son Daughter Daughter Brother Sister-in-law Nephew Nephew Nephew

Relation to Head

Mer

Mer

?

Uwa

Uwa

Uwa

Uwa

Clan

186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212

22

23

24

23

24

Kogalook Aghiuka Koozata Koyyasuk Aghinankamu Peskwolup Akayu Kowktau Goopatuku Anabeeuuk Tapeezuk Upukkok Attughu Akumuk Kundlook Kiningook Yagto Tokoga Nausukhuu Minanga Owiuarrga Yagtonga Akokygu (?) Atega Ogmattuk Iyivuk Eguntnuk

Family # Recorded Name

22

House #

Akinna Akumuq Qenluk Qanenguq Yaaghu Tukuuya Waamseghaan Emenanga Iworrigan Yaghunga

Tapiisak

Qawyalek Aghnaqa Kuzaata Yaavgaghsiq Aghnaamkami Piiskwaghtaq Akiya

Yupik Name M F M M F M M M F F M F F F M M F M M F M F M M M F M

Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Son Brother Sister-in-law Nephew Nephew Boarder W. of Kowktau D. of Kowktau Head Wife Daughter Daughter Son Boarder W. of Kiningook S. of Kiningook Head Wife Son D.-in-law Grandson Grandson Boarder W. of Ogmattuk S. of Ogmattuk

Relation to Head

Nan

Nan

Pug

Pug

Nen

Nen

Clan

213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242

25

26

27

28

26

27

28

Ifkawun Pakok Sipilla Aunaminu (?) Yapillok Okaka Pyana Inaklon Apugaku Enaghyoo Anagotak Tunlo Naneeto Annaghatuk Kiyetook Ongoosa Amekuma Bongawi Oowalu Storok Kurringohtiguk Eininguu Iyoyu Naukaruk Beeneemu Annagaya Kaloka (also Jack) Kookeeyunga Sabilu Tughitugtoon

Family # Recorded Name

25

House #

Stugruuk Qerngughtekaq Imingan Ayuya

Amikuma Pangaawen

Enlegtaq Tamlu

Ifkaghun Paakaq Sipela Aannamii Yaapelu Ukaaka Payana Asaaghqaan Apiyeka

Yupik Name M F M F F F F F F F F M M F M M M F F M F M M M F F M F F F

Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Mr Mr Wd Sg Sg Sg Sg Wd Sg Sg Mr Mr Mr Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Son Daughter Daughter Wife no. 2 Daughter Daughter Daughter Daughter Daughter Son Boarder W. of Naneeto S. of Naneeto Ad. son of Naneeto Head Wife M.-in-law Son Daughter Son Son Head Daughter Daughter Head Wife Wife no. 2 Daughter

Relation to Head

Siq

Nas

Clan

243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272

29

30

31

30

31

Assuni Asu Anatskapuk Ottisone Iyaclon (?) Nunglaloo Montokoly Nanyyook Panneghu Ookata Kunnaak Annasook Attuguk Akamuk Soonkonga Koontuk Kingwatuk Aglinatapuk Elunga Singawin Seevatuk Nanginu Aratptuk (?) Gatapa Washuka Eyatap Wayee Yatkwirrigoo Katmowayee

Family # Recorded Name

29

House #

Waayi

Singaawen Siivaghhaq Enaangena Aratgaq Katapa Maasqen

Kinguwaaghhaq Aghnaghaghpak

Nemaayaq Paniigha Ukaala

Nanghila

Asunaghaq Aasa Aghnalqwaapak

Yupik Name M F F M M M M M F F M F F F F M M F M F M F M F M M F M M

Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Mr Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg

M/F Mr/Sg Head Wife Daughter Son Son Son Son Brother Sister-in-law Niece Head Wife Wife no. 2 Daughter Daughter Son Brother Sister-in-law Nephew Niece Head Wife Son Daughter Son Boarder W. of Eyatap S. of Eyatap S. of Eyatap

Relation to Head

Siq

San

San?

Kan

Kan

Clan

277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287

273 274 275 276

33

32

House #

33

32

Annathotoyuk Nowgootuk Tingatwelat Getingawin Shoolook Kashunga Wunkone Noongwook Ooy Appetoky Amamunga

Anningtte (?) Aghinagta Bunga Teengathaquan

Family # Recorded Name

Suluk Qisgenga Waamquun Nunguk Uvi Apeteki Amamenga

Anangti Agnaga Paanga

Yupik Name

F M F F M F M M M M F

M F F M Mr Sg Sg Sg Mr Mr Sg Sg Sg Sg Sg

Mr Mr Sg Mr

M/F Mr/Sg

Boarder (?) S. of Teengathaquan D. of Teengathaquan D. of Teengathaquan Head Wife Son Son Son Son Daughter

Head Wife Ad. daughter Boarder

Relation to Head

Pug

Pug

Clan

Appendix 6

Yupik Population of Avan and Ugriileq from the Russian Missionary Record, 1910 (“Ispovednaia vedomost” [Confession Register] of the Chukchi Mission on the Chukchi Peninsula, 1910) “‘Ispovednaia vedomost’ for the year 1910 of the Chukchi Mission established by the Russian Orthodox Church of North America” was recovered by Michael Chlenov in 1992 at the Alaskan Russian Church Archives, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, in Washington, DC. This is a microfilmed list of several standard pages (sheets) filled with clear Russian handwriting by a traveling Russian missionary, Father (Igumen) Amfilokhi (Amfilohie). Father Amfilokhi’s mission was to spread Russian Orthodox Christianity among the Native people of the Chukchi Peninsula who so far had avoided Orthodox or other Christian missionaries (chapter 1). He traveled widely and his “Confession Register” for 1910 included names of Native parishioners, as well as a few Russian store guards, from the village of Uelen on the Arctic Coast to the community of Imtuk near Provideniya Bay. Altogether, he registered 135 people at six sites, including five Russians. Father Amfilokhi listed all the Native people he recorded as “Chukchi,” since he was obviously unaware of the Yupik being among his subjects. The Yupik, in fact, contributed the bulk of his flock, particularly in the communities of Ugriileq and Avan near Provideniya Bay, where Father Amfilokhi spent most of his time. Whether his claims of conversion were true or not, he listed thirty-five people in Ugriileq, almost the entire local population, and forty-six people in Avan, about 60 percent of the residents, as judged from other sources of the era and later genealogies. As a result, he produced the earliest list of residents in any Yupik community in Chukotka and the second-earliest document with Yupik personal names after Bogoras’ household census from Ungaziq of 1901 (appendix 4). Father Amfilokhi also reported people’s age and family relations. His list was obviously incomplete and it almost certainly underrepresented small children and youth, as well 328

Yupik Population of Avan and Ugriileq from the Russian Missionary Record, 1910

329

as the elderly, who were less receptive to his services. Many people, especially women, were recorded by their given Christian names only, which required careful identification. We were able to identify the Yupik names of most of the people in Father Amfilokhi’s list via genealogies and elders’ stories of the 1970s (these are marked with *). Mr. Willis Walunga of Gambell kindly checked the transliteration of the Yupik names, including many cited several times in this book.

“Ispovednaia vedomost”: Village of Urilak [Ugriileq], Provideniya Bay Russian Store Guards: 1. Ignatii Yakovlev Nadtochii, 38 2. Vasilii Yakovlev Bychkov, 32 3. Olga, his wife (Chukchi), 20—Kalanga* 4. Ioann, son, 1/2—Ivan Bychkov*

Chukchi [Yupik]: 5. Andrei Ayapisok (Ayapisak), 42* 6. Olga Chaiguna (Chaywunga), his sister, 28* 7. Mikhail Inoko (Nuuku), his nephew, 12* 8. Olga Kavala (Qawaala), 13* 9. Petr Kepelge (Kepelgu), 48* 10. Anna, his wife, 42 11. Vasilii, his son, 23—Walanga*? 12. Elena, his daughter, 15—Qangeelu* 13. Aleksandr Kupuma (Qupuma), 36* 14. Maria, his wife, 35—Makugukak* 15. Elena, his daughter, 15—Aynganga* 16. Varvara, his daughter, 3—Eghteqaq* 17. Maria Rultena (Rulltenga), 18* 18. Ignatii Kavak (Qawaq), 24* 19. Ksenia, his wife, 20—Ukiyuggaq* 20. Anastasia Ayukhlik (Ayuqliq), his sister, 8* 21. Yakov Amoyu (Amuya), 36* 22. Maria, his wife, 36—Gimangaawen* 23. Aleksei, their son, 14—Taghyu* 24. Pavel, their son, 12—Etugyi* 25. Nikolai, their son, 10—Kemuu* 26. Olga Khiuna (Giwunga), 14* 27. Simeon Isembo (Kisempu), 28* 28. Elena, his wife, 24—Ingkali* 29. Ioann, their son, 4—Tayan* 30. Anna, their daughter, 2—Asungu* 31. Agafia Maya, 18 32. Irina Nagtukina (Nawtuqen), 50* 33. Nikolai, her son, 18—Angla* 34. Andrei, her son, 17—Numelen* 35. Aleksei, her son, 16 Total residents in the village of Urilak: 35, 18 males, 17 females

330

Chukchi in the Village of Avvan [Avan] 1. Antonii Uaging (Uwaawen), 19* 2. Adam Ramnunaun (Ramnugun, Ramnungaawen), 30* 3. Elena Ramnunaun, wife, 25—Mumiigun* 4. Vasilii R., son, 4 [?] 5. Ekaterina R., daughter, 5—Kungungak* 6. Vladimir R., son, 1—Aynagwaaq* 7. Stefan Ateka (Atiqaq), 40* 8. Sofia, his daughter, 8—Apa* 9. Vladimir Suana, 23 10. Varvara, his wife, 21 11. Mikhail Ankana (Angqanga), 24* 12. Anna, his wife, 23—Iitenga* 13. Ioann Atatua (Atatuga), 18* 14. Aleksandra, his wife, 18—Iitkanga* 15. Andrei Erasi (Yagrasi), 16* 16. Nikolai Yaiko (Iyayeka), 26* 17. Maria, his wife, 22—Sayvenga* 18. Nikolai, their son, 2—Aghvughaneq* 19. Nikolai Kiviana (Qiwyanga), 20* 20. Aleksei Tseguskuk (Segesquq), 17* 21. Antonii Salvakuli (Sawatkulen, Sawaya), 28* 22. Anastasia, his daughter, 7 23. Olga Karga (Karga), 15* 24. Ignatii Lauteneg (Lawtengiighaq), 33* 25. Sofia, his wife, 25—Sikanga* 26. Vera, their daughter, 4 27. Roman Taglan (Taglaan), 13* 28. David Aya, 34—Yagruq* 29. Olga, his daughter, 12—Angqangaawen* 30. Maria, his daughter, 5—Tasluqaq* 31. Stefan, his son, 2 32. Vasilii Akakin (Akaken), 50* 33. Anna, his wife, 48—Aminakwaaq* 34. Olga Tenutechinun (Tengutaghnen), 3* 35. Grigorii Naginagun (Nagingaawen), 35* 36. Ioann, his son, 8—Angqallen* 37. Nikita Ankagun (Angqawen), 33* 38. Maria, his wife, 28—Ameywa* 39. Tatyana Ayugu (Ayugguq), 9* 40. Nikolai Tegegling (Taghyugergen), 23* 41. Ekaterina, his wife, 20—Mumigun* 42. Vasilii, their son, 1 43. Varvara Apa (Apa), 19* 44. Olga Uvuna (Uvunga), 18* 45. Olga Ukulta (Uqulta), 14* 46. Grigorii Yuskanikak (Yusquniighaq), 40* Total residents in the village of Avvan: 46, 25 males, 21 females

yupik transitions

Glossary: Geographic, Tribal, and Clan Names and Index of Yupik Terms Yupik place names and geographic names featured on modern and historical maps are capitalized and in regular font. Yupik clan, tribal, and community names are capitalized and italicized, with their spelling given in either Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) or Naukanski Yupik (NY). Other abbreviations: Ch = Chukchi; Im = Imtuk; In = Inupiaq; Nu = Nuvuqaq; Rus = Russian; Si = Sireniksi/ Sighineq; Sib = Siberian (common Siberian term of Russian or other origins); Sv = St. Lawrence Island; Un = Ungaziq. Yupik and other indigenous terms are listed in italics.

A aagra (CSY), insulated sleeping interior chamber in the dwelling (Russian, polog) Aasaq, abandoned village of the Avatmiit tribe near Cape Chukotsky Achon, Lake, lake and lagoon separated from the main body of Gulf of Anadyr aghnaasiq (CSY), “woman-like,” effeminate or homosexual man aghnalgun (CSY), aghnalgute (NY), matrilateral parallel cousin aghqesaghtuq (CSY), fall memorial ceremony, “feeding of the ancestors” Aghqullughmiit, clan of the Avatmiit tribe agi (CSY), sister-in-law, brother-in-law (affinal relative in Ego’s generation of opposite sex than Ego Agiggselghaq (CSY), “observation point”; local place name in Avan and Imtuk Agkughmiit (NY), “those living on the other side” Aglughhtughmiit, extinct clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit aiwan (Ch), Eskimo, coastal dweller (also applied to the maritime Chukchi) Aiwuanat (Ch), common name for the CSY-speaking Yupik groups used in the late 1800s Akileghmiit (NY), “those living on this side” Akingaghmiit (CSY), “people of the southern side” (in Sivuqaq/Gambell) Akulghaaghwiget, clan of the Ungazighmiit Akulighmiit (CSY), “people living in the middle section” (in Avan) Alayon (Alyaevo), Chukchi coastal camp (village) to the north of Senyavin Strait Alighpagmiit, extinct clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Alighpak, place name, also old communal underground house in Nuvuqaq Amarakaghmiit (NY), the Americans Amyak, place name and historical camp on Itygran Island Anadyr (Novo-Mariinsk), city; capital of the Chukchi Autonomous Area Anadyr River angak (CSY), matrilateral uncle Angetequq, abandoned Yupik village (camp) west of Provideniya Bay 331

332

yupik transitions

Angetequq Bay, small bay between the Imtuk Lagoon and Provideniya Bay angqallin (pl. angqallit, Ch), coastal dweller angutelgute (NY), patrilateral parallel cousin Anguyapit (NY), “real enemies”; the Americans, Amarakaghmiit Anguyat (NY), “enemies”; the Russians angyalek (CSY), anyalek (NY), boat owner angyaq (CSY), anyaq (NY), large skin boat Anyui Fair, historical Russian-Chukchi fair on the Anyui River, east of the Kolyma River Anyuwellkall, coastal village north of Uwellkal in Kresta Bay aqfaqughviik (CSY), running competition (specifically, running along a circular path) Arakamchechen Island Armaramket (Un), Aymaramket (Aymaramka) (Sv), clan of the Ungazighmiit and Sivuqaghmiit on St. Lawrence Island Asun, Asungu (Achon), historical camp near Lake Achon (Asun) ataata (CSY), patrilateral uncle atalgun (CSY, NY), patrilateral parallel cousin ateghaq, traditional ceremony marking the beginning of the spring hunting season Atqallghhaghmiit, tribal group of the southern Yupik Atqallghhaq, historical village west from Provideniya Bay Avan, village; historical center of the Avatmiit tribe Avatmiit, Yupik tribe awiitelleq (CSY), divorce ayuqllighhtaq (CSY), large skin boat made by the Alaska mainland Eskimo or by St. Lawrence islanders Aywaghmiit, neighborhood in Avan

B Bering Sea Bering Strait Big Diomede Island (Imaaqlliq)

C Cape Chaplin Cape Chukotsky Cape Dezhnev, see East Cape Cape Martens Cape Me’echken, see Me’echkyn Cape Povorotny , cape in the Gulf of Anadyr, north of the Anadyr River estuary Cape Prince of Wales Cape Serdtse-Kamen Chaplino, see Ungaziq, Old Chaplino Chukchi Peninsula Chukchi Sea

D Dezhnev (Dezhnevo, see Kengisqun) Diomede Islands (Imaaqlliq, Big Diomede; Ingaliq, Little Diomede)

E East Cape, English/American name for Cape Dezhnev Eggsughat, historical village on Cape Chaplin Egheghaq (Eggeggaq), see Plover, Plover Bay

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333

Emma Harbor, inner bay within the large Provideniya Bay fjord Engaghhpak, historical village near Cape Martens (Mertens), north of Cape Chaplin Enmelen, modern Chukchi community in the Gulf of Anadyr, west of Sireniki Estegraq, historical camp on Itygran Island

G Gambell (see Sivuqaq), modern community on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska Gergullaq, neighborhood in the village of Ungiyeramket Getlyangen Lagoon, major lagoon on the eastern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula south of Mechigmen Bay Gulf of Anadyr, large gulf in the northwestern section of the Bering Sea

I Ialiq (NY), Ingaliq (CSY), Little Diomede Island Iilvaantaghmiit, old clan in Sighineq Iilvaantaq, old underground house in Sighineq ilakwaaq (CSY), “relative,” “kinsman,” member of the same clan or kin group ilughaq (CSY, NY), cross-cousin Imaaqlliq (Imaglin), Big Diomede Island Imaqllighmiit (NY), Imaqllighmiut (In), Big Diomeders, residents of Big Diomede Island Imtugmiit (Im), tribal group of southern Yupik Imtugmiit (Nu), clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Imtuk (Imtun), village (community) west from Provideniya Bay Imturaaq, neighborhood in Imtuk (literally, “Little Imtuk”) Inchoun, Chukchi village (community) on the Chukchi Sea shore Ingaliq (CSY), Ialiq (NY), Little Diomede Island Ingleghnaghmiit, residents of the village of Ingleghnaq; clan in Gambell, St. Lawrence Island Ingleghnaq, historical village at the northeastern entrance of Tkachen Bay Inglisameen (NY), the Englishmen Itygran (Yttygran) Island, medium-size island in the Senyavin Strait area (Yupik name, Siqlluk) Ivaaqangkut, lineage name of the descendants of Ivaaqaq in Ungaziq Iyangkut, lineage name of the descendants of Iya in Imtuk and Sighineq

K Kamchatka Peninsula Kangii (Kangi, Kangee), historical village (camp) on St. Lawrence Island Kansinraygu, southern spit at the entrance of the Anadyr River estuary kazgi, kaigi, men’s communal house (see qaygi) Kengeghraq, historical name of an abandoned village, location unknown Kengisqun (Dezhnev), historical Chukchi community south of Cape Dezhnev (NY – Kangisquq) Kenlighaq, camp (village) west of Sighineq Kepenngughmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Kepennguq, neighborhood and underground house in Nuvuqaq Kigi (Kiginin, Kegenin), old village on Arakamchechen Island Kiighi (CSY), Kingingin (In), Keegte (NY), Wales, Alaska, Inupiat village on Cape Prince of Wales Kiiwalighmiit, “people of the distant, northeastern side”; neighborhood in Avan. Also, “people of the distant side,” another name for the Laakaghmiit clan in Ungaziq kilgaaqu (CSY), circular route for foot-racing in Sivuqaq (Gambell) King Island, island in the northern Bering Sea off Seward Peninsula, Alaska kinguneq (pl. kingunghii) (NY), bilateral offspring Kiwatangaghmiit, clan of the Sivuqaghmiit

334

yupik transitions

Kiwatangaq, abandoned (extinct) village on the Punuk Islands off St. Lawrence Island; literally, “far eastern side” Kiyaghnaghmiit (Kiyaghnaget), clan of the Qiwaaghmiit Kiyalighaghmiit, extinct clan of the Sivuqaghmiit Kiyalighaq, abandoned (extinct) village at Southeast Cape, St. Lawrence Island Kolyma River Kolyuchin Bay Kotzebue Sound, bay in the Chukchi Sea, named for Otto Kotzebue, Russian Navy explorer Kresta Bay, bay in the northernmost section of the Gulf of Anadyr kukhlyanka (Russianized Chukchi), men’s fur coat Kukulek, abandoned (extinct) village on St. Lawrence Island Kunga, abandoned village on Big Diomede Island Kungamiut (In), “people of Kunga,” residents of the village of Kunga Kurgu, abandoned village west of Sighineq Kurgugmiit, “people of Kurgu,” clan of the Sighineghmiit Kurupka River Kurupkeraq, abandoned village west of Qiwaaq

L Laakaghmiit, clan of the Ungazighmiit and the Sivuqaghmiit Laluramket (CSY), Russians, Europeans, Americans, Caucasians (from the Chukchi “mustached people”) Lavrentiya, town in northeastern Chukotka; administrative hub of the Chukchi District Lavrentiya Bay (St. Lawrence Bay) Lorino (Llugren), modern community on the Chukchi Peninsula

M Mackenzie River Mamruaghpagmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Mamruaghpak, historical village of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe to the north of Cape Dezhnev mangteghapik, traditional dome-shaped winter house with walrus-skin roofing; Chukchi, yaranga Maramakut, clan on St. Lawrence Island Mariinsky Post, see Anadyr, Novo-Mariinsk Mayngeguq (CSY), Meyngeran (Ch), camp (village) on Arakamchechen Island Mayngengettama, See Cape Povorotny Mayughyaghmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Mayughyaq, neighborhood in Nuvuqaq (Naukan) Mechigmen Bay Me’echkyn, Spit, sandy bar, long spit along the northern shore of the Gulf of Anadyr Megem-aghna (CSY), the Sea-Woman Meregta, Merughta, abandoned village on St. Lawrence Island north of Gambell Merughtamiit, Meregtemiit, clan of the Sivuqaghmiit Mikhailovsky Station, historical Russian station south of Cape Dezhnev built in the early 1900s

N naakaghhqaq (CSY), mother-in-law, father’s wife Naavneq, neighborhood in Imtuk Naayvaq, Lake, “lake” in CSY; large lake in the interior of Cape Chaplin; Yupik name for Lake “Estikhed” near the village of Avan nallqu (NY), kins, group of relatives Nangupagaghmiit, tribal group in southeastern Chukotka; clan of the Sivuqaghmiit

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Nangupagaq, historical village on St. Lawrence Island east of Gambell napaqaq (CSY), vertical pole, usually of a whale mandible or wood Napaqutaghmiit, tribal group of southern Yupik; residents of the village of Napaqutaq Napaqutaq, historical village on Itygran Island Napsungaq, neighborhood in Imtuk Nasqaghmiit, clan of the Sivuqaghmiit Nasqaq, historical village on St. Lawrence Island east of Gambell nasquneggqeleq (CSY), ceremony of the “heads” at the end of the spring hunting season Naukan, historical Yupik village closed in 1958; see Nuvuqaq Nengiighaghmiit, clan of the Sivuqaghmiit Nengiighaq, historical village on St. Lawrence Island east of Gambell nenglu (CSY), traditional semisubterranean dwelling (NY, englu) Nengluvaget, clan of the Ungazighmiit New Chaplino (Novo-Chaplino), modern community in Tkachen Bay (since 1958) Ngepawyingkut, lineage name of the descendants of Ngepawyi in Imtuk and Sireniki Nikolaevsky Station, historical Russian station built in Lavrentiya Bay in the early 1900s Nome, modern town on Seward Peninsula, Alaska Noruisemeen (NY), the Norwegians nuna (CSY, NY), “land,” “place,” “village” nunaaq (CSY), “village,” “camp,” “town” Nunagmiit, residents of Nunak; clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Nunak, historical village of the Nuvuqaghmiit south of Cape Dezhnev nunaleggtaq (CSY), nunalek (NY), “possessing the land,” “master of the land,” “elder of the village”; family or clan perceived as the first settler or founder of the village nunalgun (CSY, pl. nunalgutet), co-villager, neighbor Nunanghighaq, small island with walrus haul-out in the Senyavin Strait area; Ch, Nuneangan nunivak (CSY), rosewort, Rhodiola atropurpurea Nunivak, island in the Bering Sea off the coast of West Alaska Nunligran (CSY, Nunlegraq), modern Chukchi community in the Gulf of Anadyr, west of Sireniki Nunyama, Nunyamo, historical Chukchi community at the northern entrance of Lavrentiya Bay Nutapelmen, mixed Yupik-Chukchi community in Kresta Bay Nutepelmen (Nutepenmen), Chukchi community on the arctic coast of the Chukchi Peninsula Nuvuq, historical village of the Qiwaaghmiit tribe, east of Qiwaaq Nuvuqaghmiit (NY), tribe; residents of “Nuvuqaq” (Naukan); CSY, Nevuqaghmiit Nuvuqaq, historical village at Cape Dezhnev; main hub of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe nuyekliq (CSY), the eldest in the family or group of relatives Nyghchegen, historical Chukchi village south of Mechigmen Bay

O Omolon River

P paagani (CSY), “up there,” “up in the North” (from paagna, that one to the north, away from the water or up above) Pagalighmiit (Pagaliit), neighborhood, “northern side,” in the village of Ungaziq Pagileq, historical village on the southern side of Arakamchechen Island Pakaghmiit, small clan (?), clan fragment (?) of the Laakaghmiit clan Pangagmiit, extinct clan of the Ungazighmiit Pangawyingkut, lineage name of the descendants of Pangawyi in Sireniki Patkulluq, camp in the Gulf of Anadyr, south of Uwellkal Pe’ekit, historical name of the Nuvuqaghmiit used in the 1800s

336

yupik transitions

Pekuutangkut, lineage name of the descendants of Pekuutaq in Qiwaaq and New Chaplino Pengeghqaghmiit (CSY), “those living on a small hill,” neighborhood in Avan Penkigney Bay, large fjord bay in the Senyavin Strait area perara (CSY), (Chukchi loanword) dish of finely minced meat (pâté) with broth Pinakul, historical site on the northern side of Lavrentiya Bay, closed around 1970, Chuk., Pinekwen Plover, historical site in Plover Bay, closed in 1959 (named after HMS Plover) Plover Bay, small bay inside Provideniya Bay fjord; name of the historical Yupik community of Egheghaq used in the late 1800s and early 1900s Port Clarence, large bay on the southwestern side of the Seward Peninsula, Alaska Porta (CSY), Provideniya Bay (from Russian “port”) Provideniya Bay, large fjord bay in the southern Chukchi Peninsula pualla (NY), traditional whale festival Pugughileghmiit, clan of the Sivuqaghmiit, “people of/from Pugughileq” Pugughileq, historical community at Southwest Cape, St. Lawrence Island Pungughmiit, extinct clan of the Sivuqaghmiit made up of the residents of the Punuk Islands Punuk Islands, group of small islands off the eastern shore of St. Lawrence Island Pu’uten (Ch), historical Chukchi community south of Cape Dezhnev (NY, Piightuq; CSY, Puvuggtaq; Rus, Pouten)

Q Qaasqaq, neighborhood in Qiwaaq Qangeghsaq, historical extinct village on the Punuk Islands off St. Lawrence Island qangigaq (CSY), patrilateral nephew for a male Ego qaygi (NY), communal semisubterranean house Qellineq, central communal space in the village of Sivuqaq (Gambell) Qemiighaq, neighborhood in Qiwaaq Qepluwyingkut, lineage name of the descendants of Qeplyi in Imtuk and Sireniki Qequaghmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Qequaq, neighborhood and underground house in Nuvuqaq Qiighqaghaq (CSY), “little island”; small island in the Senyavin Strait Qiwaaghmiit, southern Yupik tribe Qiwaaq, historical village, center of the Qiwaaghmiit tribe, east of Cape Chukotsky Quyngegergen (CSY, Quyngiiq), camp in Kresta Bay north of Uwellkal

R ramka (pl. ramket) (CSY), (Chukchi loanword) “people,” “community,” “clan” Repatengu (CSY, Patkulluq), camp in the Gulf of Anadyr south of Uwellkal Romulet Bay, inland bay (fjord) in the Senyavin Strait area Russighmiit (NY), the Russians Russkaya Koshka, narrow spit separating Anadyr River estuary from the Gulf of Anadyr; see also Sunraygun

S Saanlegmiit, “people of Saanlek,” clan of the Sighineghmiit Saanlek (Chenlin), historical village of the Sighineghmiit tribe west of Sighineq Saghraghmiit, extinct clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Sagnaperaghet (CSY), “beggars,” nickname of the Laakaghmiit clan among the Ungazighmiit Sanighmelnguut (CSY), “those living across (the main line),” clan of the Ungazighmiit and the Sivuqaghmiit Sanluvik, historical village of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe north of Cape Dezhnev Savoonga, modern community on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska; see also Sivungaq, Sivunga

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Sawqlleghmiit, clan of the Qiwaaghmiit Saygu, name of the old underground house in Sighineq Saygughmiit, “people of/from Saygu,” former (extinct?) clan of the Sighineghmiit Seward Peninsula Shishmaref, modern Inupiat community on the northern shore of Seward Peninsula, Alaska Sighineghmiistun, language of the Sighineghmiit tribe, “Sirenikski”/”Old Sirenik” language Sighineghmiit, tribe of the southern Yupik Sighineq, historical name of the old Yupik village west of Provideniya Bay, center of the Sighineghmiit tribe; see also Sireniki Sighugmiit, “people of Sighuk,” neighborhood name in Napaqutaq Sighuk, neighborhood (“small hill”) in Napaqutaq on Itygran Island Sighunkut, lineage name of the descendants of Sighu in Ungaziq/New Chaplino Sighunpaget, clan of the Ungazighmiit Sikneq, abandoned (extinct) village on the southern side of St. Lawrence Island Silaakshaghmiit, “people of/from Silaakshaq,” neighborhood (clan?) in Sighineq Silaakshaq, neighborhood and old underground house in Sighineq Singhaghmiit, “people of/from Singhaq,” former clan (?) of the Sighineghmiit Singhaq, abandoned historical village west of Sighineq Siqllugmiit, “people of/from Siqlluk,” residents of the village of Siqlluk; clan on St. Lawrence Island Siqlluk, historical community on Itygran Island, closed in 1950 Siquvek, abandoned (extinct) village on the southern side of St. Lawrence Island Sireniki, modern community west of Provideniya Bay; see also Sighineq Sitqunaghmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit Sitqunaq, neighborhood in Nuvuqaq sivanllek (CSY), “old man,” “old woman,” senior member in the clan Sivughat, historical camp in the Senyavin Strait area Sivungaq, Sivunga, CSY name of the modern community of Savoonga; see also Savoonga Sivuqaghmiit, tribe; also, people of the village of Sivuqaq (Gambell) Sivuqaq (CSY), St. Lawrence Island; also Yupik name for the modern community of Gambell Sunraygun, Chukchi name for long spit at the northern entrance of the Anadyr River estuary; see also Russkaya Koshka

T Tanalluq, historical (lore?) community in the Senyavin Strait area Tasighmiit, tribal group Tasiq, historical village in the Tkachen Bay; Ch, Chechen or Sesin Teflleq, historical village (community) on Cape Chaplin north of Ungaziq Tekeghaq, neighborhood in Qiwaaq Teller, modern Alaskan Inupiaq community on the Seward Peninsula Tevyaghaq, historical camp in the Senyavin Strait area Tkachen Bay (Tasiq), large fjord bay in the southeastern Chukchi Peninsula torbasa (Rus., Sib), skin boots Tugraghmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit

U Ualeghmiit (NY, CSY), “people of/from Ualeq”; Yupik name for the residents of Uelen Uelen, modern community to the north of Cape Dezhnev; NY, Ualeq Ugaliit (Uwaliit), clan of the Ungazighmiit; clan of the Sivuqaghmiit Ugriileq, village in Emma Harbor, Russian adaptation of Ureliki umiilek (CSY), umialek (NY), “leader,” “strong man,” “wealthy man” uneggken (CSY), “from the shore side,” “from the sea side”

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Unegkumiit, clan of the Ungazighmiit; neighborhood (southern side) in Ungaziq Ungazighmiit, tribe of the southern Yupik Ungaziq, the largest Yupik community located at Cape Chaplin ungipaghaatet (CSY), traditional stories or legends ungipamsuget (CSY), narratives and historical accounts centered on real events and people Ungiyeramket, historical village on the northern side of Cape Chaplin north of Ungaziq uqaghllistun (Si), uqeghhllistun (CSY), Sirenikski language Uqighyaghaq, historical camp on the southern side of Cape Chaplin Uskuughnaghmiit, “people of/from Uskuughnaq,” neighborhood name in Sighineq Uskuughnaq, old underground house and neighborhood in Sighineq Uuggsaghat, historical camp on the southern side of Cape Chaplin Uwatangaghmiit (CSY), “people of the ‘farther’ or northern side” (in Sivuqaq/Gambell) Uwellkal, modern Yupik community on the western shore of the Gulf of Anadyr Uyaghaaq, historical village of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe north of Nuvuqaq Uyaghaghmiit, clan of the Nuvuqaghmiit uyghu (CSY), matrilateral nephew for the male Ego

V Vankarem, Chukchi community on the Arctic coast of Chukotka Vladimirsky Station, historical Russian station in Emma Harbor built in the early 1900s

W Wallqallek, historical village of the Nuvuqaghmiit tribe south of Cape Dezhnev Wallqaraghmiit, “earth dwellers”; name for the former residents of the underground houses (Ch, wallqar) Walwuraghmiit, clan of the Sighineghmiit Walwuraq, neighborhood, group of old underground houses in Sighineq Wellqela (CSY), see Uwellkal Wute’en (Ch), historical name for the village of Sighineq Wute’entsy, historical name for the Sighineghmiit tribe used in the late 1800s and early 1900s

Y Yakuq (Yakun), historical village of the Sighineghmiit tribe west from Sighineq Yandanay, Yandagay, historical Chukchi village at the southern entrance of Lavrentiya Bay Yanrakynnot, modern town on the Chukchi Peninsula yaranga (Ch, Rus), skin-covered house (tent) Yarga, historical camp on Arakamchechen Island Yoni Lake, large lake in the interior of the Chukchi Peninsula Yuget (CSY, NY), “people” (plural); introduced by Bogoras as self-designation for the Yupik nation (Yuit) yupigestun (CSY), Yupik (Siberian/St. Lawrence Island Eskimo) language Yupiget (CSY, NY), Yupik self designation (“the real people”) Yuwaget, cliffs, place name at Cape Chukotsky

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Index Page numbers with an n denote an endnote; f refers to a figure, and t refers to a table. A aagra (Yupik, inner chamber), 132, 175, 183 Aasaq, 26, 27 Abkhazians, kinship of, 152 acculturation in Soviet era life, 253–254 Ackerman, Robert E., 217 acronyms, xvi adoption into clans/lineages, 161–162 of orphans, 177–178 into tribes, 72 adult mortality, 177–178 affiliation clan, 41–42, 56–57, 69, 103, 254, 290 ethnic, 47 neighborhood, 131 tribal, 41–42, 103, 290 Aghayeegheq, 114 Aghnaasiq (transgender person), 184, 185f Aghqullughmiit clan about, 76, 78 boat crews, 165 neighborhoods, 130–131 social resilience of, 115 Aglu (shaman), 264–265 Aglughhtughmiit clan, 61 Agnalkvasak, Vera (Aghnallqwaasaq), 57, 100, 306 Ahwoonmool. See Avan (Eunmyn/Ahwoonmool) Aivangu, 280 Aiwa’nat people/language, 20–21 Aiwan(y)/Aiwuans. See Ungazighmiit tribe (Aiwan(y)/ Aiwuans/Chaplintsy) Aka, 171 Akatagen, 99–100 Akiiqaq, 164 Akingaghmiit, 129 Akuken, Nina (Akuqen), 274–275, 306 Akulghaaghwiget clan about, 87, 90 festivals, 157 Native couple, 55f in Teflleq, 94 winter festival, 61 Alalawen as school interpreter, 236 as “Soviet” leader, 229, 231f Alaska Eskimo groups identified in, 20

Natives Asian groups associated with, 20 Cape Dezhnev interactions with, 104–105 devastation of, 10, 14 linguistics, 14, 20, 42 tribal disintegration, 295 Yupik association with, 19–20, 198–199 Old Bering Sea confederation, 219 sale of, 10 alcohol sales, 14, 283 Aleut, 197 Alighpagmiit clan, 54, 61, 119n15 Aliiqan (“master of the land”), 100–101, 133, 134 alliance, intergroup alternatives to, 294–295 against the American Eskimo, 199 evidence of, 208, 218 Old Bering Sea confederation, 219 Alowa, Nelson, 246–247, 247f Alpen (Allpen) about, 306 on aghnaasiq, 184 on exogamy, 159 on lineage, 161 on patrilineality, 57–58 on spouse-exchange, 182 on tribal groups, 50 on Yuupeni’s marriage, 108 Alutiiq Eskimo (“Kodiak”), 196, 197, 198 ambilineal descent, 58, 160–161 American Civil War, 10 American commerce, in contact-traditional society, 9–10 Amfilokhi, Father, 12, 328–330 Amyak, 30 Anadyr, Gulf of maps of, xxxf, 31f, 68f, 98f, 229f shoreline settlement, 67, 91, 94–95 Anadyr city, 96–97 Anadyr District (okruga), 11–12 Anadyr River settlement, 99–100 Anadyrsk fortress, 208 Anaghaghhaq, 164 Anagikaq, 253 Anaka, Zinaida, 53, 55f, 144 ancestors ceremonies for, 121 feeding, 69, 133–134, 255 373

374

ancestors (continued) honoring, 72, 157–158, 158f, 257 ancient villages, 45 Angaatenganwan, 167–168 Angetequq, 49–50 Anglupa, 164 angyalek. See boat captains (angyalek) Angyaleq, 253 Ankana, Anna (Angqanga) about, 306 on boats, 143 on clans, 71, 72 on divorce and remarriage, 183 on procreational spouse-exchange, 182 on reindeer, 147 on sororate marriages, 180 on underground houses, 69 on whaleboats, 169 Ankatagin, Vasilii (Angqatagen), 27f, 55, 306 anthropological commentary, 258–259 anti-American hysteria, 262 anti-shaman campaign, 232–235 Anuuqen, 278 Anyuwellkal, 97 Apatiki, Ralph (Anaggun), 120n16, 188n10, 306 Arakamchechen Island Ekker’s eviction from, 232–234 linguistic border, 197 settlements, 30, 91, 196 Yupik communities on, 31f Arinaun/Aringaawen, 100, 101f, 131, 306 armaments (Native), 198, 211, 212f Armaramket clan about, 202 boat crews, 112, 164 clan size, 87 in Imtuk, 73 mainland roots, 111 marriage partners, 53 settlements, 100–101 on St. Lawrence Island, 109 armor, slat, 211, 212f, 222n4 Arutiunov, Sergei A., 217 Ashkamakin, Ivan (Ashkamaken) about, xxvf, 306 on ancestor honor rituals, 60, 157–158 on blind shaman, 185–186 on Cape Chaplin, 93 on drifting away on ice floes, 135 on festivals, 132–133, 140, 166 on hunting crews, 90 on Mayngeguq, 91–92 on Shaman Ekker, 232–233 on travel “lodging,” 143–144 on tribal territorial divisions, 125 on whale hunting challenges, 126 Asiatic Eskimos. See Yupik assimilation, population changes from, 36, 209 Asun (Achon or Ech’ut), 24, 75 Asunga/Assoonga, 112 Ataangali, 91–92 Ataata, 164

yupik transitions

Ataayaghhaq, 247 Atagen as boat captain, 164 as village head, 101 Atatuga as boat captain, 165 as “master of the land,” 132 Atelkun, Dmitri (Atellqun) about, 306 on festivals, 156–157 on kinship, 53 on marriage partners, 159 on migration, 96–97, 153 Atqallghhaghmiit about, 25 festivals, 157 in Imtuk, 73 as tribal group, 49, 50 tribal group merger, 51, 62 Atqallghhaq (Akatlak), 25 avalanche at Plover Bay, 282 Avan (Eunmyn/Ahwoonmool) about, 26, 27, 76–80 chronological strata, 63 closure, 250, 269, 282 house, interior view, 79f migration to Imtuk, 73 “Native council” in, 228 neighborhoods in, 78–79, 78f, 130 parishioner records (1910), 328–330 view of, 78f Avatmiit tribe about, 26–27, 76–80 after 1880, 111 avalanche, displacement by, 282 Chukchi trading partners, 145–146 clans, 56–57, 62 endogamy, 46 festivals, 156–157 mainland roots, 111 population of, 36, 46 settling among, 91 social revitalization of, 38 tribal lands of, 45 Ayaanga, 280 Ayatkha (Ayatghha), 154, 156, 306 Aymaramket (Aymaramka) clan, 167, 202 Aymergen, Flora Nemaayaq (Yupik elder), 202 Aynana (Aynganga), 180, 306 Aynana, Lyudmila (Aynganga), 146, 306 Aywaghmiit, 76, 79 B baleen as boat captain’s profit, 168 cooperatives’ use for, 238 obsolescence of, 95 price drop, 9 as trade commodity, 9, 238 as valued commodity, 86–87 whaleboats in exchange for, 170 bay expansion zones/towns, 251–255

Index

Belugin, Captain, 12 Bering, Vitus, 190, 205 Bering Strait area climate of, xxix communities in, 35f economic system of, 9–10 Ice Curtain in, 262 maps of, xxxf, 31f, 229f U.S. Confederate military action, 10 visiting across the international boundary, 300 Yupik in, 104 Bering Strait reunion, 300–301 Big Diomede Island about, 34–37 abandonment of, 250, 271 as haven from Soviet administration, 232 migration to/from, 120n19 “Native council” on, 228–229 people/language, 20 population of, 203, 205 U.S.-Soviet border and, 262 view of, 37f, 116f Yupik settlement of, 108, 113–114 See also Imaaqlliq (Imaglin/Imelin/Big Diomede) Billings, Joseph about, 190–191 Kolyma River trip, 200–201 voyage (1791), 197–199 Birnirk culture, 218–220 birth place in social model, 41 Blassi, 167–168 blubber for heating/cooking, 176 boarding schools, 259, 288, 296 Boas, Franz, 46 boat captains (angyalek) about, 131, 163–164 decline of, 288–290 distribution after hunt, 168 boat crews about, 154, 156, 162–171 as clan size predictor, 107 decline of, 288–290, 296 recruiting, 60 boats ban in selected areas, 284 landing areas, 121 launching, 167f racks, 124f servicing, 264 for serving collectives, 254 state-owned vessels, 283, 291n9 Bogoras, Waldemar on Eskimo names, 20 folklore research, xviii, 210–213 on languages, 203 population shifts, 207 on Quwaaren, 87 surveys by, 191 on Tasiq, 28 in Ungaziq, 90–91

375

Ungaziq census (1901), 312–315 Yupik language teaching, advocacy for, 260 on Yupik name changes, 261–262 Bolshevik Revolution (November 7), 279, 291n8 Booshu, 168 borders. See territories/borders boundaries, 20th century changes, 67 branches (kin groups), 161 breeding population size, 46 British wintering (Emma Harbor, 1848–1849), 192–195 Bronshtein, Mikhail, 218 Burch, Ernest S., 181, 190 Burk, Ivan, 16 Burnham, John, 16, 18nn10–11 Bychkov, Vasilii, 12, 80 C camp committees, 227 Canada Eskimo groups identified in, 20 government apologies, 288, 292n14 Inuit relocation, 286 languages, 42 caribou, climate cooling and, 209 Caribou Inuit (Canada), 209 Carpendale, Charley, 13 cemeteries. See graveyards census ethnic groups in (1926), 261 Russian (1897), 20–21, 207 Sivuqaq (1900), 316–327 Soviet (1926), 235 Ungaziq (1901), 312–315 U.S. (1900–1930), 109, 113–114 See also dogsled surveys Central Siberian (Chaplinski) kinship terminology, 151, 308–309 Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) language about, 47–48, 117n2 distinctions, 48 dominance of, 75 geographic area in 1700s, 199–200, 201 in Imtuk, 72, 74 speakers’ descent group, 58 word lists, 223n11 Yupik language teaching based on, 260 central/secondary tribal settlements, 123 ceremonial life. See ritual life Chaplin, Cape, 8, 86–94 Chaplino. See Ungaziq (Unyin/Indian Point/ Chaplino) Chaplintsy people. See Ungazighmiit tribe (Aiwan(y)/Aiwuans/Chaplintsy) Chechen. See Tasiq (Sesin/Chechen) Chichlo, Boris, 273 child care burdens, 297 Christianity, disappearance of, 266 Chukchi borders of, 30 contacts with, 145–146

376

Chukchi (continued) as distinctive from Yupik, 20 expansion (1700–1770), 203, 207–209, 210 language, 14, 201 location of, xxix–xxx marriages with, 137–138 “Native District,” 228–229 partnerships with, 146 population of, xxix–xxx Soviet authorities vs., 235 spiritual movement, 233 Yupik, assimilation of, 209 Chukchi Autonomous Area, xxx Chukchi National Area, 238, 243 Chukchi Native District about, 12 collective farms, 250t “Congress of Native Councils,” 227 cooperatives, 237 map of, 229f population of, 249t Chukchi Peninsula maps of, xxxf, 31f, 285f population of, 269t trading posts on, 15t as whaling vessel stopover, 8 Yupik communities on, 31f, 285f Chukchi Sea, location of, 35f Chukchi-Yupik trade jargon, 193 clans about, 42, 51–61 absence in tribal groups, 50 adoption into, 161–162 in Avan, 76, 78 boat crews, 164–165 disintegration of, 61–62, 288–290, 296 in dual divisions, 129 founding, 131–132 locus of, 65t of Nuvuqaghmiit, 107–108 patrilineality of, xvii of Qiwaaghmiit, 84 reintegration of, 62–64 settlements, 123 of Sighineghmiit, 68–70 in Sivuqaq, 64n5 in social model, 41–42 solidarity of, 295 territoriality, 153 as tribal segments, 45, 47 20th century changes, 71–72 of Ungazighmiit, 87, 90 “class enemies” hunt, 230–232 climate cooling, prey changes and, 209 clothing European fashion demands, 14, 95 Native manufactured, 107, 112f, 246 reindeer hides for, 142, 145 skin/tatoos, 17, 87 summer, 185f winter, 5f

yupik transitions

coastal Chukchi about, 19–20 language of, 196 linguistics, 199, 201 underground house of, 197 Cold War antagonism and isolation of, 33 onset (1947), 262 U.S.-Soviet border security during, 271, 291n3 collective farms era of 1933–1955 about, 243, 245–246 bay expansion zones/towns, 251–255 clan-lineage fragmentation, 295 community consolidation, 248–251 cultural revolution, 259–261 Glavsevmorput and the Gulag, 243–245 modernization summary, 263–265 old society, demise of, 255–259 tribal areas and, 248 U.S.-Soviet border, sealing, 261–262 number/consolidation of, 250t, 268–269 collectivization, 103, 237–238 Collins, Henry, 217 commercial trapping, 14 Committee on the North about, 227–228, 242n2 liquidation of, 243 communal tents, 193, 222n2 Communist Revolution, “benevolent changes of,” 2 communities annual rituals, 132 changes in, 21 location of, 22f, 31f, 35f locus of, 65t population of, 23t, 118t social model fit, 41 See also villages community affairs exchange and contacts, 134–147 “master of the land,” 131–134 neighborhoods, 127–131 villages, 121–127 conclusion, 148–149 competition among clans, 59 among communities, 96 athletic, 110f, 127, 129f, 140, 141f, 142, 143f, 246 dancing, 140 conjugal families definition, 171 in Sivuqaq, 173t transitioning to, 176, 186 in Ungaziq, 173t variants of, 177 construction shortages and family structure impact, 175, 188n11 for state-sponsored development, 269 Contact-Traditional Society (1900–1923) about, 5f, 16–17 American commerce, 9–10 beginnings of (origination time), 221

Index

Contact-Traditional Society (1900–1923) (continued) definition/criteria for, 4, 6 gold rush, 10–11 “old society” myth, 1–3 and Russian administration, 11–13 and Soviet regime, 14–16 traders, 13–14 whaling vessels, 6–9 conclusion of, 293–301 convict labor, 244 Cook, James, 190, 223n14, 274 cooperatives, Soviet, 103, 237–238, 239f Cossacks (Russian militia), xxii, 6, 12, 191 cousins cross-cousins (ilughaq), 40, 159, 213 marriage prohibition, 158–159, 213 matrilineal (aghnalgun), 159 parallel, 40, 158–159 patrilineal (atalgun), 153, 159, 174, 179, 213 terminology, 40 CSY (Central Siberian Yupik) language. See Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) language “cultural bases,” Soviet, 251–252 cultural revolution, Soviet, 259–261 cultural survival mechanisms diversity, 297–300 resilience, 294–297 Soviet era, early years of, 242 D Dall, William H., 38n4, 46, 191 Dalstroi (Far Eastern Construction Trust), 243–244, 265n1, 267 dancing competitive, 140 at home, 221f in New Chaplino, 298f in Shishmaref, 302n4 staged, 5f Daurkin, Nikolai, 198 daycare centers, 288, 289f, 296 decorative art carving, 213, 218–220 Denmark, government apologies for relocation, 288 descent rules, lineages, 158–160 Dezhnev (Kengisqun) Nuvuqaghmiit approval as relocation site, 273 Russian trading post, 239f Soviet cooperatives, 237 trading post at, 11f Dezhnev, Cape, 35f, 104–108 Dezhnev, Semyon (Semen), 208 Diadenko, 12, 13 diglossia, 260–261 Dikov, Nikolai N., 217 Diomede Islands about, 108, 113–114 ecology of, 104 population of, 46 social geography of, 104–105 walrus migration, 105, 107 See also Big Diomede Island; Little Diomede Island

377

disabilities, Yupik outlook on, 184–185 displacement of indigenous settlements. See relocation diversity, cultural survival and, 297–300 divorce, 183–184 dogsled surveys, 16, 20, 191 See also census Dolgikh, Boris O., 207 downstreaming, 189–190, 225 drums/drum music, 17, 257, 265, 300–301 dual divisions, 127, 128f, 129, 149n4 E ecological template. See topography economic role of lineages, 154, 155f, 156 economic system, Bering Strait area, 9–10 education boarding schools, 259, 288, 296 daycare centers, 288, 289f, 296 earliest, 12 Lutheran school, 114 Russian language skills, 260–261 Russian schoolhouse, 75f, 94, 95f school boys, xxiiif Sivuqaq schoolhouse, 129f Soviet, 236, 259–260 on St. Lawrence Island, 17n4 Ungaziq schoolhouse, 247 egalitarianism, 165–166 Eggsughat, 30 Egheghaq (Rirak/Plover Bay/Ian) abandonment of, 80 as Avan satellite, 26, 27, 76 epidemics in, 76 houses, 77f, 78f migration to/from, 93–94 residents, 77f summer tents on, 27f See also Plover Einetegin, Oleg (Eyngetegen), 256–257, 306 Ekker, Shaman (Akr, Aker), 232–234 elderly loners, 184 Emma Harbor as Avan satellite, 76, 80 British wintering (1848–1849), 192–195, 222 deep-sea port at, 252 district office at, 12 Soviet border service at, 236 summer house at, 81f trading post at, 96 Ugriileq at, 127, 187 See also Ugriileq (Ureliki/Woorel/Wugrel/ Gugrelen) endogamy about, 45–46 breakdown of, 61–62 challenges of, 74 in clans/lineages, 52–53, 152 in tribal groups, 50–51 village preferences, 123 English transliteration, xxx English-based pidgin, 8, 108

378

Epekaak, 171 epidemics, 33, 76, 178 Ermeremket (Masighmiit), 202–203 Eskimo (Eskaleut) language family, xxix “Eskimo Land,” end of (1955–1960) reforms, 267–270 relocation patterns, 270–272 village closures. See under villages aftermath, 284, 286–288 summary, 288–290 Eskimo language, 200 See also Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) language; Iñupiaq; Naukanski Yupik (NY); Sirenikski (S) language; Western/Central Alaska Yup’ik Eskimo Native District about, 227–230 cessation of, 238 “class enemies” hunt in, 232 justification for, 261 liquidation of, 262 map of, 229f Ungaziq as hub, 251 “Eskimo” social organization, 39–41 “Eskimos of the Chukchi Area,” xxx Eskimosy (“Eskimo”). See Yupik Estegraq, 30 ethnic cleansing by Chukchi, 36 ethnic groups (1926), 261 ethnic tradition, definition, 258 ethnohistory, xxvi, xxvii Eunmyn. See Avan (Eunmyn/Ahwoonmool) European-Native marriages, 12, 80, 138 exchange and contacts, 134–147 exogamy, 148, 158–160 extended families construction materials shortage and, 175 definition, 171–172 erosion of, 175, 186 in Sivuqaq, 173t Soviet era changes, 259 in Ungaziq, 173t in Ungaziq/Sivuqaq, 175f variants of, 176–177 extramarital births, 160, 177, 254 F family and kinship boat captains. See boat captains (angyalek) boat crews. See boat crews disintegration of, 288–290, 296 family at Emma Harbor, 187f family types of, 171–178 fragmentation. See fragmented families lineages. See lineages marriage. See marriage obsolescence of, 264 solidarity, 295 Soviet era changes, 259 Soviet-American border closure, 262 famine of 1878–1880, 33, 56

yupik transitions

demographic changes from, 36, 53, 108–113 marine mammal overhunting as cause, 8 Qiwaaghmiit and, 28 as resettlement motivation, 93–94 Sighineghmiit and, 25 Soviet forced labor and, 244 on St. Lawrence Island, 32, 33 Far Eastern Construction Trust. See Dalstroi (Far Eastern Construction Trust) fashion changes, European, 95–96 Fedorov, Mikhail, 190 female impersonators, 184, 185f Fenton, William N., 189 festivals evolution of, 259 intertribal, 140, 141f, 142, 143f lineage, 156–158, 263 order of, 61, 132 in Soviet era, 256–257, 263 whale, 188n7 winter, 61, 156–157 filiation alternate, 160–162 clan, 59–60, 74, 158 matrilineal (maternal), 160, 290 patrilineality about, 138 Aghqullughmiit, 76, 78 in diversity restoration, 112, 113 in Imtuk, 74 male dominance and, 56–58 “master of the land” and, 132–133 out of wedlock births and, 160 preservation of, 115 Qiwaaghmiit, 84 Sighineghmiit, 72 on St. Lawrence Island, 109 First Eskimo District Congress of Soviets, 229 five as sacred symbolic number, 163–164 fjord zone, 68–86 folklore evolution of, 258–259 in social system reconstruction, 210–213 food supply famine. See famine hunting. See hunting marine mammals. See marine mammals Soviet era changes, 247 Forshtein, Aleksandr S., 52, 66n11 fortresses of boulders, 211, 214f, 224n25 in Punuk-Era, 217 Russian, 208 fragmented families definition, 172 increase in, 186 in Sivuqaq, 173t in Ungaziq, 173t variants of, 177–178 Franklin, John, missing ships of, 192 fraternal boat crews, 163–164

Index

fraternal joint families, 171, 173t, 174–176 Friendship Flight, 300, 302n3 fur farming, 269 fur trapping/trade, 14, 95–96, 101, 103 G Gambell. See Sivuqaq (Gambell) Gambell, Vene, 17n4 Gapana (Gapanga), 93, 306 garbage pits, as research information source, 4 gatherings, intertribal, 140, 141f, 142, 143f genealogy in lineage, 42–43 gens, 52 Giddings, James L., Jr., 40 Gimangqawaawen (“master of the land”). See “master of the land” (nunaleggtaq) Glavsevmorput (Northern Sea Route administration), 243–245, 252 glossary, 331–338 gold mining, 10–11, 243–244 Gondatti, Nikolai L. linguistics work, 20, 38n3 population counts, 207 surveys by, 191 government apologies for relocation, 288, 292n14 government subsidies, collective farms, 245 “grammar” of social organization, 42 graveyards after relocation, 275, 278 ancient, 218–220 clan sections of, 60 village sites for, 121, 123, 158 Great Depression (1929), 103 Great Reform, 267–270, 283, 288, 296 Greenland government apologies, 292n14 Inuit relocation, 286 “Norse expulsion” from, 210 group solidarity as survival mechanism, 295 Gugrelen. See Ugriileq (Ureliki/Woorel/Wugrel/ Gugrelen) Gulag, 243–245, 264 Gvozdev, Ivan, 190 H half-breeds, 138, 139f “half-savage aliens,” 2, 4 Harriman Expedition, 76 Hawley, R. N., 316–327 HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company), 16 homosexuals, 184 Hooper, William Hulme, 192–193, 195, 203, 222n1 hospitality along travel routes, 143–144 hostilities/safety issues among Natives, 193, 198–199, 224n26 Russian-Chukchi, 207–209 towards Cook, 223n14 houses in 1800s, 193, 197 Avatmiit, 26, 27f communal, 54–55, 204f

379

construction of, 32f on Diomede Islands, 37f in Egheghaq, 77f, 78f interior view of, 79f lineages and, 153–154, 155f mobility of, 71–72 in New Chaplino, 281f Nuvuqaghmiit, 34f, 106f, 277f in Qiwaaq, 28 Sighineghmiit, 21, 24, 24f, 122f state-controlled, 289, 290 Tasighmiit, 28 terminology for, 198 underground. See underground houses (nenglu) Ungazighmiit, 3f, 29f, 30, 87 Hudson, William, 7f Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), 16 Hughes, Charles Campbell, xvii, 52 hunting boat captains. See boat captains (angyalek) boat crews. See boat crews camps, 123 egalitarianism, 165–166 ice floe hazards, 135–136 of marine mammals, 105, 107, 125–126, 245 mechanized, 264 overhunting, 8, 283, 291n9 prey, types of, 125–126, 209 in Sighineq, 298f during Soviet era about, 254 cooperatives, 237–238 impediments to, 236 plan targets, 245 state-owned vessels for, 291n9 subsistence whaling ban, 288 tribal areas, 45, 49 I Ialiq (Ingaliq). See Little Diomede Island Ian. See Egheghaq (Rirak/Plover/Ian) Ice Curtain, 262 ice floes, hunters lost on, 135–136 identity change of, 63, 298 clan, 103, 108 ethnic, 261 mixed, 85 tribal, 48–49, 79–80 Yupik, 48–49, 138, 289, 297 Iena, Semen (Yinga), 211, 306 Iilvaantaghmiit clan, 68–69 Iilvaantaq, 69, 71 ilakwaaq, 70 Ilutaq, 164 Ilyin (kolkhoz chairman), 279 Imaaqlliq (Imaglin/Imelin/Big Diomede) about, 35 closure, 269 population of, 113–114 view of, 116f

380

Imaklik (Imaaqlliq), 160, 162, 306 Imelin. See Imaaqlliq (Imaglin/Imelin/Big Diomede) imported goods. See trade goods Imtugmiit about, 25–26, 26f, 72–74 population of, 36, 107 settling among, 91 as tribal group, 49, 50 tribal group merger, 51, 62 Imtuk (Imtun/John Holland’s Bay) about, 72–74 as hunting center, 126 meat cache, 155f migration in, 86 neighborhoods in, 130 in Soviet era cooperatives, 237 cultural transition, 298 education, 236, 259 leadership, 229 “Native council,” 228 Nutawyi’s family, 228f view of, 26f, 73f incest taboos, 40, 158, 159 Indian Point. See Ungaziq (Unyin/Indian Point/ Chaplino) industrial enterprises under Glavsevmorput, 243 information/cultural exchange, 139–140 Ingleghnaghmiit clan, 111 Ingleghnaq, 30 integration policies, Soviet, xxii intercontinental trade, 35 intertribal gatherings/festivals, 140, 141f, 142 intertribal military alliance, 208 Inuit population, xxix Iñupiaq, 34, 46, 211 invasions Chukchi, xxii, 209, 210–211 in Punuk era, 217–218 Russian, 207–209, 224n23 in Yupik lore, 210–211 Ippi (Ipi) about, xxivf, 306 on clans, 53 on hospitality, 144 on leadership, 60 on patrilocality, 173 on remarriage, 179 “Iroquois” kinship type, 151 isolation as protection, 244–245 Itygran Island linguistic border, 197 settlements, 30, 91, 196 Yupik communities on, 31f Iultin Highway, 244 Ivaaqaq, lineage of, 42 ivory objects decorated, 213f, 218–220 as trade goods, 238 Iyaiiqa, 171

yupik transitions

J Jackson, Sheldon, 10 John Holland’s Bay. See Imtuk (Imtun/John Holland’s Bay) joking relationships, 159, 187n2 K Kaigilkun (Qaygellqun), 93, 127, 306 kainga (Samoan kinship), 161 Kamchadals (Creoles), 11, 12 Kamchatka Province, 11 Kangi (Kangii), 112 Karaev, Fedor, 15–16 Karaev Brothers Company, 16 Kavakvyrgin, Stepan (Qawakwergen), 71, 257, 306 Kavekhak (Kaviighaq) about, 306 on relocation, 94, 251, 278, 279, 282 Kawrangaawen, Shamaness, 234–235 Kayngenan, 229 Kayqatiagen, 161–162, 162f kazgi [(kaigi, qaygi) men’s communal house], 54, 114, 193, 204f Kengisqun. See Dezhnev (Kengisqun) Kenlighaq Bay about, 24, 76 whale hunting prowess, 75, 117n4, 126 Kepenngughmiit clan, 54, 107, 151–152 Khromchenko, Vasilii, 195 kidnapping of Alaska Natives, 199 Kigi (Kegenin), 30 Kikwen. See Qiwaaq (Kivak/Kikwen) King Islands about, 37 ecology of, 104 languages of, 201 Kingingin (Kiighi, Wales), 145 kinship disintegration in Soviet era, 255–256, 258, 288–290, 296 solidarity, 295 terminology, 40, 308–311 through spouse-exchange, 181–182 See also family and kinship Kivak. See Qiwaaq (Kivak/Kikwen) Kiwatangaghmiit, 110–111 Kiwatangaq, 32 Kiyaghnaghmiit clan, 61, 84 Kiyalighaghmiit clan, 110–111 Kiyalighaq, 32, 110 Kleist, Baron, 12 Kobelev, Ivan Chukchi Peninsula travels, 198–199 as interpreter, 200–201 population counts, 203, 205 “Kodiak” (Alutiiq Eskimo), 196 Kolyma River, Billings’ trip to, 198 Koryak, as Russian allies, 207, 210 Kotzebue, Otto von, 190, 195–196, 222n7 Kowarren (Quwaaren), 167–168 Krause, Aurel, 223n17

Index

Krause brothers, 191 Kresta Bay fur trapping era and, 103 map of, 98f migration to/from, 94 resettlement of, 45 Kukulek, 32, 110 Kukun, 203 Kulukhon, 168 Kunga, 35, 113 Kura (Kura), 176, 272, 279, 306 Kurgu, 24, 25 Kurgugmiit clan, 117 Kurupkeraq, 28, 55 Kutkhaun, Ekaterina (Qutgaawen), 45, 100, 133, 134, 306 -kut (social units), 42, 151 L Laakaghmiit clan after 1880, 111 boat crews, 164 boat storage area, 63f clan size, 87 festivals, 157 in Imtuk, 73 mainland roots, 111 migration of, 91–92, 93–94 in Nutapelmen, 102–103 winter festival, 61 labor as adoption motivation, 178 convict, 244 Yupik, 280 Lane, Louis, 13f language extinction of, 298 locative suffixes, 42, 44, 64n3, 123, 151 as locus property, 43 of social life, 40–41, 115–117 Soviet curtailment of, 288–289 speech and, 39 subtle differences in, 47–48 in tribal/tribal group identity, 50 languages 1700s dialects, reports of, 199–201, 223n17 Alutiiq Eskimo (“Kodiak”), 196, 197 Central Siberian Yupik. See Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) language Chukchi, 145, 196, 197 Imtugmiit, 72, 74 Iñupiaq, 14, 34, 46, 104–105 Koryak, 195–196, 197 Native, 14 Naukanski Yupik (NY). See Naukanski Yupik (NY) pidgin English, 8, 108 Sirenikski. See Sirenikski (S) language study of, 20 trade jargon, 193 Uelenski (U). See Eskimo language

381

word lists, 190, 197, 223n11 written forms of, 261 Yupik, xxix, 47–48, 104–105 Larin, Ivan, 1–2 Lavrentiya Bay Billings’ stopover, 198 Cook’s stopover, 198, 223n14 cultural base at, 251 education, 259 languages of, 201 Native hub at, 251 Nuvuqaghmiit relocation to, 274 Russian mariners in, 195–196 sea-mammal processing facility at, 252 Lazarev, Aleksei, 196 leadership lineage role in, 156–158 Soviet era changes, 227, 255 Leont’iev, Vladilen V., 291n13 levirate marriages, 179–180, 186 life expectancy, 177–178 lineages about, 151–162 clan distinction, 152 disintegration of, 288–290 “master of the land” association with, 132 names/founding of, 42–43 solidarity, 295 terminology, 151–152 Little Diomede Island about, 34–37 immigrants fleeing Soviet administration, 232 Lutheran school on, 120n19 migration to/from, 67, 113–114, 232 population of, 205 U.S.-Soviet border and, 235–236, 262 See also Ialiq (Ingaliq) Little Ice Age, 209, 215 local resources as trade goods, 10 locative suffixes, 42, 44, 64n3, 123, 151 locus about, 42–44 adaptability of, 43–44 definition, 43 disintegration of, 288–290 features of, 65t migratory, 62–64 in post-1880 recovery, 112 resilience of, 294 in social adaptation, 148 wandering, 85 Lorino, 270t Losev, Grigorii, 16 Lutheran school, 114 Lütke, Fedor, 190, 195, 196, 201 M Magadan Province, creation of, 267 male dominance, 57–58 Mallu in eviction role, 233–234

382

Mallu (continued) as “Soviet” leader, 229–230, 238 Mamruaghpagmiit clan, 107 Mamruaghpak (Memrepen) about, 34 clans, 54 demise of, 105 location of, 104 Maramakut clan, 110–111 marine mammals international boundary and, 236 Native consumption of, 168, 176, 237–238 processing facilities, 252, 264, 282, 283 products, trading of, 145–146 See also hunting marriage divorce, 183–184 endogamy. See endogamy European-Native, 12, 80, 138 exogamy, 148, 158–160 family types, 171–178 incest taboos, 40, 158, 159 intertribal/interethnic, 137–138 levirate, 179–180 lineages, 43 mixed, 290 polygamy, 178–179 remarriage, 183–184 rituals, 183 sister-exchange, 180–181 sororate, 179–180 spouse-exchange, 181–183 stability of, 297 Marxist evolutionary theory, 40, 52 Masighmiit (Ermeremket), 202–203 Masiq, 203, 223n13 Maskin, Philip, 18n11 “master of the land” (nunaleggtaq) about, 56, 131–134 in Avan, 78 as festival initiator, 61, 156–157 functions, 132 as hunting season initiator, 166 in Nuvuqaq, 56, 132 Sanighmelnguut as, 102 Sighineghmiit, 72 “master of the skin boat,” 131 Mayngeguq (Meyngeran), 91–92 Mayughyaghmiit clan, 54, 107 meat cache, 154, 155f, 247, 289 Mechigmen, 203 Meching, 224n20 “Medieval Climate Optimum,” 218 Memrepen. See Mamruaghpak (Memrepen) Menovshchikov, Georgii A., 240, 291n13 men’s winter houses, 54 Merck, Carl Heinrich, 198–201, 203 Meregtemiit (Meregta, Murruktumit) clan, 109, 110–111 Meyngeran (Mayngeguq), 91–92 migration across the Canadian Arctic, 44

yupik transitions

boat crews during, 168–169 group locus, 65t and reintegration in survival, 294 See also specific tribes; specific villages -miit (social units), 42, 44, 123, 151 Mikhailovsky Station, 11, 11f, 273 military campaigns, ethnographic records from, 191 military presence, 6, 8, 10 military role of clans, 59 Miller, Vsevolod, 20, 38n3 mining, 10–11, 243–244 mobility restrictions, Soviet era, 248 modernization policies, 171, 255, 263–265 Moore, Riley, 52 Moore, Thomas, 190–191, 192 mortality from Soviet forced labor, 244 multitribal communities during Soviet era, 241 Mumi, Sergei (Mumi), 41, 48, 307 Mumigtekaq, Olga (Asuya), 160, 255, 307 Murdock, George P., 40, 52 museum acronyms, xvi N Naataqaa, 163–164 Nakazik, Gleb, 50 nallqu (close relatives), 159 Nalughyaq, 125 names clan, 54, 58–59 locative suffixes, 42, 44, 64n3, 123, 151 tribal, 45, 261–262 Nanevgaqiya, 132, 165, 171 Nangaawen, Vasilii, 119n9 Nangupagaghmiit (Nungoopugah’kumit) about, 29, 85–86, 109 after 1880, 110–111 in Imtuk, 73 in Qiwaaq, 86, 248, 250 as tribal group, 51 Nangupagaq, 29 Nanok, Vassilii (Nanuq), 96, 103, 156, 307 Napaqutaghmiit about, 30 Chukchi trading partners, 146 in Imtuk, 73 as tribal group, 49 tribal group merger, 51 Napaqutaq about, 90–92 location of, 30 “Native council” in, 228 Napaun, Petr about, 287f on Avan cemetery, 60 on boat crews, 170 on gatherings, 142 on getting married, 183 on hunters lost on ice floes, 136 on Nangupagaghmiit, 86 on sororate marriages, 180 on spouse-exchange, 182 on travels to Anadyr, 102

Index

Napsungaq, 86 Nasalik, Klara (Anashkanga), 50, 307 Nasqaghmiit clan, 110–111 “nation-building in Siberia,” 261 “Native councils,” 227, 228 “Native District of the Chauchu (Chukchi) People,” 228–229, 229f “Native districts,” 228 Native hunters on commercial whaling vessels, 8, 9 Native lifestyle, 16–17 Native trade network Americans, exclusion of, 221 cooperatives, 237–238, 239f Russian goods in, 8 skills of, 14 whaling vessels as source for, 145 Naukan. See Nuvuqaq (Naukan) Naukanski Yupik (NY) about, 47–48 distinctions, 48 geographic area in 1700s, 200 kinship terminology, 151, 310–311 recency of, 201 speakers’ descent group, 58 word lists, 198 Naukantsy people. See Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (Peeki/ Nøøkalit/Naukantsy) naval expeditions, ethnographic information from, 190–191, 195–196 neighborhoods about, 127–131, 149n4 in Avan, 78–79, 78f, 130 disintegration of, 288–290, 296 in Imtuk, 130 locus, 65t in Nuvuqaq, 130 in Qiwaaq, 130 in Sighineq, 71f, 72, 130 in Sivuqaq, 130–131 topography and, 127, 128f, 129, 149n4 in Ungaziq, 130 Nelson, Edward, 76, 191 Nenets reindeer herders, 152 Nengiighaghmiit clan, 110–111 Nengluvaget clan, 61, 87, 90 New Chaplino Avatmiit relocation to, 279–280, 283 beachfront, xxf dancing in, 298f houses/streets in, 281f migration in, 86 population of, xxi “new land,” 94–104 new social order “victory,” 240–242 Nganganga, 71, 117n3, 147 Ngepawyi, 117n3, 132, 164 Nikolaevsky Station, 11 Nikolai, Father, 12, 230 Nizhne-Kolymsk fortress, 208 Nøøkalit. See Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (Peeki/Nøøkalit/ Naukantsy) Nootchoome (Nyghchegen), 222n1

383

norms, Soviet era changes, 258 Northeast Geographic and Astronomical Expedition (1791), 198 Northeast Siberia Russian entry, 207–209, 224n23 Russian withdrawal, 198 Northeast Siberian Stock Company, 10–11, 13, 273 Northern Sea Route. See Glavsevmorput(Northern Sea Route administration) nuclear families definition, 40, 171 disintegration of, 296 incest taboo, 158 in Sivuqaq, 173t Soviet era changes, 259 transitioning to, 176 in Ungaziq, 173t Numelen, 71, 117n3, 169, 170 Numtagnen, xxiiif Nunagmiit clan about, 108 merger of, 51 in Nuvuqaq, 54 Nunak (Nunegnin) clan association with, 54 demise of, 105 location of, 104 as Nuvuqaq satellite, 34 Nunaleggtaq Clan. See “master of the land” (nunaleggtaq) nunalgutet (residents of one village), 123, 149n2 Nunegnilan, 138, 235 Nungoopugah’kumit. See Nangupagaghmiit (Nungoopugah’kumit) Nunyama (Nunyamo) ancestor rituals in, 133 closure, 276, 288 as deserted village, 280, 282 languages, 195–196 Nuvuqaghmiit relocation to, 274–276, 279 population of, 195–196, 203, 270t Nutapelmen about, 98–99, 102–103 closure, 103, 269 Nutatagin, Petr (Nutatagen), 256, 307 Nutawyi with family, 228f as “Soviet” leader, 229–230, 231f Nuvuq, 28 Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (Peeki/Nøøkalit/Naukantsy) about, 33–34, 104 Chukchi, nonassimilation by, 209 clans, 54, 56, 60, 61, 66n12, 295 cultural distinctiveness of, 273 endogamy, 46 language of, 273 marine mammal hunting, 63–64 patrilineal filiation, 57–58 population of, 36, 46 social system, 115 on trading trip, 107f tribal lands of, 45

384

Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (Peeki/Nøøkalit/Naukantsy) (continued) 20th century viability of, 295 warfare/raids, 211 Nuvuqaq (Naukan) about, 33–34, 107–108 boat racks, 124f on Cape Dezhnev, 8 cemeteries, clan sections in, 60 chronological strata, 63 closure about, 272, 273–278 condemnation of, 291n13 dual divisions, 128f education, 259 houses, 106f migration to/from, 37 neighborhoods in, 130 population of, 38n10, 253, 269, 270t post-1953, 269 during prosperity, 148 relocation of, 270–272 during Soviet era collectives, 250, 251 cooperatives, 237, 239f education, 236 “Native council,” 228–229 resistance, 231f, 235 viability of, 288 view of, 105f, 277f as whaling vessel stopover, 8, 108 Nymylan. See Koryak, as Russian allies O Okvik-OBS-Birnirk-Punuk succession model, 218–220 Old Bering Sea (OBS) culture about, 218–220 artifacts from, 28 population since, 43 “old society” myth, 1–3 “olden times” (1850-1900) about, 19–21 early-contact Yupik, 21 northern area, 22f, 23t, 33–36 southern area, 21, 22f, 23t, 24–33 oral sources (stories). See research information sources “oral telegraph,” 139 orphans, 177–178, 212–213 Orr, Darlene, 302n3 out of wedlock births, 160, 177, 254 outboard motors from Soviet administration, 237 Owittillian, 168 Ozeeva, Conrad (Akulki), xxviiif, 175f, 307 P Pagalighmiit, 59, 127, 128–129, 130–131, 149n4 Pagileq, 30, 91–92 Pakaghmiit clan, 151–152 Pallkenten, 164

yupik transitions

Panana (Panganga), 181, 253, 307 Pangagmiit clan, 61 Pangawyi, 42 parentage in social model, 41 Parina, Aleksandra (Paringa), 56, 147, 307 paternalism about, 225–227 definition, 242n1 state policies, 296 patrilineality clans, xvii filiation, 56–58, 160 in Imtuk, 74 intertribal/interethnic marriages and, 138 lineages and, 158 “master of the land” and, 132 in post-1880 recovery, 112 patrilocality, 173–174 patrineolocality, 174 Pavlov, Iosif, 12, 80, 82, 171 Peeki. See Nuvuqaghmiit tribe (Peeki/Nøøkalit/ Naukantsy) Pekuutaq, 84–85 Pelaggtekaq, 229 perestroika (“restructuring”), xxi Pidgin English, 8, 108 Piinlin, 55 Pilawyi, 164 Pinakul, 253–255 Pinakul Marine Hunting Station, 276 Pivrana, Vera (Piwranga), 55, 61, 84, 159, 307 Plover about, 76, 77–78f in Soviet era about, 253–255 boat servicing center, 252 closure, 282–284 education, 259 hunting in Soviet era life, 254 population of, 269t post-1953, 269 reconfiguration in cultural transition, 298 sea-mammal processing, 252, 253, 254 viability, 288 See also Egheghaq (Rirak/Plover/Ian) Plover, 80, 192 political liberalization after Stalin’s death, xviii, 268 polygamy definition, 172 frequency of, 178–179 as prosperity symbol, 186 in Sivuqaq, 173t in Ungaziq, 173t Popov, Stepan, 12, 80 population pre-1800, 203, 205, 207 in 1848, 193, 222n1 in 2002, xxix overview, 36–38, 38n11, 46, 115, 117, 118t census. See census changes in, 21

Index

Chukchi, xxix–xxx of communities overview, 23t of Atqallghhaghmiit/Imtugmiit, 25 of Avatmiit, 26, 46 of Diomede Islands, 34, 35, 46 of New Chaplino, xxi of Nuvuqaghmiit, 33–34, 38n10, 46 of Provideniya Bay, 283–284 of Qiwaaghmiit, 28, 46 of Sighineghmiit, 46 of Sighineq, 21 of Sivuqaghmiit, 46 of St. Lawrence Island, 112, 113, 120n18 of Tasighmiit, 46 of Ungazighmiit, 30, 46 Inuit, xxix since Old Bering Sea time, 43 as trigger, 220 whaling and, 217 population cleansing, 291n3 post-traumatic response, 288–290 Povorotny, Cape, 101 Prince of Wales, Cape, 145 procreational exchange, 183 prosperity symbols adoption, 178 polygamy, 179, 186 prostitution, whaling vessels and, 138 Provideniya Bay map of, 68f in Soviet era, 253–255, 283–284 public vote, 227 Pugughileghmiit clan after 1880 famine, 33, 109–111 population of, 120n18 power structure, 111–112 social resilience of, 115 Pugughileq, 25, 32 Pukhluk, Yuri (Puuglluk), 253–254, 257, 307 Punuk Era, 26, 217–220 Punuk Islands, 32f Q Qangeghsaq, 32 Qawita, 164 Qaygeghun, 164 Qayqaghmiit, 202 Qekuaghmiit clan, 54 Qellineq, 129, 129f Qirgi, 164 Qisimpu, 138 Qiwaaghmii, 55, 171, 185 Qiwaaghmiit tribe about, 28, 82, 84 after 1880, 111 clans, 61, 62 language of, 108 mainland roots, 111 marriage practices, 46 population of, 36, 46

385

settlement, 91 social revitalization of, 38 tribal lands of, 45 Qiwaaq (Kivak/Kikwen) about, 28 chronological strata, 63 closure, 250, 269 education, 259, 260 history of, 84–85 Napsungaq in, 86 “Native council” in, 228 neighborhoods in, 130 Quwaaren/Kuwaren, 87–88, 89f, 90, 99 Quyngegergen (Quyngiiq), 101 Quyngellqen, 164 R Ragtenga (in Imtuk), 231f Ragtina (Ragtenga; in Sighineq), 117n5 Ragtina (Ragtenga; in Uwellkal), 119, 307 raids, 136 ramages, 161 ramka (clan), 42, 64n2 Rasmussen, Knud, 16, 273 Ratkhugwi, Aleksandr (Ratgugyi) about, xxivf, 307 on kinship, 69–70, 71–72 on shamanism, 265 on spouse-exchange, 181, 182 reforms as acculturation onslaught, 227, 267–270, 296 reindeer climate cooling and, 209 coastal limitations, 85–86 herding in Alaska, 10 in Asia, 28–29, 112–113, 146–147 products, 145–146 Soviet plan targets for, 245 reindeer Chukchi about, 19–20, 96–97 collectivization, resistance to, 238 language of, 196 linguistics, 199 Russian raids, 208–209 reintegration success, 115 relocation about, 296 impact of, 284, 286, 288, 291n13 map of, 285f novel about, 291n12 patterns, 270–272 resettlement vs., 291n2 remarriage, 183–184 Rentuwyi, 50 Repatengu (Patkulluq), 101 research information sources challenges of, 1 for family/lineage/clan reconstruction, 172–173, 188n9 folklore, 210–213 garbage pits, 4

386

research information sources (continued) interviews/oral histories, xxvi, xxix, 19, 21, 119n8, 136, 142 limitations of, 19, 38n1 military records (1700-1849), 190–191 photos/studies, xxvii–xxix St. Lawrence Island, documented history, 31–32, 142 upstreaming, 189–190 word lists, 38n3, 190, 197, 198, 223n11 resettlement about, 296 definition, 291n2 lineages and, 153–154 locus and, 43 Russo-American border impact on, 33 See also relocation residential communities about, 123 adaptability of, 126–127, 148–149 in cultural preservation, 295–296 demise of, 296 solidarity of, 297 resilience, cultural survival and, 294–297 Resin, A., 38n2 revolving door of Soviet administrators, 15–16 Rirak. See Egheghaq (Rirak/Plover/Ian) ritual life about, 156–158 of clans, 59–61 marriage, 183 walrus heads in, 167f Whale Alley, 214–217, 216f See also ancestors Rogers, John, 190–191, 197, 201 Rohbeck, M. von, 198 Rubtsova, Ekaterina, 50, 125, 236 Russian administration colonial records, 191 in contact-traditional society, 11–13 district officer, 227 See also Soviet administration Russian anthropologists, 40, 46–47, 52 Russian Arctic, government policy, 243–245 Russian military, ethnographic records from, 191 Russian schoolhouses, 75f, 94, 95f Russian transliteration, xxx Russian-American border, 33, 34 Russian-American mariners (1816–1840), 195–197 Russian-American Western Union Telegraph Company, 10 Russian-Chukchi wars, 198, 207–209 Russkaya Koshka (Sunraygun), 100 S Saanlegmiit clan, 146–147 Saanlek (Senlin), 24, 25, 69 Saghraghmiit clan, 61 sanctions, 132 Sanighmelnguut clan after 1880, 111

yupik transitions

festivals, 157 as “master of the land,” 101–102 winter festival, 61 Sanluvik, 34 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 39 Savoonga (Sivungaq), xxix, 112, 113 Sawqlleghmiit clan, 61, 84 Saygughmiit clan, 68–69 Saygugyi, 185 Schweitzer, Peter P., 181–182 secondary/central tribal settlements, 123 security considerations, U.S.-Soviet border, 271, 291n3 “sedentarization” of nomadic herders, 269 Senyavin Strait area, 31f, 93 Sergeev, Dorian A., 68–69, 217 Sergeeva, Katerina, 236 Sesil’yt. See Tasighmiit (Sesil’yt) Sesin. See Tasiq (Sesin/Chechen) settlements, types of, 123, 125–126 shamans as “class enemies,” 230, 232–235 leadership exclusion, 227 Shenandoah (Confederate warship), 10 Shishmaref (Alaska Inupiaq community) dancing, 302n4 Siberian visitors to, 300–301, 301f, 302f Shishmaref, Gleb, 195 Shnakenburg, Nikolai, 52, 66n11 shock-stabilization-revival cycles, 298 Siberia, post-1953 changes, 267–268 Siberian Yupik language areas, 199–201 siblings, 40 Sighineghmiit tribe about, 21, 24–25 Chukchi and, 145–146, 209 clans, 62 history of, 68–72 in Imtuk, 73 marriage practices, 46 “master of the land,” 72 migration of, 91–92 population of, 36, 46 resettlement attempts, 74–76 social revitalization of, 38 tribal lands of, 45 Sighineq (Sireniki/Wuteen/Wootair) about, 21, 24–25, 68–69 Avatmiit relocation to, 283 chronological strata, 63 education, 259 houses, 21, 70f, 122f hunters in, 298f kinship history, 68–72 location of, 68f migration to/from, 86 neighborhoods in, 71f, 72, 130 population of, 269, 270t Russian schoolhouse, 75f sister-city ties, 300 in Soviet era about, 258

Index

collectives, 248, 251 post-1953, 269 school boys, xxiiif underground houses. See underground houses (nenglu) view of, 69f, 194f Sighu, 164, 165 Sighunpaget clan about, 87, 90–91, 202 winter festival, 61 Sikneq, 32 Silaakshaghmiit clan, 68–70, 71, 72 Silga, 101, 164 Simpson, John, 193, 194f Singhaq, 75 Singighmiit, 202 single individuals, 184 single mothers, 290, 296 Siqllugmiit, 111 Siqlluk closure, 250, 269 settlements, 30, 91–93 view of, 92f Siquvek, 32 Sireniki people. See Sighineq (Sireniki/Wuteen/ Wootair) Sirenikski (S) language about, 47–48, 117n2 challenges to, 75 distinctions, 48 fluent speakers of, 117n5 geographic area in 1700s, 199, 200 in Imtuk, 74 sister-city ties, 300 sister-exchange marriages, 180–181 Sitqunaghmiit clan, 66n12, 107 “sitting” Chukchi. See coastal Chukchi Sivughat, 30 Sivungaq (Savoonga), xxix, 112, 113 Sivuqaghmiit tribe clans, 56–57 population of, 46 settling among, 91 social revitalization of, 38 tribal lands of, 45 warfare/raids, 211 Sivuqaq (Gambell) about, 112 after 1880, 33, 43–44, 110 census (1900), 316–327 chronological strata, 63 clans, 64n5 cultural transition, 298 family types in, 173t, 176, 177 group photo, 110f, 112f neighborhoods in, 130–131 population of, 120n18 precursor to, 112 schoolhouse, 129f sister-city ties, 300 Skvortsov, 271

387

social adaptation factors, 148–149 social geography, 37–38 social language/speech, 39, 42 social mobility, 163, 169–170 social “reconfiguration” in cultural transition, 298 social reconstruction, xxvi social revitalization, 38 social system adaptability of, xxii clans, 51–62, 65t disintegration of, 258 “Eskimo” social organization, 39–41 language/speech, 39 locus, 42–44 reintegration of, 62–64 Soviet strain on, 241 on St. Lawrence Island after famine, 109 tribal groups, 49–51, 65t tribes, 44–49, 65t Yupik Perspective on, 41–42 See also upstreaming social topography, 71 solidarity of clans, 59 as survival mechanism, 295 sororate marriages, 180, 186 Soviet administration era of 1918–1923, 14–16 era of 1923–1933 anti-shaman campaign, 232–235 “Chukchi National Area,” 238 “class enemies” hunt, 230–232 collectivization, 237–238 education, 236 Eskimo Native District, 227–230 expulsion of independent traders, 237 framework for, 235–236 independent traders, expulsion of, 225 kin-based hunting, extinction of, 171 new social order “victory,” 240–242 paternalism, 225–227, 242n1 reforms, 227 integration policies, xxii pressure points, 272 Yupik survival summary, xxi Soviet anthropologists, 40 Soviet Arctic navigation, 243 Soviet Union collapse, 293 Soviet-American border agreement (1938), 262 Soyuzzoloto (All-Union Gold Trust), 229 speech, 39, 68, 115–117 See also language splinter villages/settlements, 125 spouse-exchange, 139, 181–182, 186 St. Lawrence Island about, 31–33, 108–113 Asian mainland parallels, xvii boat crews, 164 Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) on, 200 Chukchi on, 209 clans, 295

388

St. Lawrence Island (continued) education, 17n4 ethnic makeup, xxx lineages of, 42–43 location of, xxxf Masighmiit settlers on, 202 migration to/from, 67, 85–86, 94, 110–111, 224n26 Old Bering Sea confederation, 219 population of, 36, 196, 220 reindeer herding on, 147 sister-city ties, 300 social system, 38, 43–44 Yupik communities on, xxix, xxx, 25, 28 Stalin, Joseph, 267 Stalin era purges, 235 Startsev, Stepan, 80, 82 starvation. See famine status institutions, 131 Stavropol, 81 Stefansson, Wilhjalmur, 80–81 stereotypes, clan, 59 storehouses, 89f Suluk/Shoolook, 112 summer tents, 3f, 27f, 121, 122f Svenson, Olaf, 13 Swedish Vega expedition (1879), 191 Syomushkin, Tikhon, 15, 17n8 T Tagrugyi, 69–70, 71 Tanenga, 132 tanngit (aliens), 210–211 Tasighmii, 171 Tasighmiit (Sesil’yt) about, 28–29 language of, 108 population of, 36, 46 tribal group merger, 51 Tasiq (Sesin/Chechen) closure, 250 history of, 84–85 view of, 29f Yopenven in, 86 Tatega, 257, 264–265 Tayan (Wrangell Island Yupik in Soviet movies), 82, 119n9, 138, 244 teachers Americans, 17n4 Russian, 12, 236, 245, 247, 260–261 Teben’kov, Mikhail, 195, 196 Teflleq (Tyflak) about, 30 migration to/from, 93–94 Russian school in, 12, 94 Ungazighmiit approval as relocation site, 278 Tein, Tasyan (Teyen), 276 telegraph line, 10 Telenga, 167–168 Temngaawen, 240 temporary camps, 123

yupik transitions

Tenganweriiven, 103 Tengatagen, 96 terminology houses, 198 kinship, 40, 151–152, 308–311 See also glossary territoriality clans, 54–56, 125 lineages/clans, 153–154 tribal groups, 49 tribes, 44–45, 125 territories/borders about, 67–68 Cape Chaplin, 86–94 Dezhnev Headland, 104–108 Diomede Islands, 108, 113–114 fjord zone, 68–86 “new land,” 94–104 St. Lawrence Island, 108–113 U.S.-Soviet border, 80–82 Tevyaghaq, 30 “thaw,” Soviet, 267 Thomas Corwin, 80, 110, 139 Thule migration, 44 Tiwla, 164 Tiyato, Vladimir (Tiyata), 55f Tkachen Bay, xxf, 31f, 278–282 Tomsen, Julius, 80, 96 topography neighborhoods and, 127, 128f, 129, 149n4 villages, 121, 123 trade goods in boat captains’ social mobility, 163 in garbage pits, 4 local resources as, 10 in storage, 3f whaling vessels as source of, 9 trade routes about, 97–99 control of, 96, 221 trading early years of, 8, 13–14, 295 with Alaska Natives, 199 intercontinental, 35 Native customs, 142–145 Soviet cooperatives, 237–238 Soviet restrictions, 114, 247 trading posts, 15t, 239f transgender persons (Yupik, aghnaasiq), 184, 185f tribal groups concept of, 49–51 disintegration of, 288–290 locus of, 65t reintegration of, 62–64 tribes adoption into, 72 concept of anthropologists’ view, 44–49 Yupik view, 42 disintegration of, 61–62, 241, 288–290, 296 locus of, 65t

Index

reintegration of, 62–64 settlements, 123 in social model, 41–42 structure, 45 whaling vessel impact on, 295 Tugraghmiit clan, 66n12, 107 Tullghhi, 164 Tuluq, 138 Tuluqaq, Lyudmila, 276, 278 Tu’sak (Tuusaq), 111 20th century village models, 125–126 Tyflak. See Teflleq (Tyflak) U Uelen (Ualeq/Uoleq) as Chukchi District capital, 8, 238, 251 Chukchi District “Congress of Native Councils” in, 227 Chukchi relocation to, 273 cooperatives, 237 houses, 198 migration to, 34 population of, 270t Soviet administration in, 15–16 as whaling vessel stopover, 8 Uelenski language. See Eskimo language Ugaliit, 61, 87, 90 Ugriileq (Ureliki/Woorel/Wugrel/Gugrelen) about, 26–27, 76, 80 as Avan satellite, 26, 27, 76 Avatmiit eviction from, 282 family photo, 81f migration in, 86 as military town, 252 Natives on ship, 7f parishioner records (1910), 328–330 Soviet era life, 253–255 Soviet schools, 236 Uksima, Ukhsima I./Uuggsima, xxvf, 164, 166, 241f, 307 Ulgugwi/Ulgugyi, 137f umiilek, 134, 149n6, 211–212 Umka, 273 Umqawyi, 170 Umrina (Umrenga), 184, 307 Umryrgin (Umrergen), 130, 307 underground houses (nenglu) clans linked to, 58, 64n5, 69, 84 communal, 204f communities with overview, 54–56 Avan, 26, 27f Iilvaantaq, 70f Imaaqlliq, 116f Masiq, 223n13 on Punuk Islands, 32f Sighineq, 21, 70f Tasiq, 28 Uelen, 198 Ungaziq, 29f Uskuughnaq, 70f

389

Uwellkal, 149n5 feeding, 72, 257 terminology for, 198 use in 1700s, 198, 199, 223n15 Ungazighmiit tribe (Aiwan(y)/Aiwuans/Chaplintsy) about, 29–31 bullying behavior of, 136 Chaplinski as language of, 260 Chukchi and, 146, 209 clans, 56–57, 61, 111, 202 endogamy, 46 entrepreneurial spirit of, 96 festivals, 156–157 migration of, 85, 93–94 population of, 36, 46 social system, 115 “Soviet” leaders from, 229–230 trading, 97–99 tribal lands of, 45 20th century viability of, 295 view of, 37f warfare/raids, 211 Ungaziq (Unyin/Indian Point/Chaplino) about, 86–87 boat storage area, 63f on Cape Chaplin, 8, 29 census (1901), 312–315 chronological strata, 63 clans, 61, 295 closure, 272, 278–281 collectives, 250, 251 disintegration of, 43 dual divisions, 128f education, 259 as Eskimo Native District capital, 228, 251 family types in, 173t, 175f, 176, 177 houses, 3f, 29f migration to/from, 28, 91–92, 93 Natives on ship, 7f neighborhoods in, 130 population of, 269, 270t during prosperity, 148 Quwaaren/Kuwaren, 89f Russian schoolhouse, 95f sister-city ties, 300 social topography of, 87–88 in Soviet era about, 246–247, 258 cooperatives, 237 education, 236 leadership, 229 “Native council,” 228 post-1953, 269 relocation of, 270–272 viability of, 288 storehouses, 89f traditional clothing of, 88f view of, 37f, 88f as whaling vessel stopover, 8, 108 Ungiyeramket, 30, 93–94 unilineality, 160–161

390

unrest after 1880, 111 unskilled laborers, Yupik as, 280 Unyin. See Ungaziq (Unyin/Indian Point/ Chaplino) Uoleq. See Uelen (Ualeq/Uoleq) upstreaming about, 189–190, 220–221 Billings’ Voyage (1791), 197–199 British wintering (Emma Harbor, 1848–1849), 192–195 early contact (pre-1800) populations, 203, 205, 207 Ermeremket, 202–203 historical traditions, 190–191 Old Bering Sea societies, 218–220 Punuk-Era whalers-warriors, 217–218 Russian-American mariners (1816–1840), 195–197 Russian-Chukchi wars, 207–209 Siberian Yupik language areas, 199–201 Whale Alley, 214–217, 216f, 224n27 Yupik warfare/lore, 210–213 Uqighyaghaq (Uqighyaraq), 30, 93–94 Ureliki. See Ugriileq (Ureliki/Woorel/Wugrel/ Gugrelen) U.S. International Polar Year Expedition (1881– 1883), 191 Ushakov, Georgii, 81–82, 94, 134 Uskuughnaghmiit, 68–70, 71–72 U.S.-Soviet border border service, 235–236, 247, 273 during Cold War, 271, 291n3 map of, 285f military presence and, 252 proximity as protection, 244 re-opening of (1988), 300 sealing of, xvii, 262 Soviet-American agreement (1938), 262 village proximity to, 271 Utataawen, 280 Utoyuq, 275–276 Utykhtykak/Uteghtekaq, 51f, 257, 307 Uuggsaghat, 30, 94 Uughqaghtaq (Sunbrown), 96, 99, 99f, 101 Uutgga, 164 Uwaliit (Waliit) clan, 109–112 Uwellkal education, 259 establishment of, 97, 100–101 location of, 98–99 population of, 269 in Soviet era collectives, 248, 251 cultural transition, 298 military presence, 252 post-1953, 269 trapping cessation, 103–104 as Ungazighmiit settlement, 100–101 Uyaghaaq, 34 Uyaghaghmiit clan, 66n12, 107

yupik transitions

V Vasil’ev, Mikhail, 190, 195 Veqvanga, 70 Vigilant, 139 “village elders” network, 12 villages about, 121–127 abandonment of, 80, 207, 250, 271 alternative names for, 206t ancient, 45 closures Avan, 250, 269, 282 Imaaqlliq, 269 Nunyamo, 388 Nutapelmen, 269 Nuvuqaq, 272, 273–278, 291n13 Plover Bay, 282–284 Qiwaaq, 250, 269 Siqlluk, 250, 269 Tasiq, 250 Ungaziq, 272, 278–281 maps of, 31f, 35f, 68f, 98f, 285f population of, 270t recreation, 5f Soviet era closures, 268–270 See also communities Vincennes, 197 virilocality, 174 visiting, 142–145 vital statistics registration, 235 Vladimirsky Station, 11 Vonliarliarski, V. M., 10, 12 W Walanga, 142, 171 Waliit (Uwaliit) clan, 109–112 Wallqallek, 34 walrus haul-out site “master,” 232–234 walrus ivory cooperatives’ use of, 237–238 as trade commodity, 8, 14, 107 Walunga, Nancy (Aghnaghaghniq), xxviiif, 307 Walunga, Willis (Kepelgu), xxviiif, 247f, 307, 316– 327, 329 Walwuraghmiit clan, 56, 68–69 Wangtugergen, 138 warfare, advanced, 217–218 warriors, social role of, 208–209 wars about, 136 depictions of, 213f Russian-Chukchi, 207–209, 224n23 as trigger, 220 in Yupik lore, 210–213 See also armaments (Native) wealth accumulation, 169–170, 178 Western anthropologists, 40–41, 47 Western/Central Alaska Yup’ik, 42, 104, 149, 198 Weyi, Valentina (Weyi), 117n5, 169, 236, 307 Whale Alley, 214–217, 216f, 224n27 whale festival (pualla), 188n7

Index

whaleboats from Soviet administration, 237 whalers-warriors complex, 217–218 whaling, Native clan role in, 90 in Imtuk, 74, 125–126 leadership prowess, 168 visibility for, 75–76 warfare and, 217–218 whaling vessels burning by Confederate warship, 10 in contact-traditional society, 6–9 decline in, 95, 108 at Emma Harbor, 80 impact on Native settlements, 30–31, 295 marine mammal decimation, 176 Natives’ purchase of, 163, 169–170 prostitution and, 138 as source in Native trade networks, 145 at Ungaziq, 86–87 White Guard, 15, 230 widows, as matriarchs, 296 winter festivals, 61, 156–157 food supplies, 154 houses, 121, 122f, 175f, 193 wives in leadership positions, 159 Women’s Councils, 240 Woorel. See Ugriileq (Ureliki/Woorel/Wugrel/ Gugrelen) Wootair. See Sighineq (Sireniki/Wuteen/Wootair) world view, 134–135 World War I impact, 96 World War II impact, 250 Wrangell, Ferdinand von, 195, 202 Wrangell Island Chukchi relocation to, 250 collectives, 251 education, 259 group photo, 83f

391

migration to/from, 86, 94 settlement of, 67, 80–82, 91 view of, 83f Wugrel. See Ugriileq (Ureliki/Woorel/Wugrel/ Gugrelen) Wuteen. See Sighineq (Sireniki/Wuteen/Wootair) Y Yagwa, 278 Yanrakynnot, 86 Yaquq, 24, 25 Yarga, 30 Yaruq, 81–82, 171 Yatta, Vladimit (Yata), 143, 154, 307 Yatylin/Yatelen, 92f, 202, 211 Young Communist League, 240, 241f Yukagir, as Russian allies, 207, 210 Yukeruk, 72, 132, 133 Yupiget. See Yupik Yupik areas, map of, 22f overview, xxix borders of, 30 Chukchi assimilation of, 209 collectivization, 238 displacement, 284, 286f, 287f as distinctive group, 19–21 language teaching, 260–261, 288 linguistics, 14 location of, xxix–xxx name subtleties, 38n4 population of, xxix terminology. See glossary Yupik contributors, 305–307 Yupik-to-Yupik warfare, 211, 213, 224n26 Yuupeni, 142 Z Zagoskin, Lavrentyi, 46

Residents of Qiwaaq greet fellow hunters from Ungaziq, who were drifted away on the moving ice floes. (Drawing by Vadim Yenan, 2008, to Ivan Askamakin’s story, “Gone with the Ice.”)