CHAPTER II.
MONGOLIAN BRANCH
The peoples belonging to this ethnologic branch exhibit the characteristics of the Yellow Race in the most prominent manner. They are fond of a nomadic life, and have at different periods made wide conquests; but they have, as a rule, become absorbed in the races they have overcome. The Mongols are still, however, the rulers of the Chinese Empire. They belong either to the Buddhist or to the Mahometan faith.
This branch is divided into three great families, analogous with the differences in their language: the Mongols, the Tunguses, and the Turks. We may add to them a fourth family, the Yakuts, for these latter possess the physical characteristics of the Yellow Race, and speak a Turkish dialect.
The Mongol Family
The most decided features of the Yellow Race are particularly prominent in the Mongol family. Its members have a larger head, a flatter face and nose, and smaller eyes than those of the other families. They have a broad chest, a very short neck, round shoulders, strong thick-set limbs, short bow-legs, and a brownish-yellow complexion. The most nomadic of the Mongol family live under the rule of the Russian and the Chinese Empires.
Fig. 99 represents a Mongol Tartar.
Three principal nations are to be found in this family: the Kalmuks, the Mongols proper, and the Burïats.
Kalmuks.– M. Vereschaguine, in his “Journey in the Caucasian Provinces,” has described the nomadic Kalmuks whom he met with on the frontier separating the Caucasus from the district of the Cossacks of the Don. Travelling villages are found on these dreary and monotonous steppes. The habitations of which these villages are composed consist of tattered tents. These contain, mixed up in an incredible confusion, boxes, cases, lassoes, saddles, and heaps of rags. A hearth is the only sign of a fireplace. During the heat of summer, the children of both sexes, up to the age of ten, run about almost entirely naked. In winter, in the midst of their terrible snowstorms, and when the thermometer is below zero, they remain for days together huddled up in their tents beneath heaps of their clothing.
99. – A MONGOL TARTAR.
A Kalmuk’s dress consists of a shirt, of a bechmet, of a wide pair of trousers, of red leather boots, and of a square cloth cap with a broad border of sheepskin fur, generally ornamented with an immense knob on the top. The more wealthy wear into the bargain an ample and lengthy dressing-gown. The women do not, like the men, wear a belt round their shirt; their hair falls from beneath their cap in several plaits tied up with ribbons of different colours.
Cunning, trickery, fraud, and theft, are the staple occupations of these nomadic tribes. The mother supports her child without the father troubling himself about it, and it grows up in a state of neglect.
The food of the Kalmuks is extremely primitive. Boiled flour, diluted with water and cooked up with pieces of horseflesh, forms the staple of their culinary art. They are fond of tea, and drink a great deal of it, but they season it so highly as to entirely lose its flavour. They are downright drunkards into the bargain, and in this respect the women and the children are not a whit behind the men. They sometimes spend whole days in gambling with greasy and ill-assorted cards.
The Kalmuks are capital horsemen. They also breed and break-in camels, which they sell in the Tiflis market.
Mongols proper.– The Mongols proper, or the Eastern Mongols, wander in the steppes of Mongolia. They are divided into numerous tribes, of which the most important have received the name of Khalkas.
Mongolia may be divided into two parts, as distinct by their political proclivities as by the nature and produce of their soil.
The southern part, an arid district, is only inhabited in the vicinity of the Chinese frontier, where numerous tribes of Mongol origin, direct tributaries of the Chinese Empire, are to be found. The northern division, entirely populated by Khalkas tribes, is fertile.
The Khalkas are subdivided into two castes: the Buddhist priests, and the black men who allow their hair to grow. The latter possess an aristocracy, leading like the rest a pastoral life, from whom are selected the chiefs of the tribes, chosen by election. The Khalkas could bring into the field at least fifty thousand horsemen; but they are wretchedly armed with worthless Chinese double-edged sabres. These are notched or spiral-shaped. Their other weapons are short spears, arrows, matchlocks with queer-shaped breeches, shields stuffed with sheets of leather, and coats of wire mail.
The life of a wandering Khalkasian is very uneventful. He begins his day by going round his flocks, and mounted on a horse which is never unsaddled, and which has spent the night fastened to a stake at the door of his tent, he gallops after the animals that have strayed away; then he bends his steps to a neighbouring camp to gossip with the herdsmen it contains. Returning home, he squats in his tent for the remainder of the day, and kills time by sleeping, drinking tea diluted with milk or butter, or by smoking his pipe; while his wives draw water, milk the cows, collect fuel, make cheese, or prepare wool and the skins of various animals for clothes and shoes.
The Khalkas, hospitable and sober, possess the primitive virtues of the Yellow Race; but they are unacquainted with either commerce or manufactures. The only things they produce are felt stuffs, a little embroidery, and some poorly tanned skin and leather. They dispose of their raw produce to Russian and Chinese traders, who cheat them as much as they can. The payments are made in blocks of tea, five blocks being an equivalent to one ounce of Chinese silver. This tea is composed of the coarsest kind of leaf and of the small twigs of the herb.
The dull and contemplative existence of the Khalkasian has few events to interrupt it. It is broken only by a pilgrimage, by a funeral followed by long festivities, by the arrival of a few travellers, or by a marriage. This last is, as among the ancient patriarchs, only a species of barter in which the girl is sold by her father to the highest bidder, and is an excuse for a week’s rejoicing, in which all concerned revel in orgies of meat, tobacco, and rice brandy.
The Burïats.– Miss Lisa Christiani, in the course of her travels in eastern Siberia, received the chiefs of some Burïat tribes who had made known their desire to pay her their respects. She met on the following day, on the banks of the Selinga, an escort, sent by the Burïats in her honour, composed of three hundred horsemen, dressed in splendid satin robes of various colours, and wearing pointed caps trimmed with fur; they carried bows and arrows in their shoulder-belts, and bestrode richly caparisoned horses (fig. 100). It was in this manner the traveller made her first acquaintance with this tribe.
100. – BURÏATS ESCORTING MISS CHRISTIANI.
At the time Miss Christiani fell in with them, the Burïats were celebrating the obsequies of one of their principal chiefs. The travellers were present at the funeral service and ceremonies, which were performed in a Mongol temple, and afterwards at the games which took place according to their ancient custom. These games included archery, wrestling, and horse and foot races. A banquet followed, at which roast mutton, cheese, cakes, and even some capital Champagne were served to the guests.
The Burïats number about thirty-five thousand men, dwelling in the mountains to the north of Baïkal. Their herds and flocks constitute their wealth. Their religion is Shamanism, a species of idolatry very prevalent amongst the inhabitants of Siberia. Their supreme God inhabits the sun; he has under his command a host of inferior deities. Amongst these barbarous people woman is considered an unclean and soulless being.
The Tungusian Family
The Tungusian family consists of two divisions: the Tunguses to the north, and the Manchús to the south-east.
The Tunguses. – The Tunguses, who are scattered in Siberia from the Sea of Okhotsk to Ienissia and to the Arctic Ocean, are nomadic, and live on the produce of their hunting and fishing. Daouria to the north of China is their native country. Those who live under the Russian government are classified, according to the domestic animals constituting their principal resources, as dog Tunguses, horse Tunguses, and reindeer Tunguses.
The nomadic Tunguses of Daouria were described at the close of the last century by the Russian naturalist Pallas, the same who found on the shores of the Lena the antediluvian mammoth, still covered with its skin and coat of hair, the discovery of which caused so much excitement in Europe.
Manchús.—Fig. 101 represents the type of this race. We do not think it necessary to speak of them.
The Yakut Family
The countenance of the Yakuts is still flatter and broader than that of the Mongols. Their long black hair flows naturally round their head, while but little grows on their faces: they keep one tress very long, to which they tie their bow to keep it dry when they are obliged, in the course of their wanderings or whilst out hunting, to swim across deep rivers.
101. – MANCHÚS SOLDIERS.
P. Sellier, p.t
Imp. Dupuy, 22, R. des Petits Hôtels
G. Regamey, lith.
MONGOLIAN
ESQUIMAUX
YELLOW OR MONGOLIAN RACE
We will take a few details about the country of the Yakuts and its inhabitants from the interesting travels of Ouvarouski, republished in the “Tour du Monde.” The land of the Yakuts has two different aspects. To the south of Yakutsk, it is covered with lofty rocky mountains; to the west and to the north, it is a plain on which grow thick and bushy trees. It contains numberless streams of considerable depth and width. The inhabitants, however, content themselves with boats made of planks or wooden and bark canoes, only capable of holding two or three persons. The reindeer is the principal means of conveyance used by the Yakuts.
102. – YAKUTS.
The severity of the cold is very great in this country – greater, perhaps, than in any other part of Siberia. Its population is not more than two hundred thousand. The Yakuts (figs. 102 and 103) are stoutly made, though only of middle height. Their countenance is rather flat, and their nose is of a corresponding width. They have either brown or black eyes. Their hair is black, thick, and glossy. They never have any on their faces. Their complexion is between white and black, and changes three or four times a year; in the spring, from the action of the atmosphere; in the summer, from that of the sun; and in winter, from the cold and from the effects of the heat of their fires. They would make bad soldiers, as their peaceful disposition forbids them from ever fighting; but they are active, lively, intelligent, and affable. In their encampments their provisions are at the service of every traveller who seeks their hospitality. Let his stay last a week, or even a month, there is always more than enough for both himself and his horse. They are fond of wine and tobacco, but they endure hunger and thirst with remarkable patience. A Yakut thinks nothing of working for three or four days without either eating or drinking.
But let us quote Ouvarouski, the author of the description of the customs of the Yakuts.
“The land of the Yakuts,” says this traveller, “is so extensive that the temperature varies very much. At Olekminsk for instance, wheat thrives capitally, because there the white frost comes late; at Djigansk on the contrary, the earth always remains frozen two spans below the surface, and the snow begins to fall in the month of August.
“The Yakuts are all baptised in the Russian faith, two or three hundred of them perhaps excepted. They obey the ordinances of the church and go annually to confession, but few receive the sacrament, because they are not in the habit of fasting. They neither go out in the morning nor retire to rest at night without saying their devotions. When chance has befriended them, they thank the Lord; when misfortune overtakes them, they regard it as a punishment inflicted by the Almighty for their sins, and, without losing heart, patiently await better times. In spite of these praiseworthy sentiments they still preserve some superstitious beliefs, particularly the custom of prostrating themselves before the devil. When long sicknesses and murrains prevail, they cause their shamans to practise exorcisms and sacrifice cattle of a particular colour.
“The Yakuts are very intelligent. It is sufficient to hold an hour or two’s conversation with one of them to understand his feelings, his disposition, and his mind. They easily comprehend the meaning of elevated language, and guess from the very beginning what is about to follow. Few even of the most artful Russians are able to deceive a Yakut of the woods.
103. – A YAKUT WOMAN.
“They honour their old men, follow their advice, and consider it wrong and unjust to offend and irritate them. When a father has several children, he gets them married one after the other, builds a house for them next to his own, and shares with them his cattle and his property. Even when separated from their parents their children never disobey them. When a father has but one son he keeps him with him, and only separates from him if he loses his wife and marries a second who brings him other children.
“The wealth of a Yakut is estimated in proportion to the number of cattle he possesses; the improvement of his herds is his first thought, his principal wish; he never thinks of putting by money till he has succeeded in this object.
“Anger is acclimatized among all nations; the Yakut is no stranger to it, but he easily forgets the grudge he may owe to any one, provided the latter acknowledges his wrong and confesses himself to blame.
“The Yakuts have other failings, which must not be attributed to an innate bad disposition. Some of them live on stolen cattle, but these are only the needy; when they have taken enough to feed them two or three times from the carcase of the stolen beast, they abandon the rest; this shows that their only motive is hunger, from which they have suffered perhaps for months and years. Besides when the thief is caught, their princes (kinæs, from the Russian kniaz) have him whipped with rods, according to ancient custom, before everybody. The man who has undergone this punishment carries its degradation with him to the day of his death. His evidence can never be again listened to, and his words are of no weight in the assemblies where the people meet to deliberate. He can be chosen neither as prince nor as starsyna (from the Russian starchina, ancient). These customs prove that theft has not become a profession among the Yakuts. The thief is not only punished, but never regains the name of an honest man.
“Let a Yakut once determine to master some handicraft, and he is sure to succeed. He is at one and the same time a jeweller, a tinker, a farrier, and a carpenter; he knows how to take a gun to pieces, how to carve bone, and, with a little practice, he can imitate any work of art he has once examined. It is a pity that they have no instruction to teach them the higher arts, for they are quite capable of executing extraordinary tasks.
“They are wonderful shots. Neither cold nor rain, neither hunger nor fatigue, can stop them in the pursuit of a bird or an animal. They will follow a fox or a hare for two entire days without minding their own fatigue, or the exhaustion of their horse.
“They have a good deal of taste and inclination for trade, and are so well up in driving a hard bargain for the smallest fox or sable skin, that they always get a high price for it.
“The gun-stocks that they manufacture, the combs they cut and ornament, are works of great finish. I may also remark that their oxhide leather bottles never get foul, even if they are left for ten years full of liquid.
“Many of the Yakut women have pretty faces; they are cleaner than the men, and like the rest of their sex are fond of dress and fine things. Nature has not left them without charms. They cannot be called bad, immoral, or light women. They pay the same honour to their father and mother, and to the aged parents of their husband, as they do to the Deity. Their head and their feet they never allow to be seen stripped. They never pass the right side of the hearth, and never call their husbands’ relations by their Yakut names. The woman who is unlike this description is looked upon as a wild beast, and her husband is considered extremely unlucky.”
Fig. 104 represents a Yakut village and villagers.
The Yakuts profess Shamanism, an idolatrous religion practised by the Finns, by the Samoiedes, by the Ostiaks, by the Burïats, by the Teleouts, by the Tunguses, and by the inhabitants of the Pacific islands. Shamanists worship a supreme being, the creator of the world, but indifferent to human actions. Under him are male and female gods: some good, who superintend the government of the world, and the destinies of humanity; the others evil, the greatest of whom (Chaïtan, Satan) is considered to be nearly as powerful as the supreme Being. Religious veneration is also paid to their ancestors, to heroes, and to their priests, called Shamans; these latter in their ceremonies practise a great deal of sorcery.
Fig. 105 represents some of these Shamans.
The Turkish Family
The people belonging to the Turk or Tartar family succeeded in founding, in very ancient times, a vast empire which included a part of central Asia from China up to the Caspian Sea. But the Turks, attacked and conquered by the Mongols, were subdued and driven back towards the south-west, that is to say to the south of Europe. There they became in their turn conquerors, and overcame, after laying it waste, a portion of Southern Europe.
104. – YAKUT VILLAGERS.
The Turks had originally red hair, greenish-grey eyes, and a Mongolian cast of countenance. But these characteristics have disappeared. It is only the Turks who now-a-days dwell to the north-east of the Caucasus who possess the characteristics of the Mongols. Those who are settled to the south-west exhibit the features peculiar to the white race, with black hair and eyes. The fusion of the former with the Mongols, of the second with the Persians and the Arameans, explain these modifications. The Turks, more than all nations, manifest the deepest zeal for Mahometanism, and show the greatest intolerance for the followers of other creeds.
105. – YAKUT PRIESTS.
The Turkish family comprises rather a large number of races. We shall consider here only the Turcomans, the Kirghis, the Nogays, and the Osmanlis.
The Turcomans. – The Turcomans wander in the steppes of Turkestan, Persia, and Afghanistan. They stray as far as Anatolia to the west. The tribes who dwell in this last district have the shape and the physical characteristics of the White Race; those who inhabit Turkestan show in their physiognomy the admixture of Mongol blood.
The Turcoman is above the middle height. He has not strongly developed muscles, but he is tolerably powerful and enjoys a robust constitution. His skin is white; his countenance is round; his cheek bones are prominent; his forehead is wide, and the development of the bony part of the skull forms a kind of crest at the top of the head. His almond-shaped and nearly lidless eye is small, lively, and intelligent. His nose is usually insignificant and turned up. The lower part of his face retreats a little, and his lips are thick. He has scanty moustachios and beard, and his ears are large and protruding.
The Turcoman’s dress consists of wide trousers falling over the foot and tight at the hips, and of a collarless shirt open at the right side down to the waist, falling, outside the trousers, halfway down the thigh. Outside these an ample coat is fastened round the waist by a cotton or wool belt. It is open in front and slightly crossed over the chest. Its sleeves are very long and very wide, a little skull-cap is worn instead of the hair, and is covered with a kind of head-dress called talbac, made of sheep skin, in the shape of a cone with a slightly depressed summit. His shoes are a sort of slipper, or simply a sandal of camel or horse skin fastened to the foot by a woollen cord.
The type is more strongly defined in the Turcoman women than in the men. Their cheek bones are more prominent, and their complexion is white. Their hair is generally thick but very short; and they are obliged to lengthen their tresses with goat-hair loops and strings, to which they fasten glass beads and silver pearls.
We will not describe their dress, but will only observe that they wear a round cap on their head, to which they fasten a silk or cotton veil falling backwards. The whole is surrounded by a kind of turban of the breadth of three fingers, on which are some little squares of silver. One end of the veil is brought under the chin from right to left, and is fastened, by a little silver chain ending in a hook, on the left side of the face.
Trinkets, necklaces, bracelets, and chains play such a prominent part in the adornment of the Turcoman women, that a dozen of them together drawing water make as much tinkling as the ringing of a small bell.
The men wear no ornament.
Fig. 106 represents a camp of nomadic Turcomans.
M. de Blocqueville, who published in 1866, in the “Tour du Monde,” the curious account entitled “Fourteen months’ captivity among the Turcomans,” describes as follows the habits of these tribes: —
“The Turcomans keep close to their tent a sheep or a goat, which they fatten and kill on special occasions. The bones are taken out and the meat is cut up and salted; some of it is dried and acquires a high flavour much liked by the Turcomans; the rest, cut into smaller pieces and placed in the animal’s paunch, is kept to make soup out of. They collect the bones and other leavings, and stew them down in a pan so as to have some broth to offer on festival occasions to their friends and neighbours. The intestines fall to the children’s share, who broil them on the coals and spend whole days in sucking and pulling about this half-cleansed offal.
106. – TURCOMAN ENCAMPMENT.
“… Women are treated with more consideration by the Turcomans than by other Mussulmans. But they work hard, and every day have to grind the corn for the family food. Besides this, they spin silk, wool, and cotton; they weave, sew, mill felt, pitch and strike the tents, draw water, sometimes do some washing, dye woollen and silk stuffs, and manufacture the carpets. They set up out of doors, in the fine weather, a very primitive loom made of four stakes firmly fixed in the ground, and, with the assistance of two large cross pieces on which they lay the woof, begin the weaving, which is done with an iron implement composed of five or six blades put together in the shape of a comb. These carpets, generally about three yards long and a yard and a half wide, are durable and well made. Every tribe or family has its own particular pattern, which is handed down from mother to daughter. The Turcoman women are necessarily endowed with a strong constitution to be able to bear all this hard work, during which, they sometimes suckle their children, and only eat a little dry bread, or a kind of boiled meat with but little nourishment in it. It is especially turning the grindstone that wears them out and injures their chest.
“In their rare intervals of leisure they have always got with them a packet, of wool or of camel’s hair, or some raw silk, that they spin whilst they are gossiping or visiting their neighbours; for they never remain quite idle like the women of some Mussulman countries.
“The man has also his own kind of work; he tills the soil, tends the crops, gets in the harvest, takes care of the domestic animals, and sometimes starts on plundering expeditions in order to bring home some booty. He manufactures hand-made woollen rope; cuts out and stitches together the harness and clothing of his horses and camels; attempts to do a little trade, and in his leisure moments makes himself caps and shoes, plays on the doutar (an instrument with two strings), sings, drinks tea, and smokes.
“These tribes are very fond of improving themselves, and of reading the few books that chance throws into their hands.
“As a rule the children do not work before their tenth or twelfth year. Their parents up to that age make them learn to read and write. Those who are obliged to avail themselves of their children’s assistance during the press of summer labour, take care that they make up for lost time in the winter.
“The schoolmaster, mollah (priest or man of letters), is content to be remunerated either in kind, with wheat, fruit or onions; or in money, according to the parents’ position. Each child possesses a small board, on which the mollah writes down the alphabet or whatever happens to be the task; this is washed off as soon as the child has learned his lesson.
“The parents satisfy themselves that their children know their lessons before they set out for school: the women in particular are vain of being able to read. The men sometimes spend whole days in trying to understand books of poetry which come from Khiva or Boukhara, where the dialect is a little different to their own.
“The Turcoman mollahs spend some years in these towns to enable themselves to study in the best schools.
“All these tribes are Mahometan and belong to the Sunnite sect. The only external difference between them and the Persians of the Schiite sect, who recognise Ali as Mahomet’s only successor, consists, as is well known, in their mode of saying their devotions and of performing their ablutions.
“Whilst at their prayers, they keep their arms crossed in front of them from the wrist upwards only, instead of keeping them by their side like the Persians.
“Although they follow pretty regularly the precepts of their religion, they show less fanaticism and ostentatious bigotry than most other Easterns whom I have seen. For instance, they will consent to smoke and eat with Jews.
“Every Turcoman has an affection for his tribe, and will devote himself, if need be, for the common weal. Their proper and dignified manners are far beyond a comparison with those of their neighbours – even the inhabitants of Boukhara and Khiva, whose morals have become corrupted to a painful degree. I have seldom seen quarrels and disturbances amongst the Turcomans. Sometimes I have been present at very lively and animated discussions, but I never heard any low abuse or bad language as in other countries. They are less harsh towards their women, and show them more consideration and respect than do the Persians.
“When strangers are present, the women pass an end of their veil under their chin and speak in a low voice, but they are saluted and respected by the visitors, and enter into conversation with them without any harm being thought of it.
“A woman can go from one tribe to another, or make a journey along an unfrequented road, without having to fear the least insult from any one.
“When a Turcoman pays a visit he makes his appearance in one invariable manner. He lifts the door of the tent, bowing as he enters, then comes to a stop and draws himself up to his full height: after a pause of a few seconds, during which he keeps his eyes fixed on the dome of the tent, probably to give the women time to cover their chins, he quietly pronounces his salutation without making the slightest gesture. After exchanging civilities and inquiries about the health of relations and friends, the master of the tent begs the visitor to take a seat on the carpet beside him. The wife then offers him a napkin with a little bread, or bread and water, or some sour milk, or a little fruit. The stranger discreetly only takes a few mouthfuls of what is offered to him.”
107. – KIRGHIS FUNERAL RITES.
The Kirghis. – The Kirghis (fig. 107) are a nomadic tribe. They inhabit the tract of country situated on the frontiers of the Russian and Chinese empires. They wander to and fro on wide spreading plains from lake Baikal to the borders of the Siberian steppes.
They travel armed, and always prepared, either for war or for the chase. As wild beasts attack men when by themselves, they nearly always travel on horseback in troops.
For the matter of that, the Kirghis never get off their horses. All business is settled, and all merchandise is bought and sold, on horseback. There is in a town, by name Shouraïahan, where the sedentary Kirghis reside, a market-place where buyers and sellers do all their business without leaving the saddle. The Kirghis are much below the middle height. Their countenances are ugly. Having scarcely any bridge to their nose, the space between their eyes is flat and quite on a level with the rest of their face. Their eyes are long and half closed, the forehead protrudes at the lower part, and retreats at the top. Their big puffy cheeks look like two pieces of raw flesh stuck on the sides of their face. They have but little beard, their body is not at all muscular, and their complexion is a dark brown.
The Kirghis are something like the Uzbeks, a race whom we can only just mention, but the latter, living in a temperate climate, are tall and well made, while the former, under the influence of a rigorous one, are short and stunted.
Both these people possess a certain kind of civilization in spite of their nomadic habits. In the districts in which they are in the custom of travelling, they have established relays of horses, a very necessary adjunct to their mode of life.
The Nogays. – The Nogays, who once constituted a powerful nation on the shores of the Black Sea, are now scattered among other peoples. Many of them still wander in nomadic tribes, on the steppes between the banks of the Volga and the Caucasian mountains. Others who have settled down are tillers of the soil or artisans. Such are those to be met with in the Crimea or in Astracan. M. Vereschaguine came across some Nogays on the Caucasian steppes. This Russian traveller says that they are peaceful and laborious, and more capable of becoming attached to the soil than the Kalmuks, whom they resemble a great deal in their mode of life and in their habits and customs.