ETHNOGRAPHY OF ARCTIC EURASIA 201 



from the Ob to Kamchatka. The conquerors of northern Siberia came 

 from the Archangel and Olonets districts, the Pechora and Kama 

 forests, from the Murman Coast and the Kola Peninsula, from the 

 Mezen, from Kargopol, from Kholmogori, as had been indicated in 

 the earlier Cossack reports to the chiefs. The Cossack conquerors 

 were hunting for ready furs, for valuable sable tribute (yasak). The 

 fellow travelers of the Cossacks, the promyshlennyi, hunted fur animals, 

 live sables, and foxes. 



These white Russian hunters from ancient times had worked out 

 their own hunting and fishing experience on the basis of the methods 

 of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, the experience which 

 later fused into one with the similar experience of the dark-faced 

 inhabitants of native origin. 



In European Russia, however, the Russians tried to extend to 

 the north as far as possible the principles of agriculture and domestic 

 cattle breeding. 



In northern Siberia, especially in its eastern half, the Russians 

 have abandoned all agricultural habits even where the climate would 

 permit them. Russian peasants transplanted by the government in 

 the eighteenth century to Kamchatka have discarded all their former 

 modes of living and become ichthyophagi like the native Kamchadals. 

 In the Russian village of Milkovo half a century later only a single 

 plow remained, and that was kept in the church as an ancestral 

 memorial. 



Instead, the Russian hunters of Arctic Siberia boast that they 

 are "fired by a look at a living animal," i.e. that their hunting pas- 

 sions are extraordinarily roused at the first sight of live running 

 prey. 



Three Physical Types of the Russian Population 



From the anthropological viewpoint two fundamental types of 

 Russian population can be distinguished: one, with more prominent 

 signs of Russian Slav origin, is characterized by taller size, blue or gray 

 eyes,. and light-colored hair; the other is marked by a browner skin, 

 large black or dark brown eyes, black hair, often wavy or even curly, 

 short stature and lean body — a type which, although it approaches 

 the southern Caucasian type, must be considered the product of the 

 fusion of Russian Slav and local native blood. 



There is also a third type, subordinate to the others, having mixed 

 but infused characteristics, such as the broad Mongolian cheek bones 

 (which the inhabitants of the Kolyma region speak of ironically as 

 "a face like an oven door") combined in the same individual with 

 blond hair, or blue eyes combined with oblique slits or even the 

 Mongoloid fold. 



