XII.] 
ABSENCE OF GOVERNMENT. 
125 
most complete anarchy prevails here, if by that word we 
may denote a state of society in which disputes, crimes, 
and punishments are unknown, or at least exceedingly rare.^ 
A sort of chieftainship appears, at all events, to be found among 
the reindeer-Chukches living in the interior of the country. 
At least there are among them men who can show commissions 
from the Russian authorities. Such a man was the starost 
Menka, of whose visit I have already given an account. Every¬ 
thing, however, indicated that his influence was exceedingly 
small. He could neither read, write, nor speak Russian, and he 
had no idea of the existence of a Russian Czar. All the tribute 
he had delivered for several years, according to receipts which he 
showed to us, consisted of some few fox-skins, which he had 
probably received as market-tolls at Anjui and Markova. Menka 
was attended on his visit to the vessel by two ill-clad men with a 
type of face differing considerably from that common among the 
Chukches. Their standing appeared to be so inferior that we 
took them for slaves, although mistakenly, at least with respect 
to one of them—Yettugin. He afterwards boasted that he 
owned a much larger reindeer-herd than Menka s, and talked 
readily, with a certain scorn, of Menka’s chieftain pretensions. 
According to Russian authors there are actual slaves, probably 
the descendants of former prisoners of war, among the Chukches 
in the interior of the country. Among the dwellers on the 
^ In the accounts which were collected regarding the Chukches at 
Anadyrsk in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is also stated that 
they lived without any government. On the contrary, in M. von Krusen- 
stern’s Voyage autour du monde, 1803-1806 (Paris, 1821, ii. p. 151), a report 
of Governor KoschelefE is given on some negotiations which he had with 
a “ chief of the whole Chukch nation.’’ I take it for granted that the 
chiefship was of little account, and Koscheleff’s whole sketch of his 
meeting with the supposed chief bears an altogether too lively European 
romantic stamp to be in any degree true to nature. At the same place it is 
also said that a brother of Governor Koscheleff, in the winter of 1805-1806, 
made a journey among the Chukches, on which, after his return, he sent a 
report, accompanied by a Chukch vocabulary, to von Krusenstern. 
