Red Ties and Residential Schools. Alexia Bloch
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1927; Shirokogoroff 1933; Dolgikh 1960; Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964; Karlov 1982), the clan as the basic unit of Evenk social organization underwent various changes even before the radical reorganization implemented by the Soviets in the 1930s (as discussed later in this chapter). Although there is no written record prior to the seventeenth century, oral tradition holds that for most of the year Evenki lived in small bands consisting of two or three families that belonged to one or two interrelated clans (Tugolukov 1988: 525). In summer several bands would gather in camps of about a dozen tents and engage in exchange of trade goods such as tobacco and pelts. At this time parents also arranged marriages for their children, an arrangement that usually involved an exchange of reindeer between the families.
Vasilevich and Smoliak argue (1964: 645) that by the seventeenth century ownership of reindeer among the Evenki was delineated by individual families, and that these were “economically speaking” considerably separate from clans. These individual families accrued varying numbers of reindeer and apparently fought with one another over territory. In the same period, the development of trade relations with Russians, the depletion of the sable population, and the rapid Russian occupation of land contributed to the breakdown of former Evenk clan relationships. Evenki moved about as they lost control of land they had formerly used for subsistence activities, and this movement resulted in the creation of new communities consisting both of Evenki from different clans and of various other ethnic groups, including Kety and Sakha. Vasilevich and Smoliak (1964: 645) write that until the Russian Revolution these new communities engaged in collective labor instead of labor being based on the former framework within the joint family or clan.
Whether or not this ideal communal arrangement depicted by Vasilevich and Smoliak existed, there is evidence that in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries the increasing role of trade and taxation was causing internal strife among Evenki and between Evenki and other groups. From the seventeenth century onward, tsarist policy engaged Cossacks in collecting taxes, or iasak, in the form of furs from indigenous Siberians throughout Russia (Slezkine 1994: 13). As early as 1614, one group of Cossacks known as the Mangazeia imposed a fur tax on Evenki living in central Siberia near the Nizhniaia Tunguska River, and by 1623 nearly all the Evenki living near the Enisei River were paying tax in furs (Vasilevich and Smoliak 1964: 623). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tsarist policies moved more toward trade and Christianization among the Evenki.
The Russian Orthodox Church and Shifting Relations of Control
While prior to the Soviet era most interaction between indigenous peoples and Europeans was connected to trade, even as early as the seventeenth century missionaries sought out converts among indigenous Siberians. Russian Orthodox Church schools were also expanding their efforts in Siberia by the eighteenth century, but they attracted few indigenous Siberian students (Bazanov 1936). One of the largest church efforts resulted in twenty elementary schools being set up in Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands in the mid-1700s; these lasted until the 1780s (Sgibnev, 3–4, cited in Forsyth 1992: 142). These schools largely served a Russian settler population, however, and did not actively seek to incorporate indigenous Siberians.
As for many other indigenous Siberians, the establishment of Russian Orthodox missions had little impact on the daily lives of the Evenki in central Siberia. In 1754 a Russian Orthodox mission was established on the banks of the Enisei River in Turukhansk, a town about 360 miles downstream from present-day Tura along the Nizhniaia Tunguska River. It appears that for years the mission took little interest in the surrounding populations of indigenous Siberians in the region. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the church was becoming involved in the budding systems of surveillance and control of indigenous Siberian populations that were to become fully developed in the Soviet era. From 1862 to 1915, the central Siberian region fell under the Enisei diocese (Eniseiskii dukhovnyi konsistorii), and those Orthodox missionaries working in Turukhansk Territory were instructed to keep records ranging from their daily activities to a registry of births, deaths, and baptisms (Anderson and Orekhova 2002: 97). One document in the Evenk District archive collection dated December 1855 lists the Tungus newcomers to the area and a count of those who were “believers” in Russian Orthodoxy.16 A September 1855 account notes marriage dates for members of the indigenous population along with information about their trade partners in Turukhansk.17 Archival documents suggest that relations between clergy and native peoples were often strained because of inordinate charges for ritual services and the clergy’s disdain for native ritual practices; there were some exceptions, however (see Anderson and Orekhova 2002). This region served as a point of exile for priests in disfavor with the church hierarchy.18
While the church did not avidly promote conversion, it gained some converts through its role as an interlocutor between the Russian government and the indigenous population. Thus by the mid-eighteenth century, tribute requirements for indigenous Siberians were reduced if they converted to Russian Orthodoxy. For instance, in November 1855 a priest sent a request to Irkutsk that tribute not be demanded from a certain “Tungus” for a period of three years because he had converted. Even with this inducement, however, few members of the indigenous population converted.19
In 1868 the Russian Orthodox Synod announced the possibility for clergy to receive a medal of “Saint Ann, of the third order” for good works dealing with education in general. In August of that year the Turukhansk church received word from the Enisei diocese that they should open a seminary and a school for indigenous students.20 In the same period, missionaries were sent out from Turukhansk to outlying regions, including to what are today towns in the Evenk District. In 1892 one of these missions founded Saint Basil’s church in Essei, the most northern village in the Evenk District, which is located on the border with the present-day Sakha Republic (see Anderson and Orekhova 2002). Although in 1913 the priest counted 1,562 Evenki and 1,328 Iakuty (Sakha) who lived in the region, few were drawn to attend church or send their children to school there. Although the mission was nearly abandoned by the time the Soviets arrived in the early 1920s, its former presence was recalled by several Evenki and Sakha living in Tura in the early 1990s.21 One woman recalled that in her childhood her grandparents kept a Rus-sian Orthodox icon beside the shamanic bundles and talismans safeguarded in their chum in the taiga.
Evenki and Trade in the Early Twentieth Century
The Russian Orthodox Church briefly located in Essei was strategically established along one of the major routes traversed by Sakha and Evenki in the course of their yearly trade. In the Soviet period, the 1926 Household Census of the Arctic North (Pokhoziaistvennaia perepis’ pripoliarnogo Severa) also took note of the key role that trade played in the life of indigenous Siberians in the region. In particular the census carefully documented the degree to which various indigenous Siberians, including the Evenki, were acquainted with Russian goods. In the early twentieth century, Evenki in this region attended an annual fair where they encountered Russians and traded sable pelts and fish for textiles and beads, metal, guns, and foodstuffs, including tea, sugar, salt, flour, and vodka.22
In addition to Russian Orthodox and Russian trader influences, over time the Evenki have had a wide range of cultural contacts. For instance, in the late 1990s collections at the Evenk District Regional History Museum (hereafter Evenk District Museum) reflected the longstanding Evenk trade links with China. Artifacts on exhibit included Evenk garments with buttons and ornamentation made from Chinese coins dating from the eighteenth century. Trade ties with the neighboring Sakha were also evident in the museum’s collection of ornate silverwork and iron acquired by Evenki to create buttons, tools, sled details, and icons. The Evenki have a long-standing interaction with the Sakha, historically a sizable seminomadic group living to the north and northeast of Lake Baikal. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Sakha already lived as pastoralists with semipermanent residences. They had considerable knowledge of metal forging, and unlike the Evenki, they could make metal out of iron ore (Forsyth 1992: 56). Since this metal was particularly prized by the Evenki, those living in regions bordering the present-day Sakha Republic would travel ten to forty days to trade with the Sakha. As one elderly Evenk woman described to me, intermarriage between Sakha and Evenki in these same neighboring regions was also common. In her mother’s youth, in the 1940s, people would travel days to arrange marriages between Evenki and Sakha.
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