The fish-skin Tartars of the Ussuri
Editorial contextOn the Ussuri, Grosier says, live the 'Yupi-tatse' (Chinese for 'fish-skin Tartars'). They live almost entirely on fish and dress in fish skins, dyed three or four colours and stitched so finely with thin thongs that the seams look like silk. On the next pages he describes their bark canoes, hair hung with little mirrors, and a lady who drove a sledge pulled by a hundred dogs.
The river Ousouri, on the banks of which these people live, must supply them with abundance of fish, since they have no other food, and scarcely any clothes but what they make of their skins. They have the art of dressing these skins, and of dying them three or four colours ;
About Yupi-tatse Tartars (Hezhe/Nanai, Tungusic fishing people)
Keep in mind
From the Jesuit map-makers who surveyed Manchuria about 1709; Grosier calls them 'stupid and clownish', a prejudice he inherits.
The 'dog-using' and 'deer-using' tribes of the Amur
Editorial contextThe gazetteer lists the northeastern peoples who brought tribute to the Qing post at Ningguta, measuring each by distance: the Fiyaka seven or eight hundred li beyond the three-river confluence, the Kiler three thousand li away on the sea coast, the Kuyala facing Korea across the Tumen. Beyond the 'dog-using' tribes lay a 'deer-using' (reindeer) tribe. These are the peoples European maps grouped in 'Eastern Tartary'.
Another seven or eight hundred li to the northeast are the Fiyaka. Three thousand li northeast of Ningguta are the Kiler, who border the great sea on the east... The Kuyala: their land lies on the north bank of the Tumen river, opposite Kyongwon in Korea... And the deer-using tribe lies beyond the dog-using tribes.
Working translation
Original wording
又東北行七八百里曰費雅喀自寕古塔東北行三千里曰奇勒爾東濵大海…庫雅喇其地在圖們江北岸與朝鮮之慶逺相對…而使鹿部又在使犬諸部之外
About Fiyaka (Nivkh), Kiler, Kuyala and other tribute peoples
Continue in this sourceThe Imperial Gazetteer of Shengjing (Manchuria)1684 · 4 passages