Kazan's Tatars: clean, honest, better farmers
Editorial contextSauer found Kazan a well-built trading city of Russians, Tatars and Armenians, and at the governor's dinner on 6 January 1786 the Muslim chief priest sat at table with the Orthodox bishop and a Lutheran pastor. Riding east from the city, he praises the Tatar villagers: Muslims, clean, honest and hard-working, whose land yielded nearly twice what Russian farmers got from the same ground.
The Tartars are Mahometans, and very clean in their persons and habitations. The women are, in general, very handsome, and dress extremely neat. They are industrious, honest, and peaceable; and, under their management, a piece of ground of a given extent will produce nearly twice as much as the Russians obtain from an equal quantity. All the villages are built in vallies on the borders of rivers
About Kazan Tatars (Muslim Volga Tatars)
Tatar women spinning thread from nettles
Editorial contextOn the road to Tobolsk in 1786, Sauer noted Tatar farmers who also made and sold neat worsted carpets. Coming back in 1794, he saw Tatar women near Tara spinning thread from nettle fibres, making linen as good as flax. The Siberian settlers also told him that trade with the Mongols was not as open as before.
The Tartar women about Tara were preparing nettles, and spinning thread from the fibres; the linen made of which was fine and good, apparently equal to that made of flax. I have already mentioned the neat carpets then made by these industrious people.
About Siberian Tatars
Shamans no better than an English conjurer
Editorial contextSauer explains that shamans could be men or, more rarely, women, trained by an old master in lonely woods. He heard wonderful stories of their power even from Russians, but after watching them many times he was not impressed. He then describes a healing ritual in detail, with a horsehair switch, a sacrificed mare or cow, and a drum.
I have heard most wonderful relations of their power, even from the Russians; but, notwithstanding I have seen their enchantments or incantations many times, I never could discover any of their feats equal to that of a common conjurer in England.
About Yakuts (Sakha)
Keep in mind
Sauer's judgment reflects his Enlightenment scepticism.
Fleeing to China: 6,000 Yakuts in one year
Editorial contextSauer reports that Yakuts and Tungus unhappy under Russian rule were slipping away to the upper Amur valleys under Chinese protection, where they had reportedly built strong places. Russian officials told him more than 6,000 Yakuts moved to China in 1787 with all their goods, and his footnote remarks that such migrations reduced 'the number of Tartars tributary to Russia'. Elsewhere he blames heavy exactions by Russian officials for the Yakuts' decline.
In the year 1787, there migrated to China, from the districts of Olekma, Yakutsk, and the Vilui, more than 6000 Yakuti, with all their possessions
About Yakuts and Tungus (Evenks)
Keep in mind
The figure is second-hand, from two Russian assessors.
A priest flogs his Tartar guides
Editorial contextIn a footnote Sauer tells why he calls the expedition's priest 'more than savage'. On the road to Okhotsk the priest lost some food, assumed his two Tartar guides had stolen it, and had them tied to trees and flogged so badly that one died. Runaway exiles turned out to be the thieves. The priest said no harm was done because the guides were not Christians.
On a mere supposition that his two Tartar guides had taken it, he tied each of them up by an arm to a tree, and had them flogged to such a degree, that one of them died, and the other never recovered the use of his arm: it was afterwards known, that some runaway exiles hid in the woods were the thieves.
About 'Tartar' guides (on this road, most likely Yakuts)
Keep in mind
Sauer was not present; he tells it to show the priest's character. The same priest burned the Aleuts' carved masks, as Sauer reports on this page.
The Yakuts' own story: fleeing from Lake Baikal
Editorial contextThe Yakuts told Sauer they call themselves Sakha and came from the south. Their chief Omogai Bey led his tribe and cattle from the plains west of Lake Baikal to escape a stronger horde, fought the Buryats, and followed the Lena north to the meadows around today's Yakutsk. A related people near Krasnoyarsk, which Sauer calls Mongols, also called themselves Sakha and spoke the same language.
The nation known among the Russians by the name of Yakuti call themselves Socha, and say that they came originally from the south. … The Toyon (i.e. Chief) Omogai Bey, with all his tribe and cattle, left the fertile plains situated to the west of the lake Baical, or Baighal, to make way for a more powerful horde
About Yakuts (Sakha)
Keep in mind
Oral tradition recorded through interpreters. The Sakha language is Turkic, so calling the Krasnoyarsk kin 'Mongals' is Sauer's loose label.
Yakut horse-breeders: 'very opulent Tartars'
Editorial contextSauer and the Russians around him still called the Yakuts and their neighbours Tartars. Describing the Lena valley, he says the little Russian posts existed to collect fur tribute from 'the wandering tribes of Tartars' nearby. Here, crossing the Aldan on horseback with Yakut guides, he describes the plains as home to 'very opulent Tartars' with huge herds of horses and cattle: the cattle- and horse-breeding Yakuts.
The woods abound in wild beasts and game; and the plains are inhabited by very opulent Tartars, who possess immense numbers of horses
About Yakuts (Sakha), called Tartars
Keep in mind
The sentence continues 'and herds of cattle' on the next page.
Aley the shaman, father of twelve sons
Editorial contextThe Yakut founding story continues with Aley, a runaway from the Buryats who became Omogai's overseer and was thought to have supernatural powers. He declared himself a shaman, prophesied that Omogai's daughter would bear no children, and chose the chief's adopted girl instead. After Omogai's death most of the tribe followed Aley, who is said to have had twelve sons; the eldest founded a named tribe.
He observed, that all his tribe esteemed Aley to adoration; for they supposed him to possess supernatural powers, and attributed his continual good fortune and success to the immediate influence of spirits. … Aley now avowed himself a Shaman, and assumed the powers of divination.
About Yakuts (Sakha)
Keep in mind
Oral legend, not history.