Gavriil Sarychev (1763-1831) was a young Russian naval officer on Joseph Billings's expedition to north-east Siberia, the Arctic coast and the Aleutians. Sent ahead in 1785 to prepare the ships at Okhotsk, he crossed Siberia by road and rode from Yakutsk with Yakut guides, lodging in their houses. His account appeared in Russian in 1802; this corpus copy is the shortened English translation published by Richard Phillips in London in 1806, with notes by the translator. Most of it is about sea voyages; the Tartars come in only with his early pages on the Yakuts.
How they knew
Eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
The Yakuts (Sakha), whom Sarychev calls a branch of 'an ancient race of Tartars' not yet converted to Islam, comparing them with the Muslim Tatars of European Russia and western Siberia.
Why read it
A clear early statement, backed by a real test, that the Yakuts speak a Tatar (Turkic) language, and a builder's description of their winter and summer houses.
Watch out
The English edition is a translation with added notes by the translator, so check whose voice you are reading. Sarychev travelled with Sauer (W008), so the two accounts are not independent.
Editorial contextSarychev describes Yakutsk as the oldest town in the region, grown up around a wooden ostrog of 1647 whose towers still stood but were falling into decay. There were a few stone churches, but all the houses were wooden, 'in the old Russian taste', with Yakut huts scattered between them. For windows they used mica or bladders in summer and slabs of ice in winter.
The ostrog, or wooden fortress, was erected in the year 1647, and soon afterwards the building of the town commenced. This old edifice, with its towers, is still standing, but in some places is fallen very much to decay. … All the dwelling-houses are built of wood, in the old Russian taste, with here and there Jakutish huts interspersed between them.
Editorial contextSarychev, who slept in these houses on the road, explains how a Yakut winter jurt is built: three rows of posts, beams laid across and sloping, rough planks, then a covering of grass, earth and dung. A hearth with a pitch-lined chimney of sticks burns all winter, and the cattle live in an attached shed. Summer houses are different: conical frames of poles covered with bark.
On these poles they lay five beams crossways and sloping, which are covered with rough planks, and afterwards with herbs, mould, and dung. … The summer jurts are altogether different from the winter ones, and have another name, being called masses; they are round and conical, made of long poles, and covered on the outside with the bark of trees.
Editorial contextMany poorer Yakuts had been baptised, Sarychev says, perhaps to escape the poll-tax for a few years. The rich stayed pagan because Orthodox fasts would forbid their many wives and their food: meat, butter, milk and above all horse-flesh, their greatest delicacy. In summer they made kumis from mare's milk 'after the manner of the Tartars'.
The rich are not disposed to renounce a plurality of wives, nor the use of meat, butter, milk, and above all, horse-flesh, during the fasts … The latter is the greatest delicacy they can possibly conceive; and they often tell the Russians, that if they were once to make a proper meal from the flesh of a horse, they would in future prefer it to the tenderest beef.
Editorial contextSarychev argues that the Yakuts descend from 'an ancient race of Tartars' who never became Muslim. His proof is practical: one of his own attendants was a Tatar, and he understood most of what the Yakuts said without difficulty. Modern linguists agree that Sakha is a Turkic language, related to Tatar.
The Jakuts are probably derived from an ancient race of Tartars not yet converted to Mahometanism. This appears evident from a similarity of their features, their mode of life, and still more their language, which approaches so nearly to the Tartar dialect, that one of my attendants, who was a Tartar, understood most of what they said without any difficulty.