Kumis, but not the intoxicating kind
Editorial contextIn a footnote Wrangel says the Yakuts make kumis from mare's milk 'in the same manner as in Tartary', except that they have not learned, like the Tartars, to make it intoxicating. It is so nourishing that a couple of skins of kumis hung from the saddle are often the only food carried on a hunting trip of several days.
This well known beverage, prepared from mares' milk, is made here in the same manner as in Tartary; only the Jakuti have happily not learnt, like the Tartars, to make it intoxicating. It is an agreable beverage, and so nourishing, that a couple of large skins full of kumys hung to the saddle, are often the only provisions taken for a foraging excursion of a few days.
About Yakuts (Sakha); 'Tartars' of the steppe
Keep in mind
Sauer (W008) reports that Yakut kumis could intoxicate if drunk in quantity, so accounts differ.
Horsehair for the spirit of the mountain
Editorial contextCrossing a mountain, Wrangel's lead Yakut driver pulled a few hairs from his horse's mane and tied them to a tree as an offering to the spirit of the mountain. Travellers on foot planted a stick instead. Even baptised Yakuts kept the custom, and the drivers sang songs praising the landscape, which his sergeant explained was meant to flatter the spirit.
Our leading postilion got off his horse, plucked a few hairs from the mane, and fastened them to the tree with much solemnity of manner. He told us that this was a customary offering to the spirit of the mountain, to obtain his protection during the journey, and that foot-passengers placed a stick in the ground with the same intention.
About Yakuts (Sakha)
A priest who burned the idols
Editorial contextWrangel reports that the Kolyma Yakuts were now all baptised. A priest named Slezzow, twenty years earlier, had destroyed every idol and pagan altar he found, by fire or water. Yet shamans still had followers and were consulted, even by Russians, to find stray animals or thieves. A footnote adds that newborn girls had once often been left in baskets hung in trees.
The Jakuti are now all baptized. A priest from Sredne Kolymsk visits these settlements every year. An ecclesiastic named Slezzow, who lived here twenty years ago, showed undaunted and unwearied zeal in the abolition of Schamanism. Wherever he discovered idols or heathen altars, they were destroyed by fire or by water, and none such are now to be met with.
About Yakuts (Sakha) of the Kolyma
Keep in mind
Wrangel approves of the conversion; the destruction he describes means few Yakut sacred objects survived to be seen.
A Tartar named Sachalar, forefather of the Yakuts
Editorial contextWrangel writes that the Yakuts' faces and language confirm their tradition of descent from the Tartars. In a footnote he gives the tradition itself: their ancestor was a Tartar called Sachalar, who crossed the mountains to Kirenga on the Lena, settled and married a Tungus woman. That, he explains, is why the Yakuts still call themselves Sachalary (Sakha).
Their countenance and language fully confirm the tradition of their descent from the Tartars. … According to this tradition, their ancestor was a Tartar, named Sachalar, who came from his own country on the other side of the mountains, to Kirenga on the Lena, where he settled and married a Tungusian woman; the Jakuti still call themselves Sachalary.
About Yakuts (Sakha)
Keep in mind
An origin tradition as reported to Wrangel. It differs from the Omogai legend recorded by Sauer (W008).
Once they had writing, and knew lions and tigers
Editorial contextNear Sredne Kolymsk Wrangel befriended an 82-year-old Yakut who read and wrote Russian. The old man said his people had been more civilised before they split from 'the other Tartar races', and had once had their own writing, since lost. As proof that they once lived far to the south, he quoted old sayings that mention gold, gems, lions and tigers, things Yakuts no longer knew.
He complained of the ignorance of his countrymen, who he said, had been formerly more civilized; and that before they separated from the other Tartar races, to whom they are allied, they had possessed written characters, and consequently means of intellectual cultivation, which they have since lost. He maintained, that his race had once inhabited far distant southern regions
About Yakuts (Sakha)
Keep in mind
One elder's memory of lost traditions, which he himself says were fading. Old Turkic peoples of the south did use runic writing, but the elder gives no specifics.
Claws of a giant bird, or a rhinoceros?
Editorial contextSummarising the explorer Hedenstrom, Wrangel says one of the Lyakhov Islands seemed to be made of mammoth bones, which hunters had carried off by the boatload for eighty years. Along the Arctic shore lay skulls of two unknown beasts, one found with what looked like three-foot claws of a giant bird. The Yukaghirs used these 'claws' to strengthen their bows and told marvellous tales about the bird. A footnote says Dr Kyber believed they came from a kind of rhinoceros.
Near these last-named skulls something like the claw of an enormous bird is generally found. These claws are often three English feet long … The Jukahiri, who make use of these horny claws, to give increased force to their bows, maintain that the head and claws have both belonged to an enormous bird, respecting which they relate a number of marvellous stories.
About Yukaghirs and Russian fur-hunters
Keep in mind
Not about Tartars. The 'claws' are almost certainly the horns of the extinct woolly rhinoceros, as Kyber suspected; the giant bird is Yukaghir legend.