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(Ma:mentuhun urse) would not witness Ningguta’simpressiveconcentra-
tion of military power that customarily formed the backdrop of pelt tribute
proceedings there. Such a display was thought particularly timely to discour-
age the Hejen and Fiyaka from plundering the“new people”(Ma:ice urse), a
reference to the Warka, who were then in the process of being relocated
southward to Ningguta for protection and mobilization.^75
Assault, however, could reinforce indigenous identity as Qing subjects.
As early as 1653 , a group offive Cossacks were sent out to explore routes
to China in order to obtain its emperor’s submission to the Tsar. En route
the Cossacks demanded horses and guides from what they called a
“Ducher”village. They also declared the tsar’s proposal that Heilong-
jiang be divided roughly in half, with Russia taking the territory east of
the Non River (Nenjiang). As their tributary mission later reported in an
imperial audience in Beijing, the villagers, probably known to the Qing as
ethnically akin Hūrha, decided that they could not maintain livelihoods as
Cossack tributaries. So, in gratitude for state gifts of clothing and horses
bestowed for their pelts, the villagers killed the Cossacks and added their
victims’fox and sable to augment their own annual tribute. After admon-
ishing them to spare further Russian emissaries, the throne sent the
delegation off with their statutory gifts of clothing.^76
Although the villagers’ethnicity is not clear from the record, it is
apparent that they were indeed Qing subjects who were willing, under
the express motive of the pelt tribute system, to resort to violence to
maintain a Qing Manchuria against imperial rivals. Lower SAH basin
groups such as the Fiyaka and the Hejen, who had not been as exposed to
this system, were, in contrast, unlikely to uphold the Qing regional order
so militantly. Here is one indication that pelts were more than simply
articles of commerce or consumption. Pelts were sovereign wares, com-
modities whose semiritualized exchange could help establish and main-
tain hierarchical power relations, and their requisite suzerain-subject
identities, without further supervision or coercion.
romanov pelt tribute
The Russians were more heavy-handed in manipulating relations between
indigenous peoples and sable pelts. Villager reaction to Cossack visitors
was accordingly violent in 1653 , and this also facilitated Qing mobiliza-
tion of the SAH basin against Russia more than twenty years later. Pelts in
general and sable in particular conditioned Romanov expansion in east-
ern Eurasia to such an extent that some scholars have characterized this
The Nature of Imperial Foraging in the SAH Basin 83
