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mobilization in the mid- 1670 s that relocated the Warka and restructured
their identity, a process that continued beyond Russian departure in 1689.
Russia benefited from indigenous discontent with Qing relocation
policies. One such manifestation was the 1682 appearance of leaders
of more than four hundred Qing tributaries at Nerchinsk, the Russian
administrative equivalent of Ningguta, petitioning to transfer their pelts
to the tsar. The leaders explicitly referred to Qing relocation policies
as their motive, stating that the dynasty was“driving them out and plan-
ning to take them from their encampments to their Bogdoi empire, together
with their wives and children.”^107 Russian reconstruction of such indigen-
ous tributary identities was, of course, precisely what the Qing relocation
policies were intended to avoid.
A dynastic counterattack was thus commensurately urgent. Its primary
thrust was aimed at Yaksa, Russia’s main, if modest, outpost on the SAH
since the early 1780 s. Once reconnaissance and logistical preparations
were completed, Qing forces moved forward in 1683 to clear Russian
forces from the basin and began the assault on Yaksa in 1684. This
assault was successfully concluded in 1685 , but the Cossacks reoccupied
Yaksa’s stockade until Qing forces decisively expelled them in 1686 – 87.
By this time, direct negotiations between the two imperial powers had
been initiated, culminating in the historic Treaty of Nerchinsk that ceded
most of the basin to the Qing.^108
During these operations Qing forces had several encounters with the
Russians’indigenous allies, the Kiler-Ewenki, and took several of them
prisoner. One encounter revealed a population of forty-seven Cossacks
and eighteen Kiler-Ewenki, one adult male, two adult females, twelve
boys, and three girls, all living andfishing together on the Tuhuru
River, more than 250 kilometers west of the mouth of the SAH River in
northern Jilin. The officer in charge of the main operation, which also
returned these nineteen“Russian prisoners”to their homes, acknow-
ledged that“this is thefirst time we have pacified these ninety-nine males
of thirty-one Kiler-Ewenki households.”He declared that although they
“lived in the mountains and forests like wild beasts and birds,”“all would
submit in droves”once they were subjected to“Milord’s civilization.”
Another pacified group contained both Kiler-Ewenki and Orochen. There
was also an indigenous group of eleven unweaned infants, forty-five adult
males, sixteen adult females, nineteen girls, and twenty boys among the
Yaksa garrison when itfirst fell in 1685. Three boys and thirteen girls
among them had been “sired by Cossacks” from “women taken
captive.”^109
94 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
