reindeer herdsmen: from west to east, Samoyedic-speaking peoples, Tunguz (Man-
chu) and paleo-Asiatic speakers Chukchi, Kamchadals, and Koriaks. Deeper into
the taiga, tribes were generally nomadic hunters andfishermen; in western and
central Siberia, these included Samoeds, Ostiaks (Finno-Ugric, also called Khanty),
Tunguz, Iakuts (Turkic), and paleo-Asiatic Iukagir. Those living further south in
the forested steppe could add nomadic pastoralism and farming to hunting and
fishing: in western Siberia these included Siberian Tatars (Turkic) and Finno-
Ugric-speaking Voguly (also called Mansi). The largest groups of nomadic pastor-
alists were the Mongol-speaking Buriats and Turkic-speaking Iakuts in fertile
valleys of the middle Lena River.
Colonization by East Slavs into Siberia reached large numbers only in the
nineteenth century; the trappers, Cossacks, and officials who came in Muscovite
times followed the furs and were never numerous. Most Russian in-migration
brought agricultural peasants needed to feed officials. Initially grain had been
shipped in from the north (Pomor’e) and the Perm and Viatka lands to support
Russian officials (Cossacks, governors, bureaucrats) who were paid in land and
grain; by the 1590s Moscow was forcibly settling peasants from the upper Kama
into western Siberia to farm sturdy crops (rye, barley, oats, peas, hemp, and wheat
where possible). Western Siberia became self-sufficient in grain by the 1680s, but
was then required to provision points east. In the 1630s–50s and again in the 1680s
forcible settlement occurred at Russian outposts in the upper Lena and upper
Angara valleys and forts at Irkutsk and Eniseisk, which was as far north as peasant
agriculture was reliable. Voluntary peasant migrants preferred the more fertile
southern edge of western Siberia. From about 70,000 in 1660 the population of
Russians across Siberia rose to about 230,000 in 1709.
In the seventeenth century exiles provided a small stream of new settlers. A large
group of Ukrainian prisoners of war were settled around the Lena River in 1645
and by the 1660s a few thousand exiles had been settled along the Yenisei, Angara,
and Lena Rivers and in the Lake Baikal area. These were common criminals and
political criminals, as well as prisoners of war as diverse as Ukrainian Cossacks,
Poles, Swedes, and Germans. They staffed forts at Tobolsk, Tomsk, Eniseisk,
Irkutsk, Krasnoiarsk, Ilimsk, and as far north as Iakutsk and Mangazeia. As a
rule, exiles were sent to settle and serve (only the most notorious religious or
political criminals were kept in jails); most blended into their communities as
artisans, peasants, and Cossacks, musketeers, or other garrison guards. Where
possible exiles farmed to support themselves, but primarily they exploited the forest
and engaged in trade for a living, alongside other required duties. To keep exiles in
place, Russia counted primarily on distance and the rigors of travel; for capital
criminals, they also used physical marking. In the seventeenth century, this took the
form of branding (tattooing) with letters indicative of the crime, and cutting off
fingers or ears; in the early eighteenth century less debilitating forms such as
slashing of nostrils were introduced, along with branding. Any person so marked
whofled exile and showed up in the center could be summarily executed, by law,
since their branding and mutilations proved they were exiled capital criminals. The
number of exiles in Siberia by the early eighteenth century was not great, about
64 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801