Koryak Texts

THE collection of Koryak texts here published was made as part of the field-work of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History. Since the Museum does not allow sufficient space for the publication of all the linguistic material, which naturally forms one of the most important aspects of the work of the Expedition, the American Ethnological Society has undertaken the publication of part of it.


The texts contained in this volume were collected by me between December, 1900, and April, 1901. While Mr. Waldemar Jochelson, my colleague in the ethnological work of the Expedition in northeastern Siberia, investigated the ethnology of the Koryak, I undertook the study of their language, because my practical knowledge and previous studies of the Chukchee language put me in a position to acquire with ease a knowledge of the Koryak, which is closely related to the Chukchee.


I left the Anadyr country in December, 1900, and travelled to the village of Kamenskoye, on Penshina Bay, where I met Mr. Jochelson. I staid with him one month, after which time I proceeded to the southeast, to the eastern branch of the Koryak, and also visited the Kamchadal. I travelled among these tribes for two months, until my return to the mouth of the Anadyr, on April 8, 1901. A considerable part of this time was spent in covering the long distances between the villages, the journey bring made by reindeer or dog sledge and on snowshoes. Some parts of this territory had never been visited by any white man, not even by a single Russian trader, and I met camps and villages the inhabitants of which did not even know the taste of brandy,--in these countries, the foremost product of civilization, and the first to arrive. The last fifteen days of the journey between the Ke'rek region and Anadyr Bay were spent in going without a guide through a country wholly uninhabited; for the Kerek, who have but few dogs, do not go very far from their villages on the coast, and are unfamiliar with the hills of the interior.


We travelled up-stream along several small rivers that flow into Bering Sea on the Ke'rek coast, and then, passing over the divide, followed the rivers that belong to the Anadyr system, and finally reached the first camps of the Telqap Chukchee. This is the method of travelling adopted by the ancient cossacks, the conquerors of Siberia.


All the time that was not taken up by travel, and that was available for study, was devoted to an investigation of the languages of the Eastern Koryak and Kamchadal tribes. The study of the Koryak was the more extensive, owing to its closer affinity to the Chukchee in grammar as well as in vocabulary.


The Koryak dialects may be divided into two large groups,--the western branch, which includes the Maritime Koryak of Penshina Bay and also the Reindeer Koryak; and the eastern branch, which includes the Maritime Koryak of Kamchatka, and also the inhabitants of the villages RekI'nnok, Pustoretzk, and Podkaguirnoye, to the south of Parapolski Dol. These last belong ethnographically to the Kamchatka Koryak, although they are counted by the Russian Administration as belonging to the Gishiga district. The eastern branch includes also the Maritime Koryak of the villages on the Pacific coast around Alutor Bay, and those of the Pacific villages still farther east. The Kerek stand apart, and form perhaps a third dialect, although, on the whole, similar to the western branch.