This story began in the 90s. Once my family went to my wife's classmate's birthday party. As usual, we sat at the festive table and congratulated the birthday girl, and then went with her father to the kitchen to smoke, since there were only two of us among all the guests of the men. We talked - it turned out that he was from Veliky Ustyug, as they say the homeland of Santa Claus. So he said that his small homeland is famous not only for the Frosts - they say, grandfathers said that long before Ivan the Terrible, local peasants went to China and America, but after they stopped. Why did they stop clearly explaining - either they were banned, or those who knew the road were gone, or the sea stopped thawing, or maybe all together. I smiled at his story and knowing that his name was Markov jokingly asked: - And Marco Polo did not come from your family? He also smiled in response and answered,that the grandfathers did not tell anything about such a relative. But with Ermak, someone from the Markovs went to Kuchum, and the Stroganovs were from those regions, from Usolye, and this is only 90 km from Ustyug, and it seems that in ancient times someone from the Stroganovs and himself on long hikes walked.
He also told about Ermak, they say he was from Borok, which is on the northern Dvina. His mother is from the Vologda region, but Dad was like a stranger. Who knows, what has been said is true - the Kirghiz consider Ermak to be theirs, although their version does not contradict what I heard.
He also told about his other fellow countrymen Khabarovs - where does the city of Khabarovsk come from, but we all speak incorrectly that city - the stress should be on the third syllable. Recently I watched the news and flashed a story about Veliky Ustyug, so now one of the Khabarovs in Ustyug is the mayor.
And I also remember about the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s in one popular science film there was information about the flight of a group of noble Novgorodians to America (to Alaska) during the defeat of Novgorod by Ivan the Terrible !? What kind of film, unfortunately, I cannot remember … Or maybe it was a retelling of Herman of Alaska, who in 1795 claimed that the first colonists of Alaska were Novgorodians who fled from the wrath of Ivan the Terrible.
I'll try to follow the eastern path.
Samoyed idol from Vaygach island. A copy of a drawing by Martinier, published in 1676.
A Russian settlement of the 10th century was found on Vaygach Island. The old name of Vaygach Hayudey-ya, was it not from here that those Chaldeans that Babylon and Damascus took?
Vaigach is generally a remarkable island: … Before the Samoyeds adopted Christianity, the northern tip of Vaigach, Bolvansky Cape, served them as one of the two main places of public worship. The storms howling in the caves of the Bolvansky cape inspired superstitious fear on the Samoyeds and inspired special reverence for the main idol Vesak standing on the cape, which meant an old man (in Latvian vecāki ancestors), simply as a god Rod among the Slavs. It was wooden, three-sided, tall, thin, with seven faces, which were carved on two sloping, narrow edges. The oldest surviving offerings from the Vaigach sanctuaries were made in ancient Russia.
Promotional video:
Vecaki resort (German Wezak) on the coast of the Gulf of Riga, photo from the early 20th century.
Do you think there are few such place names that are the same in the Baltics and Siberia? And this is how you look: everyone probably knows such a big river as the Angara, but probably not every Latvian will find the Angar river in Latvia, but it is - flows from Lake Usmas. Who was on the Putorana plateau probably remembered the river called Kanda, and on it a 108 meter waterfall. There is another Kanda river near Murmansk. In Latvia, there is the city of Kandava (German: Kandau), which is also on a turbulent river with waterfalls - and in Livian Kande is just a jug. The history of this ancient city says that before the arrival of the Crusaders, it was the center of the state of Vanemaa - in Livsky the land of Roda. And how do you like the Irbe River in Latvia and the Irbensky Strait, which separates the Gulf of Riga from the Baltic Sea, and the Irba River in the Yeniseis province where the Irbinsky iron plant was built on the old Chud mines in 1732. Sometimes one gets the impression that almost all of Siberia is displayed in places in the small Baltic region. Just kidding, of course - not only Siberia. The ancient historical name of Ulan Bator is Urga (I will not say anything about the Ugra region for now), in the north of Latvia there is a small settlement Urga, and throughout Latvia there are 6 more rivers with the same name.
Around 1485, Pope Innocent VIII was sent from the Don a report with the following content: “The Russians from Perm, sailing in the Northern Ocean, about 107 years ago discovered in those seas a hitherto unknown island inhabited by Slavs. This island is eternal cold and ice. It is called Philopodia and is larger than Cyprus, but on modern maps of the world it is called New Earth."
Gerard Miller in his "Description of the Siberian Kingdom", talking about the annexation of the land of Prince Demyan along the Demyanka River, reports that the aborigines put up special resistance in the Demyansk town, where they had a particularly revered idol:
Chaldonov and Samars inhabiting Siberia much earlier than Ermak's campaign and speaking Russian, even the official history cannot fail to notice. There is a version that some of them are the heirs of indigenous Caucasians living in those regions since ancient times.
V. N. Berkh in his writings mentions:
Paolo Jovio - Pauli Jovii Novocomensis published in 1525 in Latin "The Book of the Embassy of Vasily, the Grand Duke of Moscow, to Clement VII", in which he reproduced many geographical and cultural information of Dmitry Gerasimov about Russia and the Scandinavian countries, about the Northern Sea Route, which if you sail from the Northern Dvina to the right along the coast of Siberia and around it, you can reach China.
The "Monthly Works and Translations" of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1769 (vol. 3) report, with reference to documents from the Siberian archives kept at that time, that the expedition to the Pacific Ocean was undertaken by Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich. She, having passed the strait, reached Kamchatka. Subsequently, she was apparently forgotten due to the ensuing time of troubles, and even now, that record is rarely remembered. But after all, turmoil followed after the death of Ivan III (1525-1545), since it was after his death, in the 1550s, that the Tyumen Khanate, whose lands lay southeast of the southern Urals, was seized by Kuchum from the Sheibani clan, which were the rulers of Bukhara.
It's funny, but there is a mention that Peter I, participating in the Grand Embassy in 1697, decided to visit Witsen in Amsterdam. During the conversation, a dispute arose between them about whether Asia was connected with America. Witsen insisted on such a connection, while Peter denied it and eventually promised to send from Russia geographic drawings in which Asia was separated from America. Judging by the fact that Peter had been to Arkhangelsk more than once and clearly communicated with the Pomors, this was clearly not a question for him. On the instructions of Peter, the ultimate goal of Bering's voyage was to achieve “Gishpan possession of the Mexican province,” and not to open a strait that no one doubted in Russia at that time. Officially, Dezhnev was the first to cross that strait in 1648, by the way he was also a native of Ustyug. The option is not excluded that many information about their future geographical discoveries,in particular, about the strait between Asia and America, Dezhnev received from Mikhail Stadukhin, under whose command he began his service. For ten years of his travels in the north-east of Siberia, Mikhail Stadukhin, originally from Pinega, covered about 15,000 km - more than any other 17th century explorer. The Europeans, on the map of Gastaldi (1562), show the strait under the name Anian, from where they probably do not get the data anymore.
Well, the information about Far Eastern Russia was eventually confirmed - they found a Pomor koch at the bottom of the Peter the Great Bay near Vladivostok. The find dates back to the 7th-9th centuries.
In 1937, on the shores of the Kenai Bay, the remains of an ancient settlement were discovered - the remains of 31 well-preserved, sod logs, judging by the materials, things and stoves - Russian. Analysis of the timber showed that houses were being built about 300 - 400 years earlier.
In the summer of 2016, another typically Slavic settlement was found in the same area. Archaeologists date it 800-900 years ago. (See 00:00 - 01:02)
In 1732, Gvozdev reached the shores of Alaska, and the Cossack Ivan Daurkin in 1764, according to the Eskimos from the Diomede Islands, mapped a Russian fortress on the right bank of a certain river Heuverin.
Jacob Lindenau, a member of many expeditions to the north-east of Siberia, left to the descendants "Description of the Chukotsk land" (1742). He wrote:
Bering's assistant, Captain Spenberg, reported in a report to the Admiralty that the participants of the first Kamchatka expedition had a chance to hear about some Russians who settled on the American mainland. Spanberg linked their appearance there with the drift in the "long-gone years" of several ships that left the Lena estuary to the east, bypassing the Chukchi bow. And the companions of Bering "heard that some of those people were still on the Bolshaya Zemlyets opposite the Suksun nose, which is why they are relying on them to this day."
In February 1710, from the words of the serviceman Nikifor Molchin (Malgin), the Yakut voivode D. A. Traurnikht and clerk Ivan Tatarinov recorded the details of the campaign of Taras Stadukhin, who in the late 60s of the 17th century tried to repeat the Popov-Dezhnev route of 1648. During the campaign, Staldukhin received information that:
In 1762, two Cossacks, Grebeshkov and Vershinin, made a report to the office of Okhotsk: Grebeshkov assured:
The founder of the Russian-American company Shelikhov, in his reports noted that among the black-haired, high-cheekbones, chubby residents of Alaska there are those whose faces are oblong, blond hair and beards from ear to ear, In addition, they cut their hair under a circle, and their wives do their hairstyles for Indian tribe unusual: bangs in front, and braids behind.
In the book “Voyages across North America to the Arctic Sea and the Pacific Ocean, made by Herne and Mackenzie” (St. Petersburg, 1808), it is said that the members of the expedition in 1789 asked the local people who lived north of the Yukon. The Indians replied: "Bearded white people." What do you think of the name of the river Huslee (Gusli) from the name of which the village of Huslia originated, just north of the Yukon? Or a hill (volcano) Ilemna, why not Ilemno, which is on the right bank of the Sheloni, or the largest lake in Alaska Iliamna, than Ilmen?
The Russian scientist Korsakovsky, on the orders of the governor of Russian America Gagemeister, undertook an expedition to the center of Alaska, and a local old-timer named Kylymbak told the researcher that once two men came to the Indians who were organizing a religious meeting near the Yukon, and “they were wearing a camisole, triplets and bloomers made of deerskin without hair and painted with black paint. Black leather boots. With beards. Their conversation is different, so that all the Indians who were on this toy could not understand it. We saw a copper barrel with them, one end is wider, and the other narrower, like a blunderbuss, and the other has a copper barrel, like a rifle, decorated with black sepia and white lines. “Kylymbak compares their dress with ours, exactly the same cut as ours. On these dwellings, passed by him, there are iron axes, copper pots, smoking pipes,different kinglets, brass. All these things are obtained through trade. He compared axes exactly like ours,”Korsakovsky wrote in his journal.
In his work "News of the Northern Sea Passage" Miller wrote:
GV Steller wrote: “Among the Americans, there allegedly lives a people who are completely identical to the Russians in figure, manners and customs; the Anadyr Cossacks are of the opinion that they are the descendants of people who left the Lena in kocha and disappeared without a trace. It is highly plausible that their bad ships were thrown onto land by storm and the circumstances forced them to stay here. The American dish that I bought for the Kunstkamera is the product of these people. Unfortunately, the mentioned dish was destroyed in the Kunstkamera during a fire on December 5, 1747.
Kugikalnitsa M. A. Bocharova. Photo from the newspaper * Kurskaya Pravda *.
Although what am I talking about wooden bowls and dishes, really nothing else was brought from there or there? Why, then, do the Incas (XIV-XV centuries AD) have such a national letter - qipu is called (in our language - a knotted letter), so in 1887 the famous Russian anthropologist Anuchin in Perm “… having about 8 lb. weight”(3.6 kg). Kvipu begin their history in Caral-Supe (Peru, 3000 BC), although the Caral civilization existed for only 200 - 300 years and eventually disappeared into some unknown place. Between Caral-Supe and the Incas, the quipu does not appear anywhere, and here on you - at Chudi near Perm … Is it funny? And the fact that in Peru and in the villages near Kursk they play the same musical instruments is not funny? And how do you like the Ichu river in Peru, Icha in Kamchatka, the Icha tributary of the Tara, the two Ichi upper and lower tributaries of the Omi in the Novosibirsk region,Icha is a tributary of the Protva in the Kaluga region, Itza (Ika) in the Orenburg province and Icha (Iča, on modern maps Inča) in the east of Latvia? The word iche, just means to drink in Turkic languages.
There is nothing surprising in this: … if you know the Turkic languages, and especially the Chuvash, then having arrived in Kamchatka, you will be able to communicate with representatives of the Kerek (Ankalaku) people at the level of root basic words. … In America you can communicate with representatives of such Indian peoples as Shoshoni, yakama, non-persce, chumash, choctaw, mohawks and purpecha.
In 1779, centurion Ivan Kobelev landed with his subordinates on the Diomede Islands and conducted a survey of the islanders about the crafts and inhabitants of America. The main toyon of the island Igellin Kaigunya Momakhunin told him that in the Yukon, in the "prison called Kymgovey, Russian people have a residence, they speak Russian, read books, write, worship icons, and other things from the Americans have been canceled, because Americans have beards rare, and even those pluck, and the Russians living there have thick and large beards. " The centurion tried to persuade Toyon to take him to the American coast "to those Russian people", but Toyon and his people refused him, explaining the refusal by fear, "so that he, Kobelev, would not be killed or detained on the American coast, and in this case, fearing a penalty, or on them of innocent oppression and calamity. " However, Toyon agreed to hand over Kobelev's letter. It can be seen from the letter: Kobelev for some reason decided that descendants of the sailors who disappeared under Dezhnev live on the Yukon. In 1948, the original report of Kobelev about correspondence with Russian settlers from the village of Kymgovey was found in the archives. From the report it is clear that the Chukchi Ekhipka Opukhin, during a confidential conversation with the centurion, told him that the inhabitants of the Yukon “gather in one large horomina made and here they pray; right in front, the males are big, and behind them are the others. " Ekhipka Opukhin even showed Kobelev how the American Russians put the sign of the cross on themselves, which surprised the centurion a lot … The settlers wrote that they had enough of everything, they only needed iron. In 1948, the original report of Kobelev about correspondence with Russian settlers from the village of Kymgovey was found in the archives. From the report it is clear that the Chukchi Ekhipka Opukhin, during a confidential conversation with the centurion, told him that the inhabitants of the Yukon “gather in one large horomina made and here they pray; right in front, the males are big, and behind them are the others. " Ekhipka Opukhin even showed Kobelev how the American Russians put the sign of the cross on themselves, which surprised the centurion a lot … The settlers wrote that they had enough of everything, they only needed iron. In 1948, the original report of Kobelev about correspondence with Russian settlers from the village of Kymgovey was found in the archives. From the report it is clear that the Chukchi Ekhipka Opukhin, during a confidential conversation with the centurion, told him that the inhabitants of the Yukon “gather in one large horomina made and here they pray; right in front, the males are big, and behind them are the others. " Ekhipka Opukhin even showed Kobelev how the American Russians put the sign of the cross on themselves, which surprised the centurion a lot … The settlers wrote that they had enough of everything, they only needed iron.that the inhabitants of the Yukon "gather in one large khoromina made and pray here, those people still have such a place on the field and put wooden written plates, stand opposite them right in front of them, a big man of the floor, and others behind them." Ekhipka Opukhin even showed Kobelev how the American Russians put the sign of the cross on themselves, which surprised the centurion a lot … The settlers wrote that they had enough of everything, they only needed iron.that the inhabitants of the Yukon "gather in one large khoromina made and pray here, those people still have such a place on the field and put wooden written plates, stand opposite them right in front of them, a big man of the floor, and others behind them." Ekhipka Opukhin even showed Kobelev how the American Russians put the sign of the cross on themselves, which surprised the centurion a lot … The settlers wrote that they had enough of everything, they only needed iron.they only need iron.they only need iron.
In addition to the possible drift of the Dezhnev ships, there could be other similar, but less known cases. Belov believes that such a fate befell, for example, in 1655 a ship with 14 industrial people under the command of Pavel Kokoulin Zavarza on the way back from the walrus fishery in Anadyrsk.
The Spaniards in 1774 undertook a voyage from San Blas to the north, and during this campaign they landed at 55 ′ 49 ′ ′ N, where they “found civilized people, pleasant-looking and habitual to wear clothes”. These people turned out to be “white and blond”.
In 1789, the Russian ambassador in Madrid, Zinoviev, sent to St. Petersburg "A report on the voyage to California of a Gishpan ship": -
Subsequently, the Russian-American company has repeatedly used this information to prove the ownership of Upper California by right of primary population, referring to 462 residents. However, in the documents of the company itself, there is no mention of that meeting at that time, and later searches for those people were organized.
A little about the Markovs: Markow is a village in Mecklenburg - Western Pomerania, on the Umanz island, near Rügen. In addition - another Markow in the mainland of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, as well as the Markau form in Saxony-Anhalt. The Russian surname is Markov. In Russia, we see about 110 villages, villages, settlements Markovo, the Markov farm and two Markov villages. In Poland we find 5 settlements Markowa and Markowo. In Ukraine we find the village of Markovo, in Bulgaria - three Markovo and two Markov in the Czech Republic. Of the Russian carriers of the surname, one can recall one of the leaders who fought against the Bolsheviks - "White Knight", Lieutenant General S. L. Markov (1878-1918), who led a division, which consisted of some officers.
Read the continuation here.
Author: Sergey Mulivanov