Centuries ago, the first settlers who arrived from the European part of Russia to Siberia faced frightening stories, legends and traditions of indigenous peoples about mysterious and mysterious creatures endowed with unusual, almost supernatural powers.
Monster worship
The indigenous inhabitants of the upper reaches of the Tobol and Ishim worshiped and endowed with divine properties a certain Chapsan - a creature with arms and legs like a human, fins and gills like a fish, and the head of a lynx. According to aboriginal beliefs, this spirit creature lived along the banks of the rivers in the crowns of tall century-old cedars, and went hunting in the stormy river waters. Inhabitants of the northern regions of Siberia deified a polar bear with six legs and huge tusks. Especially for this creature, the Nenets and Khanty left part of their prey on the snow-covered areas of the tundra, where, in their opinion, there were rookeries for six-legged bears. The Kamchadals worshiped the seal goddess, who, according to their stories, is capable of not only swimming, but also rather quickly moving on the ground, as well as flying …
One of the most mysterious and at the same time little-studied legends concerning the existence of creatures hitherto unknown to science is the legend of the mountain devil, known from time immemorial among the peoples inhabiting the territory of modern Altai. Back in 1890, the famous explorer of Siberia N. Yadrintsev in his notes mentioned a strange ritual when the Altaians living in the areas of the villages of Ust-Kan, Kosh-Agach and Ulagan made stuffed animals of some "very disgusting-looking" creature out of bearskin skins and placed them in the courtyards of their own houses, in camps and summer camps. This creature in the south-west of Gorny Altai was called Kagyt, in the high-mountainous southern regions - Kargyt, in the east - on the border with Tuva - Kagyltit. In all cases, identifying these names with Türkic linguistic roots,the creature, translated into Russian, is referred to as "The devil in bearskin - the spirit of the mountains."
According to the memoirs of N. Yadrintsev, the mountain devil was associated in the minds of the Altai with a creature that ruled the elements of the mountains. And given the fact that for the indigenous inhabitants of this protected country the mountains were at the center of their perception of the world, "The devil in bearskin - the spirit of the mountains" occupied one of the main places in the mythological pantheon of the Altai.
Bride for the devil
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The Altaians endowed the mountain devil with a whole range of mystical abilities. So, it was believed that this creature is able to protect domestic animals from the attack of predators - wolves, bears, lynxes and snow leopards. That is why stylized stuffed mountain devil was often installed in places of pastures and livestock keeping. The mountain devil also scared away the spirits of disease and death. There is evidence of how the skin of a stuffed animal of this creature, which was in the same room with a seriously ill person, turned from brown to ashy, and after that the person, burdened with an illness, began to quickly recover.
Altai shamans, before sending the men of the village to hunt, often arranged a bloody ritual of sacrifice to the mountain devil. Often during this ritual, acts of self-harm were performed - fingers and ears were cut off from specially selected people, numerous cuts were made on the body, causing profuse bleeding. Tribesmen who underwent such executions were considered almost saints in the village, they were worshiped, offered gifts, and after death they were given a magnificent funeral, comparable to that of shamans or elders.
The Leningrad ethnographer Dmitry Zagodsky, who studied the life of the Altaians in the 1920s, mentioned in his travel notes about meetings with such crippled people, "whose sight and injuries caused shudder among the members of the scientific expedition." The same D. Zagodsky mentioned another very "inhumane" ritual - the choice of the bride of the mountain devil. Once a year, before the beginning of the pine nut harvesting season, a young girl was selected in the village, locked in a pit and began to feed her vigorously until the first snow appeared. For two or three months, almost continuous feeding with high-calorie food, which included bear and badger lard, nuts, wild honey, goat's milk, the girl managed to gain several tens of kilograms in weight. At dawn on the first snowy day, the "bride" was coated with an infusion of mountain herbs, honey and milk,wrapped in bear skins, tied tightly with ropes, taken high into the mountains, to a place known only to the shaman, where they left them. What happened next to the unfortunate bride remained a mystery, but among the local residents it was believed that in a year she would give birth to offspring from the mountain devil, which would protect their village.
Healing waste
Although the descriptions of the mountain devil differ in small details among residents of different regions of Altai, they surprisingly agree on the main thing. According to legends and legends, this creature, covered with thick hair that can change its color, is half the size of an ordinary brown bear, has a sheep's head, a long tail, like a snow leopard, arms and legs close to human. The mountain devil lives in high mountain caves inaccessible to man. It is there that he gives offspring, capable of living an independent life in a week. It is believed that the mountain devil lives for over 100-150 years and eats animal food. The remains of the mountain devil's vital activity, which the Altai sometimes find on the slopes, in the spurs and caves and attribute to this very creature, are a dense yellowish mass, very similar to amber. The Altai people consider it a great success to stumble upon this substance, which, according to legend, has an almost miraculous healing power.
Despite the frequent mention of this almost mythological creature in the legends, legends and legends of the local peoples, the body of a dead mountain devil, his remains have not been found to this day. The Altaians explain this circumstance by the fact that after death, skin, meat, bones and its entrails, and in a scientific way - a material substance, immediately turn into an incorporeal ball (etheric body), which until the end of the world hovers over the area of its lifetime, invisibly protecting people and your offspring …
Missing girl
In the village of Beltir, old people still tell the story of how, in the early fifties of the 20th century, one of the residents left the yard and lost their five-year-old daughter. For two days in a terrible blizzard and bitter frost, all the inhabitants of the village were looking for the girl. And when there was no longer any hope of finding a fugitive in such bad weather, the girl's father found his daughter sleeping peacefully in her own house. When the baby, alive and well, woke up, she told how a horned bear with a tail picked her up in the taiga - freezing and almost covered with snow. According to the girl, he brought her to some cave, "fed her with delicious cakes and let her play with pebbles." During the game, the girl fell asleep, after which she woke up in her home. According to the daughter's stories, the parents concluded that the girl stayed with a strange creature for no more than a few hours,while three days passed from the moment of her disappearance to the end of the search …
Nowadays, ethnographers and local historians have calculated that, as follows from traditional legends and legends of Siberian peoples, more than two dozen creatures presumably live on the vast territory of the Trans-Urals (an area of ten million square kilometers), which cannot be attributed to any of those discovered today or pre-existing animal species. Most of them are known from oral folk art. We learn about others from the stories of living witnesses and participants in such unusual meetings - hunters, geologists, fishermen and representatives of other professions, whose activities are in one way or another connected with communication with nature. It is possible that the mountain devil is just one of those few mysterious creatures who managed to keep their existence a secret from people greedy to the gifts of nature.
Sergey KOZHUSHKO