Koryaks

Between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Anadyr basin, on the coasts of the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, live the Koryaks, one of the Indigenous nations of Russia's far north-east. Some have long herded reindeer across the inland tundra, others hunted sea mammals and fished from coastal villages. They fought Russian expansion for much of the 18th century, and today number about 7,500, most of them in Kamchatka Krai.

The name Koryak seems to come from a neighbouring Chukotko-Kamchatkan word meaning roughly "with the reindeer"; Russian Cossack records first used it around the time Vladimir Atlasov pushed into Kamchatka in the 1690s, and official documents adopted it. The Koryak language, also called Nymylan, belongs to the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family with Chukchi, Alyutor and, more distantly, Itelmen. It had 1,665 speakers in 2010, far fewer than the number of Koryaks.

Koryaks traditionally fell into two groups. The coastal Nymylan, "village dwellers", lived settled lives, fishing and hunting whales, seals and other sea mammals. The inland Chavchuven, "rich in reindeer", were nomads who followed their herds through the seasons, eating the meat roasted and using hides, sinew and bone for clothing, tools and weapons, while salmon, berries and roots filled out the diet. Herders rode reindeer and harnessed them to sleds, and both groups used birch or willow snowshoes. Families gathered in bands of six or seven households, and a nominal chief had no real power; decisions were reached by consensus. Dwellings were domed tents of reindeer skin, the yaranga.

In Koryak belief a Supreme Being watches over the world from the sky, and much of their mythology centres on Big Raven, Quikil, whom the Supreme Being made as the first man and guardian of the Koryaks. Raven stories with striking similarities are told by peoples of North America's Pacific Northwest Coast.

Russians first entered Kamchatka from the north, in part because the rugged Koryak lands north-east of the Sea of Okhotsk, with their formidable inhabitants, discouraged a coastal approach. In 1699 Koryaks killed Russians travelling from Kamchatka, and in 1700 a Russian reprisal raid wiped out a Koryak village. Fighting continued through the following decades: in 1705 Koryaks destroyed a Cossack detachment, and in 1715 Russians captured the largest Koryak settlement. In 1742 the government in Saint Petersburg ordered a war in which the Chukchi and Koryaks were to be "totally extirpated", and campaigns against the Koryaks followed in 1744 and the 1750s; in 1753 Koryaks besieged the Gizhiga fortress. One account dates the end of serious Koryak resistance to 1756. War and a smallpox epidemic around 1769–1770 cut the Koryak population, by one estimate, from 10,000–11,000 in 1700 to 4,800 in 1800.

In 1931 the Soviet Union created the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, with its centre at Palana. After a referendum in 2005 it was merged into Kamchatka Krai on 1 July 2007. Most Koryaks are now Orthodox Christians, though shamanic traditions survive. The 2021 census counted 7,485 Koryaks in Russia. Some families still herd reindeer and use the yaranga on trips to the tundra, but snowmobiles have largely replaced reindeer for travel, and bought food sits beside traditional fare.

Our 1530, 1600, 1650 and 1700 maps draw an approximate Koryak territory at the head of the Kamchatka Peninsula, with the Itelmens to the south and the Chukchi to the north-east. The Tsardom of Russia, later the Russian Empire, lies to the west. See also Russia.