The peoples of Sakhalin: culture, features of life and way of life. Presentation on the topic: "Small peoples of the Sakhalin region

Nivkh clothing. A common decoration for Nivkh women were earrings made of silver or copper wire. They were shaped like a ring at the top and a curled spiral at the bottom. Sometimes the earring was a large ring made of silver wire, studded with colored glass beads or flat stone circles. Women sometimes wore several earrings. Nowadays, women's clothing includes robes, sleeves, greaves and shoes. The fabric robe has a kimono cut. The robe is bordered around the collar, along the left field and along the hem with a wide strip of material of a different color, mostly darker than the robe. One row of copper plates is sewn on the hem along the border as decoration. The long robe wraps around the right side and fastens at the side with 3 small ball-shaped buttons. For winter, the robe is sewn insulated; a thin layer of cotton wool is laid between 2 layers of material. In winter, women most often wear 2 more insulated robe over a thin robe. An elegant robe is made from bright, expensive fabric (velvet, corduroy, plush, etc.) in blue, green, red, brown and other colors. In addition, festive robes are richly decorated with stripes of bright fabrics and various patterns. The stripes are located around the collar, along the edge of the left hem, on the sleeves and along the hem. The back of the robe is especially richly decorated: an ornament is embroidered on it with multi-colored threads, and metal openwork decorations are sewn along the hem. These decorations are very rare; they are usually altered from old robe to new ones, inherited from mother to daughter and kept by women as a great value. Many women wear cloth greaves in winter and summer. In addition to greaves, women still have armlets.

Picture 21 from the presentation “Small Nations of the Sakhalin Region”

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“Clothing of the 19th century” - Summer and ritual clothing. The usual idea of ​​Russian women's costume is usually associated with a sundress and kokoshnik. Costume of the Novgorod region of the 19th century. The complex of clothing with a sundress spread in Russia at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the mid-nineteenth century, shugai began to go out of fashion and gradually turned into wedding clothing.

“Clothes in English” - Shirt. Formulation of the problem. Purpose of the work: Jacket is a short light coat – hyponym. Smock (1938) – loose garment worn by artists. The motivational features of the meaning of the word, hyponyms and hypernyms are determined. The etymology of the word influenced changes in the process of name motivation. Similarities and differences in structural and semantic features have been identified.

“Style and silhouette in clothing” - 6. Conclusions. A dress is a type of women's clothing. 4. Clothing styles. Clothing styles. Dress – all clothing, except shoes and underwear. Fashion is the temporary predominance of certain tastes in clothing. The content of the presentation. 1. Repetition of previously studied material. Straight (the width of the product is the same along the lines of the chest, waist, hips).

“Educational and methodological project” - Abstract. Materials of the educational and methodological package. Moscow City Pedagogical University Faculty of Primary Schools. Contact Information. Questions. Educational and methodological package “Clothing: yesterday, today, tomorrow.” Methodological tasks:

“Clothing of the Finns” - At the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries, Finnish folk clothing almost everywhere fell into disuse. Folk clothing of the Finns of the Vyborg province. Local peculiarities existed in each county, and initially in a separate church parish (Kirchspiel). Folk clothing, the result of the creativity of many generations, is an integral part of the Finnish cultural heritage.

Sakhalin, where small peoples - Nivkhs, Uilta (Oroks), Evenks and Nanais - have lived since ancient times, is the cradle of the culture of the region's aborigines, who created original decorative and applied arts. Like all folk art, it was born from the need to make everyday things and the desire to combine functionality and beauty in them. The peoples of Sakhalin, hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, creating clothes, utensils, and tools, reflected their worldview in decorative language and informed them about life and economy.

In the 60s and 70s, due to the resettlement of the Sakhalin aborigines to large settlements and their separation from traditional fishing grounds, the custom that made folk art obligatory gradually became a thing of the past. The spread of Russian-style clothing leads to the gradual extinction of traditional folk costume. Active labor and social activities are replacing labor-intensive handicrafts. It seemed to be on the verge of extinction. However, the craving for traditional art continued to persist, acquiring new forms of modern life. Regularly held traditional holidays of the peoples of the North, accompanied by exhibitions of decorative and applied arts, contributed to the restoration of interest in national art. Products of these years largely lose their purpose of serving everyday household needs and are perceived as artistic values, satisfying aesthetic needs.

In the 70s, state-owned specialized enterprises for the production of artistic products and souvenirs were created in the cities and towns of Sakhalin. Folk craftsmen from the city of Poronaysk, the villages of Nogliki, Nekrasovka, Viakhtu and the village of Val were involved in this activity. The range of artistic products and souvenirs produced by these enterprises includes products made from deer skins, kamus, seal skins, rovduga and other natural materials.

The beginning of the collapse of the economy associated with the restructuring of the Soviet Union also affected these enterprises. Transformed into national specialized enterprises in 1989, they suffered losses due to exorbitant taxes and lack of markets and gradually ceased to exist. At present, the modern applied art of the peoples of the North of Sakhalin is largely amateur in nature, although it tends to develop into national professional decorative and applied art. Now only a few masters are trying to preserve traditional art. Among them, Uiltka Ogawa Hatsuko (1926 - 1998), Nanayk Nina Dokimbuvna Beldy (1925 - 2002), Nivkhki Olga Anatolyevna Nyavan (born 1915), Lidia Demyanovna Kimova (born 1939), Uiltka Veronica Vladimirovna Osipova (born 1966) stand out. , Nivkhs Valery Yakovlevich Yalin (born 1943), Fedor Sergeevich Mygun (born 1962) and others.

The Nanai craftswoman N.D. Beldy was gifted with all the talents, she was fluent in playing traditional instruments: a harp, a tambourine, a shaman's belt, she kept in her memory many original Nanai songs, mastered the art of improvisation, and herself composed works in the national spirit. Her singing style was so original that recordings of songs performed by her were used by other Nanai groups. For example, the Nanai ensemble “Givana” from the Khabarovsk Territory used songs performed by her in the fairy tale play “Ayoga”. The first laureate of the Governor's Prize (1999), she immediately declared herself as a great artist with an innate sense of color, compositional flair, as a master who masters not only national technical and artistic techniques, but also an expert in national artistic and aesthetic traditions. Nivkh master L. D. Kimova began to engage in national art already in adulthood. Studying the originals and copying them, Lidia Demyanovna gradually mastered almost all the materials and traditional types of Nivkh women’s artistic creativity.

V. Ya. Yalin stands out among Sakhalin woodcarvers with his special talent, high artistic taste, steady hand and natural intuitive sense. The spoons carved by V. Yalin for the exhibition in 2000 are distinguished by their rich ornamentation and complexity of handle profiles. Variations in the shapes of handles and ornaments - the individual creativity of the master was manifested here with great completeness.

The collection of the Sakhalin Regional Art Museum, numbering more than 100 items, was created over the last decade. Collected thanks to targeted funding by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation for the project “To the Origins. Aborigines of Sakhalin" and supported by the company "Sakhalin Energy Investment Company, Ltd", it characterizes the state of modern decorative and applied art of the peoples of the North of Sakhalin. The museum's collection well represents the festive clothing of the peoples of Sakhalin, the decor of which seems to close the clothing, creating a special microcosm, which is usually what any national costume is.

The national costume occupies a significant place in the work of the Nivkh master L. D. Kimova. In it she reached special heights, becoming a recognized master of folk costume. It was in this capacity that she was invited to work on the film “The Piebald Dog Running by the Edge of the Sea.” Festive women's robes, men's shirts and other items made by her are in museums across the country and abroad. What is most striking in her works is the color harmony, exquisite selection of fabrics, thoughtfulness of color and shape of additional details. Among the festive robes of Lydia Demyanovny Kimova, of particular interest is a robe made on Nivkh motifs from fish skin with an ornamented back, dressed in which a Nivkh woman dances to the sounds of a musical log at a bear festival. The craftswoman sewed a robe from white wool and embroidered an ornament on the back, the image of which is based on an attempt to artistically comprehend the nature of her native land. Lidia Demyanovna realized her long-standing dream of creating a series of traditional Nivkh clothes by making a collection of dolls in Nivkh clothes.

Among them, the hunter-archer in a seal skirt stands out with the exotic beauty of his outfit. Everything here is ethnographically accurate, from skis lined with seal fur, short seal high boots tied at the ankle, to a seal skirt with a belt and a sheath and a flint bag suspended from it.

The ornaments of the Nanai robe of N.D. Belda are bright, the arrangement of patterns is dense. The scaly pattern on the back of the robe, the cut-out appliqué, braid and piping along the edges of the robe emphasize its festive purpose.

Each Far Eastern craftswoman had a supply of various preparations for decorating clothes. It took a lot of time to decorate a thing with an ornament, embroidered or applique, so they prepared for sewing festive and wedding robes in advance. In the museum’s collection there are such blanks for a robe by the oldest Nivkh craftswoman O. A. Nyavan with exquisite graphic patterns. In addition to robes, the museum collections also include another type of clothing - a dress for Uilta women, complete with an elegant bib, headdress and handbag for needlework. This costume was recreated by a group of Uilta women from the North of Sakhalin in 1994 and made by a young craftswoman Veronica Osipova from the village of Nogliki.

The only item of the Sakhalin Evenki in the museum’s collection is the “Avsa” handbag, sewn from deer kamus and suede. The main decoration of the bag is a semi-oval suede plate at the top of the bag, embroidered with deer hair and decorated with white round plates with red beads in the center. Tassels of white and dark fur are inlaid into the semicircular edge of the plate, giving it a festive, elegant look.

No less beautiful is the ulta pouch made of light seal fur by Ogawa Hatsuko. Its shape is traditional - a pouch, slightly tapering towards the top. Nivkh pouch - author Kimova L.D. - is sewn from alternating light and dark strips of fish skin. On the golden and dark gray surface of the pouch, red inserts and preserved traces of scales look very decorative.

In the manufacture of footwear among the peoples of Sakhalin, in addition to other materials, rovduga was widely used, obtained by soaking reindeer skin in water, then removing the wool from it and smoking it. On the children's chests made by Ogawa Hatsuko from this material, the embroidered pattern of their two paired spirals and images reminiscent of a jumping frog attracts attention.

The carpets of the peoples of the North of Sakhalin are distinguished by a wide variety of materials and techniques used. Uilta craftsmen sew them from deer skins and inlay them with white (protective) deer fur. Ogawa Hatsuko's rug (ulta) is sewn from pieces of golden seal skin.

The Nivkhs have long been famous for the art of wood carving. The custom of artistic carving of wooden products, which has lost its popularity, is preserved on Sakhalin by individual craftsmen, who from time to time turn to it to make a traditional gift, still valued among the Nivkhs, to participate in exhibitions or to perform a ritual ceremony. The main part of the museum collection consists of carved wooden utensils: ritual ladles and spoons. The shapes of the buckets are predominantly trough-shaped. Most of them traditionally have opposing handles of different configurations. The carved designs decorating them are different on each handle. The predominant element of the rich ornamentation on the ladles is a curved ribbon, intricately intertwined, in places turning into spirals and curls, or illusorily going deeper. F. Mygun complements the ribbon ornament with simple cuts or fills the background space between the intertwining ribbons with small carved figures. It is interesting that Fyodor Mygun came to Nivkh carving through Russian culture. Graduated from the Abramtsevo Art and Industrial School, wood carving department. In Nivkh carving he uses a special Bogorodsk knife, which has long been used by Russian folk craftsmen.

Other ladles are decorated with spirals, and there is also a carved chain ornament, sometimes turning into a twisted rope. Most ladles, dishes and spoons are traditionally soaked in seal oil, which gives them a beautiful yellow color.

Currently, only a few Nivkh craftsmen carve sculptures from wood. Marina Kavozg is a hereditary woodcarver. This author is represented in the museum’s collection by five sculptures made of wood of a cult nature, in which, according to the ideas of the peoples of the Far East, “spirits” lived. In the plastic characteristics of the images of the “mistress of the mountain and water”, as well as in the amulets, their semantics seems to be confirmed: on the chest of the “mistress of the water” there is a relief image of a fish, the “mistress of the mountain” has a protrusion on her head resembling a hill (hill), and on her head figurine depicting a spirit causing headaches - a raised growth-protrusion. In amulets against heart disease there is even more: an image of the diseased organ - the heart - is given.

The museum's collection also includes wooden toys. A. Voksin’s very expressive “Ducks” are shaped like the traditional “Dog” toy. After removing the bark, he painted them with spiral patterns, which were traditionally carved into the bark. These conventional figures, where only the most characteristic features are sparingly revealed, resemble iconic sculptures.

In the past, birch bark was also widely used in the economy of the peoples of the Amur region and Sakhalin. The basket of Sakhalin craftswoman Ogawa Hatsuko demonstrates the traditional form of birch bark products, made from one piece of birch bark. The Nivkh birch bark ladle (Sakhalin, 1980s) amazes with its sophistication and unusual design of clearly ethnic origin. We admire the thoughtfulness and variety of decorative details in the design of the birch bark body of the musical instrument - tynryn - Nivkh violin (property of the regional museum of local lore). Here, not only different shades of birch bark are used as decorative means, not only figured stripes along the edge of the cylinder, but even the height of the stitch that sews them and echoes the wavy edge of these strips. Everything is complemented by an embossed ornament on the body and an original selection of the color of fish skin, which covers the upper part of the body (from the belly of a sea goby). Only L.D. Kimova makes functioning tynryns on Sakhalin. The exquisite seam along the edge of a small tueska of her own work resembles a sprouting twig, vibrantly and naturally entering and exiting the holes on the strip holding the top of the tueska together.

In the work of folk craftsmen in the last decade, embroidery has begun to stand out as an independent art form (L. D. Kimova. Triptych panel “Swan Girl” - the property of SOKM; Ogawa Hatsuko. Panel “Deer”), which previously played an auxiliary role: sew on an applique ornament or traditionally decorate the edges of festive national clothing with ornaments. When creating an embroidered picture, the craftsmen used national decorative stitches. Acquaintance with Russian culture, with the achievements in the art of other nationalities of Sakhalin (in particular, with the art of the Evenki master Semyon Nadein), and the passion of a creative person led Ogawa Hatsuko to create a story-based work. Using traditional techniques and patterns, she embroidered the “Deer” panel rug. With naive spontaneity, the rug depicts a gray deer with a block around its neck, a green outline of Sakhalin at its feet, reminiscent of a thick-lipped fish (Semyon Nadein has the image of a deer-island), and two brown-green trees on the sides. There are many deviations from the rules of professional art, in particular, the image of the deer as the most important thing in the plot is given in much larger sizes than the trees, and this does not bother the artist at all. The naivety of the visual language and the spontaneity of the content attract the viewer.

In modern decorative and applied art of the peoples of Sakhalin, there is the emergence of separate trends in the artistic processing of fish skin, based on a folk basis and therefore having a local originality. Young Nivkh artist Natalia Pulus constantly turns to fish skin, making small narrative or ornamental panels using the appliqué technique. Veronika Osipova has a unique technique of painting with ink on fish skin, who creates decorative paintings-panels with it. A bearer of the Sakhalin Uilta culture, she introduces ethnographic details into the drawing, giving the product a national identity. Nivkh master L. D. Kimova, combining various natural shades of fish skin color, enriching them with new content, creates unique things: beads, handbags, collages. When making the collage “Keraf - the summer home of the Nivkhs,” Lidia Demyanovna not only uses different shades of skin color of different breeds of fish, but also smokes it, cuts it into pieces, crumbles it, and then makes images from them.

Considering the products of modern folk craftsmen, it can be noted that the ancient cultural tradition is not static. It is constantly evolving in the interrelationship of old and new. Increasingly, craftsmen are decorating modern things with traditional patterns: cosmetic bags, newspaper cases, covers for banquettes and pillowcases, etc.

And yet, a review of the products of Sakhalin craftsmen of the last decade shows a not entirely favorable situation with the art of indigenous and small peoples on the island. The museum's collection practically does not represent the DPI of the Sakhalin Evenks. The average age of folk craftsmen is 55 - 60 years. Old masters who know and remember the cultural traditions of their people are leaving. Along with the preservation of traditional types of decorative and applied art and the emergence of new ones, losses are also noted in Sakhalin folk art. Wicker weaving has disappeared, and the production of birch bark products has begun to disappear, although some older representatives of these nationalities still possess the skills of birch bark art.

At present, when folk art is no longer vital, it is very difficult to work on its revival and preservation. Studying various artistic crafts is one of the most effective forms of familiarization with traditional national culture. In order for the art, which was and is owned by representatives of the older and middle generations of Sakhalin masters, to be studied and assimilated by young people, it was necessary to organize the transfer of ancient skills to future generations.

But despite the fact that from the 60-70s, Nivkh and Uilt children began to be introduced to national arts and crafts in labor lessons in secondary schools, where they were fully supported by the state, only a few mastered traditional wood carving techniques and learned embroidery, processing of seal and fish skin. The departments of decorative and applied arts of the indigenous peoples of Sakhalin organized in the 90s in children's art schools located in areas where artistic crafts are especially developed, and the technological lyceum in the city of Poronaysk, also helped little. Since 2002, at the Institute for Advanced Training of Teachers of the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, there has been a department of additional education under the program “DPI and folk crafts of the indigenous peoples of Sakhalin”.

And although we understand that the loss of any element of the traditional heritage of indigenous peoples is a tragedy for the entire world culture, we are probably no longer able to prevent its leveling. But there is no doubt that the best ethnic traditions, if they are truly significant and valuable in a spiritual and aesthetic sense, can and should enrich modern folk arts and crafts and professional art.

Alexandra MARAMZINA

Maramzina Alexandra Mikhailovna, head of the decorative and applied arts sector of the Sakhalin Regional Art Museum, where she has worked since 1985. Interests: decorative and applied arts and folk art.

Section "Artistic culture" 6th grade. Lesson No. 4. Lesson topic:

Folk costume.

Lesson plan:

1. First, threads and needles.

2. Nivkh costume.

3. Uilta costume.

4. Ainu costume.

5. Why did men wear skirts?

6. Holiday clothes

7. Decorations.

The craftswomen invested all their imagination, brilliant talent and patience, first of all, into decorating national clothing. Folk costume– this is not just clothing that protects the body, a household item. A folk costume, through its design features, shape, material, color, and decor, demonstrates that people belong to a particular nation.

Traditional Nivkh clothing was made from fish and seal skin, dog skins, and imported fabrics. The Nivkh costume consisted of a robe with a belt, pants, Nogovitz , headdress, shoes. Important additions to clothing were oversleeves , headphones, bibs that were worn for warmth, mittens, various pendants to the belt of the robe. Women's, men's, and children's robes did not differ in cut. Robes were both home clothing and outerwear. Women's robes, also winter ones, were longer.

To prevent snow from getting into the sleeves of a fur coat, they were wrapped in sleeves at the wrists. Leggings were worn in both warm and cold seasons. Inset Leggings are clothing that fits the legs. A mandatory element of men's and women's underwear. Worn separately on each leg. For the warm season they were sewn from fabric. For winter - from dog, seal fur, from rovduga. The bottom of the leggings was tucked into the shoes.

Inset Sleeve ruffles - a strip of leather, a wide braid or an ornamented ribbon, which was used to tie the ends of the sleeves. In winter, oversleeves protected hands from wind and snow and insulated clothes. In the summer they protected their hands from midges and midges. Mittens were tied to the sleeves of the fur coat. They were made from seal skins. The Nivkh winter costume was complemented by headphones, a fur hat and a scarf made of squirrel tails. Traditional headdresses were made from fox, river otter, seal, and cotton fur. The hats were richly and colorfully decorated with squirrel, sable, and dog fur, Chinese silk, buttons, and beads. Summer conical men's hats were made from birch bark. Everyday women's hats made of fabric resembled a helmet.

Researcher L.Ya. Sternberg vividly and colorfully described the Nivkh winter men's suit: “The winter suit is very impressive. Tightened at the waist in a black dog fur coat, against the dark background of which a soft gray skirt made from the skins of young seals stands out softly, in boots with narrow toes, elegantly sewn, in a hat made of fox paws with earmuffs, in fur gloves covering the sleeves - the Gilyak produces an elegant, dashing impression.”

leggings

Using colored pencils, draw drawings of leggings (on the left) and a waist bag (on the right) in accordance with the indicated colors (capital letters (for example - C - blue, G - blue, Z - green, etc.)

Uilta shoes were very diverse - high and short, winter and summer, thin and with double fur. The Uilta believed that diseases entered through the feet and tried to keep their feet warm. Thin socks made of reindeer skin were put on the feet, and insoles were inserted from grass, which was specially prepared. Shoes were made mainly from rovduga and kamus. Inset Rovduga is a finely dressed reindeer skin.

Inset Kamus is the skin from the legs of a deer. Used for padding skis, making and decorating fur shoes, mittens and clothing among many peoples of the North and Siberia. Despite the ordinariness of such a thing as everyday shoes, they were certainly decorated. Consider children's bags made from kamus. Two narrow light stripes set off the different tones of deer fur. The top is decorated with black material. It is embroidered with a curvilinear pattern using deer tendon threads in bright yellow, green and red colors. The black ribbon is edged with gold thread and tiny white beads. It was a pleasure to wear these not only warm, comfortable, but also beautiful shoes.

Nivkhi( nivah, nivuh, nivkhgu, nyigvngun, outdated. Gilyaks)

A look from the past

“Description of all the living peoples in the Russian state” 1772-1776:

The Gilyaks, or Gilem, or Kil ey, as they call themselves, are a people who are probably most devoted to fishing among all the peoples of the world. Until quite recently, this people retained all their primitive features intact. However, in recent years, contacts with Russian colonists at the mouth of the Amur have led to the fact that the Gilyaks began to quickly forget their language and customs.

They do not usually use the names given to them by their families, but nicknames, as is common among the American Indians. Being adherents of shamanism, even those who have recently been baptized pray to idols.

R. Maak "Journey to the Amur", 1859:

The Gilyaks occupy a space of 200 versts to the very mouth of the Amur and also, in places, inhabit the seashores to the right and left of the mouth.
First of all, when meeting them, I was struck by their language, which is completely different from Tungusic and has nothing in common with it, with the exception of a few words that, both by them and by the Tungusic tribes, were borrowed from the Manchus. In addition to their language, they differed from the Tungus in their physique and the formation of their face, which was very wide, with small eyes, protruding, thick eyebrows and a short, somewhat upturned nose; the lips were large, plump, and the upper one was upturned; their beard grew noticeably thicker than that of the Tungus, and they did not pull it out, as the Tungus do. The uncut heads of the Gilyaks were covered with long black hair, which curled in some and was braided into one braid in almost all of them. Their clothing, of the same cut as that of the Tungus tribes, was made of fish skin, and some accessories, for example, boots, indicated the proximity of this tribe to the sea, because they were made of seal skin. On their heads, the Gilyaks had conical birch bark hats decorated with colored stripes.

"Peoples of Russia. Ethnographic essays" (publication of the magazine "Nature and People"), 1879-1880:

Kindness is a distinctive feature of the Gilyaks; at the same time, they are hardworking, energetic and have a much greater love of independence than the Tungus. It cannot be said that the Gilyaks did not have an admixture of foreign elements; this becomes especially noticeable in the areas neighboring the Manguns and near the mouth of the Angun, where the Tungus live.

It is very rare to find firearms among the Gilyaks. Their main and favorite food is fish, and there is no nation in the world more skillful and passionate in fishing than the Gilyaks.

As for crafts, the Gilyaks are quite skilled in wood carving. They do not call each other by their last names, but follow the American custom of calling each other by different nicknames. Bloody revenge is common in those areas where the Christian religion has not yet penetrated. Many of the Gilyaks have already converted to Christianity, but some adhere to shamanism and very carefully hide their idols. The dead are not buried in coffins, like the Tungus, but burned.

L. Schrenk, “About foreigners of the Amur region”, vol. 1, 1883; vol.2, 1899:

The Gilyatsky letnik is designed in the same way both on the mainland and on Sakhalin. Its distinctive feature is that it rests on stilts at a height of 4-5 feet from the ground. By erecting summer houses on stilts, the Gilyaks pursue a dual goal. Firstly, they try to protect themselves from floods, since the Amur River often overflows its banks during prolonged rains and floods neighboring lowlands.

Secondly, by raising their homes above the ground, they protect them from direct contact with damp soil and, as it were, arrange constant ventilation under them. This is all the more necessary because part of the fish stocks are usually stored in summerhouses.

Modern sources

Nivkhs are a small people living on the territory of the Russian Federation and Japan.

Autochthonous, indigenous population of the Amur region, Sakhalin Island and neighboring small islands, who inhabited this territory during the late Pleistocene.

Self-name

Nivah, nivuh, nivkhgu, nyigvngun “people, people” from nivkh “man”.

The outdated name is gilyak (Tung. gileke from gile “boat”).

Number and settlement

In total up to 4652 people.

In the Russian Federation, according to the 2010 census, 4466 people. (according to the 2002 census 5.2 thousand people), including the Sakhalin region 2253 people. and Khabarovsk Territory 2034 people.

The Nivkhs are historically divided into two groups according to their region of residence: Amur and Sakhalin.

They differ in language dialects and cultural characteristics.

A significant part of the Nivkh population is settled in the Khabarovsk Territory (the lower reaches of the Amur, the coast of the Amur Estuary, the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the Tatar Strait), forming a mainland group.

The second, island group, is represented in the north of Sakhalin Island.

Khabarovsk region
Locality	Nivkhi	Total population	%% Nivkhs
Nikolaevsk-on-Amur	407	28492	1,4 %
Khabarovsk	131	583072	0,02 %
village Innokentyevka	129	664	19,4 %
Takhta village	118	937	12,6 %
village Lazarev	117	1954	6,0 %
Tyr village		729	12,2 %
Kalma village		139	61,2 %
Nizhneye Pronge village		461	17,8 %
Puir village		269	28,6 %
Bogorodskoye village		4119	1,9 %
village Multivertex		2798	2,6 %
Susanino village		882	7,0 %
Krasnoe village		1251	4,8 %
village Mago		2244	2,5 %
Oremif village		325	16,6 %
Aleevka village			75,4 %
Ukhta village		175	25,7 %
village of Nizhnyaya Gavan		377	10,6 %
Voskresenskoye village		114	31,6 %
village of Konstantinovka		908	3,9 %
Tneivakh village			60,0 %
Bulava village		2226	1,3 %
Beloglinka village			33,7 %
village Makarovka			84,6 %
Chnyrrakh village		455	4,6 %
Chlya village		933	2,1 %
Solontsy village		570	3,2 %
village Vlasevo			28,2 %
Oktyabrsky village		170	6,5 %
Sakharovka village			11,8 %

Sakhalin region
Locality	Nivkhi	Total population	%% Nivkhs
village Nogliki	647	10604	6,1 %
Nekrasovka village	572	1126	50,8 %
Okha	299	27795	1,1 %
village Chir-Unvd	200	291	68,7 %
Poronaysk	116	17844	0,7 %
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk		170356	0,1 %
Rybnoye village			66,7 %
Trambaus village		105	42,9 %
Moskalvo village		807	5,5 %
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky		12693	0,2 %
Viakhtu village		286	9,1 %
Lupolovo village			75,0 %
Val village		1211	1,6 %
village Katangli		896	1,9 %
village Rybobaza-2			32,4 %

Until 1945, about 100 Nivkhs, speakers of the South Sakhalin dialect, lived in the southern Japanese part of Sakhalin.

After the war, most of them moved to the island of Hokkaido.

There is no data on the number of ethnic Nivkhs in Japan.

Ethnogenesis

Nivkhs are quite homogeneous in anthropological terms.

They belong to the Paleo-Asian type of the Mongoloid race.

Being direct descendants of the ancient population of Sakhalin and the lower reaches of the Amur, which precedes the Tungus-Manchus here.

It is the Nivkh culture that is perhaps the substrate on which the largely similar culture of the Amur peoples is formed.

There is a point of view that the ancestors of modern Nivkhs, northeastern Paleo-Asians, Eskimos and Indians are links in one ethnic chain that in the distant past covered the northwestern shores of the Pacific Ocean.

The Nivkhs are identified with the archaeological Okhotsk culture, which in ancient times occupied a wider area than the modern territory of the Nivkhs.

The bearers of this culture, mishihase, were expelled from Japan in the 7th century AD. e.

In terms of language and culture, the Nivkhs are close to peoples speaking Paleo-Asian languages ​​(Chukchi, Koryaks, etc.), and most often unite with them in a common group.

It is assumed that the Nivkhs are related to the peoples of Polynesia and the Ainu.

Another point of view believes that the ancient population of the Amur and Sakhalin (archeology of Meso/Neolithic times) is not actually Nivkh, but represents an ethnically undifferentiated layer of culture, which is substratum in relation to the entire modern population of the Amur.

Traces of this substrate are recorded in the anthropology, language, and culture of both the Nivkhs and the Tungus-Manchu peoples of the Amur region.

Within the framework of this theory, the Nivkhs are considered to have migrated to the Amur, one of the groups of northeastern Paleo-Asians.

The relative inconsistency of these ethnogenetic schemes is explained by the high degree of mixing and integration of the modern peoples of Amur and Sakhalin, as well as the late time of their ethnic registration

Language

Nivkh is an isolated Paleo-Asian language.

The language is agglutinative, synthetic.

It has a complex system of regular consonant alternations.

The stress is not fixed, movable and varied, and can perform a semantic distinguishing function.

It has eight parts of speech, adjectives are not highlighted, their semantic equivalents are qualitative verbs.

In the Amur dialect, nouns, pronouns, and numerals have 8 cases and 7 in the East Sakhalin dialect.

Verbs have the categories of voice, mood, aspect, tense (future and non-future), number, person and negation.

Language of nominative syntactic structure.

A simple sentence prevails over a complex one.

The typical word order is SOV.

The question of the existence of incorporation is controversial.

There is a hypothesis by J. Greenberg, according to which the Nivkh language is part of the Eurasian (Nostratic) family of languages.

Since the 1970s, Soviet science has expressed the opinion that the Nivkh language belongs to the Altai family (T. A. Bertagaev, V. Z. Panfilov, V. I. Tsintsius); according to A. A. Burykin, the Nivkh language represents a separate branch of the Tungus-Manchu languages, which separated earlier than other languages ​​and was subject to strong Ainu influence.

O. A. Mudrak attributes Nivkh to the ancient “Paleo-Asian” family he reconstructs (along with the Chukotka-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut, Ainu and Yukaghir languages).

Japanese linguists Katsunobu Izutsu and Kazuhiko Yamaguchi consider the Nivkh language to be one of the ancestors of modern Japanese.

S. L. Nikolaev came up with a hypothesis about the relationship of Nivkh with the Algonquian and Wakash languages ​​of North America.

Dialects

There are 4 dialects in the Nivkh language:

Amursky. The lexical and phonological differences between the Amur and Sakhalin dialects are so great that some linguists distinguish two separate languages ​​belonging to the small Nivkh family.

East Sakhalin

North Sakhalin - in all respects, occupies an intermediate position between the Amur and East Sakhalin dialects.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is a dialect of the Nivkhs, who until recently lived in Japan.

Story

The Nivkhs settled Sakhalin during the late Pleistocene, when the island was supposedly connected to the Asian mainland.

But during the Ice Age, the ocean rose, and the Nivkhs found themselves divided into 2 groups by the Strait of Tartary.

It is believed that the earliest mention of the Nivkhs in history is Chinese chronicles of the 12th century.

They talk about the peoplegilami(whale.吉列迷 Jílièmí), who was in contact with the rulers of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China.

Contacts between Russians and Nivkhs began in the 17th century, when Cossack explorers visited here.

The first Russian to write about the Nivkhs in 1643 was Vasily Poyarkov, who called them Gilyaks.

This name stuck with the Nivkhs for a long time.

In 1849-1854. The expedition of G.I. Nevelsky, who founded the city of Nikolaevsk, worked on the Lower Amur.

A year later, Russian peasants began to settle here.

The Russian Empire gained full control over the Nivkh lands after the Treaty of Aigun in 1856 and the Treaty of Beijing in 1860.

Traditional home

The Nivkhs are traditionally sedentary; many of their settlements on the mainland (Kol, Takhta, etc.) are hundreds of years old.

Winter dwelling - tyf, dyf, taf - a large log house that had a pillar frame and walls made of horizontal logs inserted with pointed ends into the grooves of vertical pillars.

The gable roof was covered with grass.

The houses are single-chamber, without ceilings, with earthen floors.

Chimneys from 2 fireplaces heated wide bunks along the walls.

In the center of the house, a high flooring was erected on poles; in severe frosts, sled dogs were kept and fed on it.

Usually 2-3 families lived in the house, on their own plot of bunks.

With the onset of warmth, each family moved from their winter home to a summer village near a lake or stream, near the fishery.

Frame summerhouses made of bark were most often placed on stilts and had different shapes: 2-slope, conical, 4-angled.

Of the 2 rooms, one served as a barn, the other as a dwelling with an open hearth.

Among the Gilyaks, summer dwellings are either yurts (in Gilyak “Tuf”), low log cabins always standing directly on the ground, usually covered on two slopes with tree bark (bast).

With a smoke hole in the roof, no windows, with one small door - a loophole, which for the most part would be difficult for an adult to crawl through.

The roof also serves as a ceiling; the floor is laid only for the more prosperous.

The logs of the log house are always thin and rarely fitted closely and caulked.

For the most part, the log house is divided into two halves across, then the front half is not residential - it usually serves dog owners in bad weather and is chock-full of dogs of all ages.

In the residential half, the middle is occupied by a hearth (“mascara” in Gilyak), i.e., an oblong-quadrangular ½ arshin approximately high above the ground (or floor) boardwalk.

Almost level with the edges covered with earth (or sand), in which a fire is lit directly with a fire.

Some of the smoke comes out into the square hole in the roof directly above it in calm weather and when the front door is closed, otherwise the smoke covers the entire room and every living thing survives.

Despite all sorts of tricks to cover this roof hole from the outside on the leeward side with boards, every new yurt quickly becomes covered inside with a layer of soot, and there’s nothing to say about the old ones.

At a distance of a step (on average) from the hearth and at the same height as its edges, plank bunks are laid on three sides, usually the width of an average person’s height.

The wall (or partition) in which the entrance door is a loophole is usually free of bunks.

Between the upper edges of the log house along and across the room, poles are stretched over the hearth; boilers are hung from them on hooks and clothes and all sorts of junk are hung to dry.

In the highest yurts it is difficult to walk without hitting your head on these soot-covered poles - you have to bend down.

The entire log house is usually oblong and quadrangular, the area it occupies varies, but the spaciousness of the room is a rare exception; cramped space prevails.

For household needs, log barns were built on high poles, and hangers were installed for drying nets, seines and yukola.

On Sakhalin, until the beginning of the twentieth century, ancient dugouts with open hearths and a smoke hole were preserved.

Family

Until the middle of the 19th century, the Nivkhs remained outside the influence of any state power, diligently preserving traditions and internal, tribal structure.

The clan was the main self-governing cell.

The highest body of self-government of the Nivkhs was the Council of Elders.

The average Nivkh family in 1897 consisted of 6, sometimes 15–16 people.

Small families predominated from parents with children, and also often from younger brothers and sisters of the head of the family, his older relatives, etc.

Rarely did married sons live with their parents.

They preferred to choose the bride from the mother's family.

There was a custom of cross-cousin marriage: the mother sought to marry her son to her brother’s daughter.

Parents agreed on the marriage of children at the age of 3–4 years, then they were raised together in the house of their future husband.

When they reached 15–17 years of age, married life began without any special rituals.

In cases where marriages took place between unrelated clans, the Nivkhs followed a carefully developed ritual (matchmaking, contracts on bride price, presentation of bride price, relocation of the bride, etc.).

When the bride moved, the ritual of “stomping the cauldrons” was performed: the parents of the bride and groom exchanged huge cauldrons for cooking dog food, and the young people had to alternately step on them at the doors of the bride’s and groom’s houses.

Traditional farming

The main traditional occupation of the Nivkhs was fishing, which provided food for people and dogs, material for making clothes, shoes, sails for boats, etc.

We did it all year round.

The main fishery is migratory salmon (pink salmon in June, chum salmon in July and September).

At this time, they stocked up on yukola - dried fish.

Dried fish bones were prepared as food for sled dogs.

Fishing gear included spears (chak), hooks of various sizes and shapes on leashes and sticks (kele-kite, chosps, matl, chevl, etc.), various fishing rods, rectangular, bag-shaped, fixed nets (including ice nets) and smooth (chaar ke, khurki ke, nokke, lyrku ke, anz ke, etc.), seines (kyr ke), nets, summer and winter fences (fences in rivers with a net trap).

Marine hunting played a major role in the economy of Sakhalin and the Amur Estuary.

In spring and summer, animals (seals, bearded seals, sea lions) were caught with nets, seines, hooks, traps (pyr, rsheyvych, honk, etc.), harpoons (osmur, ozmar), a spear with a floating shaft (tla) and a kind of rudder (lahu) .

In winter, with the help of dogs, they found holes in the ice and placed hook traps in them (kityn, ngyrni, etc.).

In the spring, seals and dolphins were hunted in the lower reaches of the Amur.

The sea beast provided meat and fat; clothes, shoes, gluing skis, dressing various household items.

Taiga hunting was most developed on the Amur.

Many Nivkhs hunted near their homes and always returned home in the evening.

On Sakhalin, hunters went into the taiga for a maximum of a week.

Small animals were caught using various pressure traps, nooses, crossbows (yuru, ngarkhod, etc.), bears, moose - using a spear (kah), bow (punch).

From the 2nd half. XIX century Firearms were widely used.

The Nivkhs exchanged furs for fabrics, flour, etc.

Women collected and stored medicinal and edible plants, roots, herbs, and berries for future use.

Various roots, birch bark, twigs, etc. were used to make household utensils; nettle fiber was used to weave nets, etc.

The men stockpiled building materials.

They fished and caught sea animals from boats - plank punts (mu) with a sharp nose and 2-4 pairs of oars.

All R. XIX century Such cedar boats were often received from the Nanai.

On Sakhalin they also used poplar dugouts with a kind of visor on the nose.

In winter they traveled on sledges, with up to 10–12 dogs harnessed to them in pairs or in a herringbone pattern.

The sled (tu) of the Amur type is straight-winged, tall and narrow, with double-curved runners.

They sat astride it, with their feet on their skis.

In con. XIX - early XX century The Nivkhs began to use wide and low sledges of the East Siberian type.

The Nivkhs, like other peoples of the Amur, had 2 types of skis - long skis for spring hunting and sealed fur or elk skins for winter hunting.

Religion and ritual

The religious beliefs of the Nivkhs were based on Pantheism and Animism, a trade cult, and belief in spirits that lived everywhere - in heaven, on earth, in water, in the taiga.

The religious ideas of the Nivkhs are based on the belief in spirits that lived everywhere - in the sky (“heavenly people”), on the earth, in the water, the taiga, every tree, etc.

They prayed to the host spirits, asking for a successful hunt, and made bloodless sacrifices to them.

“Mountain man”, the owner of the taiga Pal Yz, who was represented in the form of a huge bear, and the owner of the sea Tol Yz, or Tayraadz, a sea killer whale.

Each bear was considered the son of the owner of the taiga.

The hunt for it was accompanied by rituals of the trade cult; there were rituals characteristic of the bear holiday; A bear cub caught in the taiga or purchased from the Negidals or Nanais was raised for 3–4 years in a special log house, after which a holiday was held in honor of the deceased relatives.

Feeding the animal and organizing a holiday was an honorable task; neighbors and relatives helped the owner in this.

During the entire time the animal was kept, many rules and prohibitions were observed. For example, women were forbidden to approach him.

The bear festival, which sometimes lasted 2 weeks, was held in the winter, during free time from fishing.

During the celebration, the bear was dressed in a special costume, taken from house to house, and treated to food from carved wooden dishes.

After which the animal was sacrificed by shooting from a bow.

They placed food at the head of the killed bear, “treating” it.

The bear was then skinned, following many rules.

All relatives (even those living far away) usually gathered for it.

The details of the bear festival among the Nivkhs had local differences.

The features of the ritual also depended on whether the owner was organizing a holiday after the death of a relative or simply on the occasion of the capture of a bear cub.

The Nivkhs, unlike other peoples of the Amur, cremated their dead.

The burning ritual differed among different groups of Nivkhs, but the common content prevailed.

The corpse and equipment were burned on a huge bonfire in the taiga (at the same time, fire pits were made and fenced with a log house.

A wooden doll was made (a bone from the skull of the deceased was attached to it), dressed, put on shoes and placed in a special house - a raf, about 1 m high, decorated with carved ornaments.

Near him they performed regular memorial rites (especially often once a month for a year, after that - every year), treated themselves, and threw food into the fire - for the deceased.

A typical ritual is the symbolic burial of a person whose body was not found (drowned, disappeared, died at the front, etc.): instead of the body, a large, human-sized doll made of branches, grass was buried, it was dressed in the clothes of the deceased and buried in the ground or burned, observing all the required rituals.

Members of one clan, living in a common village, held prayers in winter to the spirits of water, lowering sacrifices (food on ritual utensils) into the ice hole; in the spring, after the river was opened, victims were thrown into the water from decorated boats from special wooden troughs in the shape of fish, ducks, etc. 1-2 times a year they prayed in their houses to the master spirit of heaven.

In the taiga, near the sacred tree, they called upon the spirit-owner of the earth, turning to him with requests for health, good luck in trades, and in upcoming affairs.

The guardian spirits of the house in the form of wooden dolls were placed on special bunks; sacrifices were also made to them and they were “fed.”

The Nivkhs attached great importance to the ritual of naming a newborn.

This act was usually performed by fellow villagers and very rarely by relatives.

In most cases, the name was given immediately after the umbilical cord fell off.

The proper names of the Nivkhs are formed from words with a wide variety of meanings.

The Nivkhs gave newborns names that reflected the habits of their parents, their activities, and character traits.

There are Nivkh names that contain a hint of certain circumstances and events, one way or another connected with the birth of a child.

Many proper names were given based on some feature of the child’s appearance. There is an assumption that some names were wish names, i.e. denoted the quality that parents would like to see in a child.

Among the Nivkhs, like many other peoples, in the practice of naming newborns, sometimes an important role was played by the idea that there is an inextricable connection between a word and the phenomenon or object it designates.

So, in particular, they were afraid to tell a stranger their own name of a clan member, fearing that he, knowing the name, could cause harm to its bearer.

Perhaps this was to some extent reflected in the nature of communication between the Nivkhs. Before, they rarely called anyone by name.

Young people addressed old people simply with the word khemara “old man”, and old women with ychika “grandmother”, or they said a fake name.

The Nivkhs explain this by the embarrassment that will be felt if you pronounce the old man’s real name in his presence.

The parents of their peers were addressed using a descriptive term: “father of such and such”, “mother of such and such”, for example: Payan ytyka “father of Payan”, Rshysk ymyka “mother of Rshyska”, etc.

Children addressed their parents and grandparents using kinship terminology.

Adults, in turn, rarely called their children and grandchildren by name. During a conversation, when they wanted to name one of the children, they were usually identified using the age ratio: “senior”, “middle”, “junior”, etc.

Even the guests were never called by name, but were said: “who came from such and such a place” or “a resident of such and such a place.”

For example, the Nivkhs of the Amur called a guest from the Amur Estuary Lanrp'in "resident of the area...", and a guest from the Okhotsk coast - kerkpin "guest of the sea", a Sakhalin guest - Lerp'in "resident of the area Ler", and the Sakhalin and Liman Nivkhs called the guest with Amur Lap'in “resident of the Amur”, etc.

Perhaps that is why many Nivkhs had two names: a real one (urla ka “good name”) and a fake one (lerun ka “a playful, wandering name”).

Among some young Nivkhs of Sakhalin, the false name was formed by shortening the real name.

Sometimes the Nivkhs gave the newborn the name of some ancestor who died several generations (usually at least three) ago.

Usually, if the newborn was very similar to one of the deceased ancestors, then the old people said: Inar ichir p’ryd letters. “having become his blood, he came.”

On about. In Sakhalin, the Nivkhs now have names that were borne by their ancestors who lived in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

Traditional clothing

Clothing was made from fish skin, dog fur, leather and fur of taiga and sea animals.

Men's and women's larshk robes are kimono-cut, left-handed (the left half is twice as wide as the right and covers it).

Women's robes were longer than men's, decorated with appliqué or embroidery, and along the hem with metal plaques sewn in one row.

Winter fabric robes were sewn using cotton wool.

Festive ones made of fish skin were decorated with ornaments applied with paints.

Winter clothing - ok fur coats made from dog skins, men's pshakh jackets made from seal skins, for the wealthier - women's fur coats made from fox fur, less often - from lynx fur.

Men on the road to ride sleds (sometimes during ice fishing) wore hosk skirts made of seal skins over their fur coats.

Underwear - trousers made of fish skin or fabric, leggings, women's - made of fabric with cotton wool, men's - made of dog or seal fur, short men's bibs with fur, women's - long, fabric, decorated with beads and metal plaques.

Summer hats are birch bark, conical in shape; winter - women's fabric with fur with decorations, men's - made of dog fur.

Piston-shaped shoes were made from sea lion or seal skins, fish skin and other materials, and had at least 10 different options. It differed from the shoes of other peoples of Siberia with a high “head”-piston, and the tops were cut separately.

A warming insole made from a special local grass was placed inside.

Another type of footwear is boots (similar to Evenki ones) made of reindeer and elk camus and seal skins.

The Nivkhs decorated their clothes, shoes, and utensils with the finest curvilinear ornaments of the characteristic Amur style, the foundations of which are known from archaeological finds.

National cuisine

The diet of the Nivkhs was dominated by fish and meat.

They preferred fresh fish - they ate it raw, boiled or fried.

When there was an abundant catch, yukola was made from any fish.

Fat was boiled from the heads and intestines: they were simmered for several hours without water over a fire until a fatty mass was obtained, which could be stored indefinitely.

Soups were made from yukola, fresh fish and meat, adding herbs and roots.

Purchased flour and cereals were used to prepare flatbreads and porridges, which were eaten, like other dishes, with large amounts of fish or seal oil.

Until relatively recently, the Nivkhs widely consumed seal, sea lion, beluga and dolphin meat; most often the meat was boiled.

But the heart, kidneys and flippers were eaten raw, considered a great delicacy.

They ate the meat of deer, elk and, less often, bear.

Moreover, when they ate bear meat, they followed an ancient custom - the best pieces of meat (heart, tongue, etc.) were given to the eldest sons-in-law.

The Nivkhs widely eat the meat of ducks, geese, sea waders, seagulls, herons, partridges, wood grouse and other game, mainly boiled.

Wild berries occupy a place of honor in the Nivkh diet: blueberries, crowberries, cloudberries, black and red currants, raspberries, lingonberries, as well as rosehips and hawthorns.

Berries mixed with ground dried fish and seal fat are still traditionally considered a delicacy, although there are other delicacies in stores, for example, chocolate, candies, compotes, etc.

Nivkhs eat seaweed (put), it is dried in the sun, and then, as needed, boiled in brine and eaten.

Saran tubers are collected, as well as other plant roots. They are dried and added as a seasoning to ground yukola.

Wild garlic is prepared for future use (dried or salted) and is widely used as a seasoning for fish and meat.

They drink white tea with birch mushroom - chaga (in Nivkh, chagu-kanbuk - white mushroom).

Of the flour dishes, the most common are unleavened flatbreads baked directly on the stove, frying pan or over a fire, as well as boiled flatbreads with seal fat.

Arkaizozle

Cut the dried smelt into small pieces, mix with boiled peas, shiksha berries and seal fat.

Potato tola (potato talc)

Cut the peeled and washed potatoes into strips, boil in water without salt (cook for a short time so that the potatoes do not become overcooked).

Then cut the head cartilages of salted chum salmon into small pieces (pink salmon can also be used).

Mix all this, add chopped onions or wild garlic and pour in fish oil.

Boiled crucian carp (e-nchisko)

Peel the crucian carp - remove scales, cut the belly and remove the entrails, remove the gills from the head, rinse with cold water and place in a pot with cold water.

Bring the water to a boil, skim off the foam, cook until almost done, then add salt, add bay leaf and cook for 5-7 minutes until the fish is ready.

Remove the fish from the broth, place on a dish, add finely chopped wild garlic and berries (lingonberries, blueberries, etc.).

Eaten hot.

Potato jelly (potato mos)

Prepare mashed potatoes with the addition of butter from peeled and boiled potatoes in salted water.

From peas boiled in salted water, pea puree is prepared with the addition of fat.

Then add the crushed mass of peeled boiled pine nuts and fresh bird cherry to the mixture of two purees.

Tala

To prepare tala, you can use fresh (live) or frozen fish.

Fresh (live) fish must be slaughtered - with the sharp end of a small knife, make a deep cut in the throat between the fins and allow the blood to drain.

You can use frozen fish that is still alive, that is, just caught, which most often happens when preparing tala for winter fishing.

To prepare tala, it is best to use sturgeon or salmon (chum salmon, pink salmon, coho salmon, char, etc.).

If thala is prepared from frozen fish, then the skin must be removed.

Using a sharp knife, cut the fillet, cut it very finely (into strips), salt and pepper, add 6% vinegar and leave in the cold for at least 30 minutes.

Serve the thala frozen.

To prepare tala from fresh fish, it must be cleaned, washed and frozen, and then proceed in the same way as when preparing tala from frozen fish.

Economy and life of the Nivkhs

The main occupations of the Nivkhs have long been fishing and marine activities. In fishing, the first place was occupied by fishing for anadromous salmon fish - chum salmon and pink salmon. Salmon fish were caught using traps, nets and seines. The driveway was a fence made of thick stakes and rods in the shape of the letter “L”, located perpendicular to the shore and “verbly” downstream. In this part, a lifting network was installed, at which people were on duty on the boat. The fish, moving in a solid mass along the shore, bumped into the wall of the entrance, turned along the wall and fell into the net. Noticing the movement of the signal ropes, the fishermen lifted the net and unloaded the caught fish into the boat. This method usually gave the farm 4-5 thousand salmon in a few days, which fully satisfied its consumer needs. The drive-in was usually built collectively by several families.

Seines, small in size, were previously woven from nettle threads. Two or three fishermen were pulling the net, one of whom was walking along the shore, while the others were sailing in a boat. Later, the Nivkhs learned from the Russians how to sew large nets. The Nivkhs caught beluga and sturgeon with harpoons and hook tackle - hooks on short ropes attached to a long rope stretched in the water.

Particular fishing, which was carried out throughout the year, was of great importance for the Nivkhs. It was caught using fishing rods, fixed nets (in winter and summer), floating nets (in summer) and seines (in the spring-autumn season).

Marine fishing was developed among the Sakhalin and Liman Nivkhs. They hunted sea lions and seals. Steller sea lions were caught with large fixed nets. They went out to hunt for seals in early spring, with the first signs of breaking up the ice. They beat them with harpoons and clubs (clubs) when they climbed out to bask on the ice floes. The seal hunt continued into the summer. In open water they were hunted using a floating harpoon (lykh). It was a board with a harpoon point attached to a stick, 10-30 m long. The lykh was launched into the water, the hunter was hiding nearby on a boat or on the shore. Seeing the prey, the hunter carefully pointed his bald head at it and quickly thrust it into the animal.

Hunting, in comparison with other peoples of the Amur, played a lesser role among the Nivkhs. The hunting season began in the fall, after the end of the fish run. At this time, bears go to the rivers to feast on fish, and the Nivkhs were waiting for them with a bow or a gun. Sometimes they used crossbows. In winter they hunted bears with a spear. Following the bear hunt came the sable fishing season. Sable and some other fur-bearing animals (otter, lynx, weasel) played a significant role in the economy of the Nivkhs. The furs went to the Chinese and later to the Russian market. The Amur Nivkhs went every autumn on their large, plank, heavy-moving boats to the sable fishery on Sakhalin and returned from there only in early spring. This was caused by the abundance of sable on Sakhalin. Along the banks of rivers and on fallen trees, which served as crossings for sables, the Nivkhs set numerous traps.

The main hunting weapon was the gun; at the beginning of the 20th century. replacing the Nivkh compound bow with horn overlays. Noah later, the bow was preserved in the bear festival and in children's games. Squirrels and foxes were hunted with dogs. Crossbows were used on large and small animals.

Agriculture began to penetrate the Nivkhs in the middle of the 19th century. when they first started planting potatoes. A few Nivkhs used to work as a cab driver and other jobs, but they were hired.

Even before the arrival of the Russians, in some villages there were specialist blacksmiths who forged Japanese, Chinese, and later Russian metal products for their needs; they made straight and curved knives, adapted for planing wood, arrowheads, harpoons, spears, etc. The blacksmiths used a double bellows, an anvil and a hammer. The surviving remains of massive chains indicate the high skill of blacksmithing in the past.

Among the Nivkhs, inlay with silver and copper> tips was common. The old people were engaged in the production of ropes from bast and nettles, as well as the manufacture of desks and dog harnesses.

Men's jobs included fishing, hunting, making tools, including gear and vehicles, collecting and transporting firewood, and blacksmithing. Women were engaged in processing fish, seal and dog skins, as well as birch bark, sewing and decorating clothes, preparing birch bark dishes, collecting plant products, housekeeping and caring for dogs.

By the time of the Sovietization of the Far East, the way of life of the mainland Nivkhs was characterized by a fairly strong development of commodity relations. The old forms of collective production and distribution almost completely disappeared under the influence of growing processes of property differentiation. Many fishermen and hunters, deprived of fishing tools, were forced to go to logging, work for hire, and engage in carting. Insignificant income from fishing forced the Nivkhs to turn to agriculture. Fur hunting was of negligible importance among the Amur Nivkhs. The products of hunting marine animals - seals, beluga whales, sea lions - were mainly used for consumer needs. Fishing was carried out by artels. These artels were usually small, consisting of 3-7 people. It was practiced to hire workers in the form half-shareholders. Some of the Nivkhs worked for hire during fishing in fish processing.

Among the Sakhalin Nivkhs, fishing was also very important, but along with it, fishing for sea animals and hunting for bear, sable and some other animals were widely practiced.

The main food of the Nivkhs was always fish, most often dried; yukola replaced bread for them. Meat food was rarely consumed. Food was seasoned with fish oil or seal oil. Moss, prepared from a decoction of fish skins, seal oil, berries, rice, and sometimes with the addition of chopped yukola, has always been considered a tasty dish. Another tasty dish was talkk - a salad of raw fish seasoned with wild garlic. The Nivkhs became acquainted with rice, millet and tea during the time of trade with China. After the Russians appeared on the Amur, the Nivkhs began to consume, albeit in small quantities, bread, sugar and salt.

The original, and until the recent past, the only domestic animal of the Nivkhs was a dog. It served as a draft animal and provided fur for clothing, its meat was eaten, it was a common object of exchange, and played a prominent role in religious beliefs and rituals. The number of dogs in a household was an indicator of prosperity and material well-being. Typically, each household had 30-40 dogs, which required a lot of care. They most often fed on fish and seal oil; food supplies had to be stored for the entire winter, during which dogs were used as mounts as much as possible.

The ancient Nivkh sled, which Shrenk found in the middle of the last century, was so narrow that the rider sat astride it, resting his feet on small skis, and sometimes he stood up and ran in this position on skis. The runners of this sled were curved both front and back. The dogs were harnessed with a snake, that is, they were tied to a pulling belt not in pairs, but one at a time, then on one side or the other in turn. The harness was a simple collar, so the dog pulled with its neck.

Not so long ago, at the bear festival, they organized dog races, using old sledges and an old team for this. The dog harness and sled that appeared among the Nivkhs at the beginning of the 20th century are significantly different from the previous ones. Later sled dog breeding among the Nivkhs (the so-called East Siberian type) is characterized by a more capacious sled with a vertical arc and a pair of sleds not in collars, but in straps in which the dogs pull with their chests.

The development of the carriage industry caused the transition to a new type of sledge. Increasing the stability and size of the sled made it possible to transport up to 200 kg of cargo. Usually 9-11 dogs were harnessed. The most trained and valuable dog is the leader. The shouts from the management of the driver - the musher - were usually addressed to her. They stopped the dogs with a shout and a stopping stick. The dogs were harnessed not only to the sled, but sometimes also to the boat with a longer pull.

The horse as a transport animal appeared among the Nivkhs relatively recently.

In winter, the means of transportation on land, in addition to dog transport, were skis - skis without fur or skis with seal fur glued on. The first were used for short journeys, the second - for long trips during the fur hunting season. A distinctive feature of Nivkh skis were wooden flaps nailed on top of the skin.

They swam along rivers (mainly on Sakhalin) on light dugouts made from poplar. These dugouts were so light that they were carried by hand across the obstacles (shoals, isthmuses). They moved on them with the help of an oar and a pole, which they usually used when climbing against the current. For long journeys, the Nivkhs had a large boat, similar to the Ulch, Nanai and Oroch boats. It was built from three wide cedar boards, the bottom (bottom) at the bow was bent upward and protruded above the water with a shovel. Row on it with 2-4 pairs of oars, lifting the oars on the right and left sides separately.

Nivkh settlements were usually located near the mouths of spawning rivers and only rarely numbered more than 20 dwellings. Until recently, the houses of relatives were placed nearby. About 40-50 years ago, the dugout was still widespread among the Sakhalin Nivkhs. For it, they dug a hole 1.25 m deep, over which they placed a frame made of thin logs and covered it with earth from the outside. The smoke hole served as a window, the fireplace was built in the middle, and there were bunks around it. At the end of the 19th century. The entrance to the dugout was no longer through the roof, but through a long, low corridor.

Among the Amur Nivkhs, approximately from the time of the Ming dynasty, dugouts began to be replaced by Manchu fanzas of the frame type, which spread throughout the territory of the Nanai and passed on to the Nivkhs. The type of construction and the distribution of places inside the winter road among the Nivkhs were the same as among the Ulchi. The Nivkhs usually spent the summer in summer houses. Letnik is a building on stilts 1.5 m high. It consisted of two halves: the back - living, illuminated through a hole in the roof, and the front, which served as a barn. Around the summer house there were usually hangers for drying fish and pile storage sheds for storing various products. The general appearance of the Nivkh summer dwelling on piles was no different in general from the Ulchi summer barn.

The old summer men's costume of the Nivkhs largely coincided with the Nanai. It consisted of trousers (varga), a robe that reached to the knees and fastened from left to right, shoes made of sealskin, and a conical birch bark hat (kh'ifkh'akk). Pants and a robe were sewn from blue or gray paper material. The women's summer robe made of fish skin or fabric was longer and decorated along the hem with copper plates. In winter, over the robe they wore clothes made of dark fur, sewn with the fur facing out. When traveling on sleds, to protect the fur from drying, men wore a skirt made of seal skin over their fur clothing (seal skin was not used for clothing of the deceased). Headphones and a fur hat were put on the head. The differences between men's clothing and women's clothing boiled down to a greater number of embroideries and appliqués and a greater variety of materials for women's clothing (silk, cloth, lynx fur on the hat).

The Nivkhs previously purchased material for clothing from Chinese and Russian traders. For shoes, dressing gowns and fur coats, they used specially tanned skins of carp, chum salmon and pike, seal and elk skin, dog fur, etc.

In pre-revolutionary times, both men and women did not cut their hair, but braided it - men in one braid, women in two braids