Sakha
The Sakha were Turkic-speaking communities of the Lena River region in northeastern Siberia. In 1632 the Cossack Pyotr Beketov founded Yakutsk on the Lena; two years later Sakha fighters defeated Ivan Galkin's Cossack detachment and besieged the fort. The Russian authorities established the Yakut voivodeship in 1638.