Alyutor

The Alyutor are a Chukotko-Kamchatkan people of the narrow neck of northeastern Kamchatka, the Olyutor and Karaga coasts facing the Bering Sea. Long counted as a Koryak branch and speaking a tongue close to Koryak, they call themselves Alutal'u.

They built riverside villages on high ground, living from reindeer, salmon and seals in octagonal earth houses shared by several families.

Cossacks imposed the fur tribute on them in 1697, and armed resistance culminated in the uprising of 1751, after which their numbers fell sharply and Chukchi raids took their herds. Their late-eighteenth-century isolation let them escape the worst smallpox and keep their coastal way of life.