Ayan-Mai

The Ayan-Mai are Evenki-speaking Tungus groups of the northern Okhotsk coast, roaming the taiga and shoreline between the Ulya and Maya rivers in what is now Khabarovsk Krai. Unlike inland reindeer breeders, the coastal Tungus combined hunting and small reindeer herds with salmon fishing and sea-mammal hunting, moving between winter forest camps and summer fishing grounds.

In 1639 Ivan Moskvitin's cossack party reached the Sea of Okhotsk at the Ulya, and the ostrog of Okhotsk was built from 1647 after fighting with local tribes; the coastal clans were then registered for the fur tribute, or yasak. Through the eighteenth century Okhotsk served as Russia's main Pacific port, tying the shoreline Tungus closely to the fur trade.