Haixi

The Haixi were Jurchen tribes of the middle Songhua River, a Ming label meaning west of the sea, after the river's old name; they themselves called their land Hūlun. They combined pastoralism on the steppe margins with settled agriculture, and were the Jurchens most deeply marked by Mongol culture, speaking Mongol as often as Jurchen; their Jianzhou kinsmen nicknamed them the Mongols.

In the sixteenth century the four leading clans, Hada, Ula, Hoifa and Yehe, were known as the Four Hulun, which Wang-tai of the Hada, who died in 1582, united into a confederacy.

They became the chief rivals of the rising Jianzhou leader Nurhaci: he took the Hada in 1601, the Hoifa in 1607 and the Ula in 1613, and stormed the Yehe stronghold in 1619, killing its last independent ruler. The conquered clans entered the Eight Banners and became Manchus when Hong Taiji fixed that name in 1635.