Khakas

The Khakas are a Turkic people of the Abakan and Minusinsk basin in the upper Yenisei, formed from the Yenisei Kyrgyz and older Tagar and Samoyedic elements. Their Kyrgyz forebears founded a khanate in 693 under Bars Bek, served the Göktürks and Uyghurs as vassals, and in 840 sacked the Uyghur capital Ordu-Baliq and destroyed the Uyghur Khaganate.

In 1207 the Kyrgyz submitted to Genghis Khan. By the seventeenth century their clans were caught between Dzungar and Russian power; a 1635 treaty imposed tribute, and many were deported to Dzungaria and, in 1761, to Manchuria, where their descendants became known as the Fuyu Kyrgyz.

Russians moved into the depopulated Minusinsk lands, building forts and farming settlements. Those who remained called themselves Tadar and lived by herding, farming, hunting and fishing; during the nineteenth century most converted to Russian Orthodoxy while keeping shamanic practices.