Khanty

The Khanty, formerly called Ostyaks by Russians from the Khanty word as-kho, a person of the Ob, are the Ob-Ugric people of the middle and lower Ob and Irtysh, a region known to medieval Novgorod as Yugra. Their language shares its Ugric branch with Mansi and Hungarian.

They descend from woodland Uralic populations between the Kama and the Irtysh; by the eleventh century Novgorodian hunters and merchants knew the tribes of Yugra, each led by its own chief. Some Khanty princedoms were absorbed into the Sibir Khanate between the 1440s and the 1570s, and its capital Qashliq stood in Khanty lands.

The Russian conquest in the 1580s brought yasak tribute, hostage children, destroyed idols and mass baptisms, but Christianity remained superficial. The Khanty kept their nature cults, shamans and Bear Celebration honouring the sky god Torum, alongside fishing, taiga trapping and reindeer herding.