Nganasan

The Nganasans are Eurasia's northernmost people, Samoyedic-speaking hunters of the Taymyr Peninsula. They took shape when southern Samoyedic migrants overran and absorbed the older Paleo-Siberian population, merging clans into the Avam and Vadeyev branches. Russians knew them as Tavgi Samoyeds.

Unlike the reindeer-herding Nenets, the Nganasans lived chiefly by hunting wild reindeer, following the herds north to the Byrranga Mountains in summer and wintering at the Arctic tree line in conical tents. They entered the Russian yasak system in 1618, paying sable furs at the Avam winter quarters, and in 1666 killed three tribute parties in a year of open revolt.

Their isolation kept missionaries away, so their shamanist religion, centred on clan spirits and the sacred wild deer, remained almost untouched. Trade in sables ran partly through the Dolgans, and smallpox brought by Russian contact caused heavy mortality in the 1830s.