Nyurmgan

The Nyurmgan are an Evenki clan of the Vilyuy basin, in the taiga plateau west of the Lena; their name, recorded in Russian as Nyurmagan, is explained as the Evenki word for having arrows, and it gave its name to the settlement of Nyurba on the Vilyuy.

Tungus clans had settled the Vilyuy and the Middle Lena by the 1200s, until the spread of the Yakut down the Lena pushed groups such as the Nyurmgan away from the main river. With the Russian advance of the 1600s the clan was drawn into the yasak fur-tax network, and a permanent Russian settlement grew up at Nyurba in the mid-1700s.