Ulch

The Ulch, who call themselves nani, are a fishing people of the lower Amur valley, settled in small villages on the river's right bank; their Ulch language belongs to the Nanai branch of Tungusic, and Chinese accounts classed them as the Hezhen group that did not shave the front of the head.

Their ancestry reaches back to the ancient coastal population of Northeast Asia. Their economy rested on salmon, dried in strips for winter, supplemented by sable hunting and by catching seals and sea lions.

They wintered in log-frame houses and moved into bark-covered summer huts when the fishing season began. Russian explorers first recorded the Ulch in the 1600s, after which their sable furs entered the Russian fur trade.