Vadul-Alais

The Vadul-Alais are the tundra Yukaghirs of the East Siberian seaboard. Vadul, meaning the strong or mighty ones, is their old self-name. The Alais, or Alazei, lived in the Alazeya River basin between the Indigirka and the Kolyma; at Russian contact they numbered about five hundred and eighty in eight clans, some hunting on foot and others herding reindeer.

They held in their folklore that they descended from the hero Idilvey, who could outrun a wild reindeer and leap across rivers. By 1649 a Cossack fort stood on the Alazeya; that year Yukaghir hostages escaped and killed its men. The rising was crushed and the clans made to pay fur tribute. Tribute, warfare and epidemics drove the tribe into decline.