Ob-Ugric

The Ob-Ugric group comprises the Mansi, once called Voguls, and the Khanty, once called Ostyaks. Their two languages belong to the Uralic family and are close relatives of Hungarian. They lived between the Urals and the Ob and Irtysh rivers, where the Khanty are recorded in Russian sources as Yugra from about the eleventh century and traded with Novgorodian hunters and merchants.

Their tribes each had their own chief, and some Khanty princedoms were partly included in the Khanate of Siberia from the 1440s to the 1570s. The Russians arrived about five hundred years ago, pushing the Mansi and Khanty eastward toward the Ob and Irtysh, while some Mansi stayed west of the Urals.