Chukotko-Kamchatkan

Chukotko-Kamchatkan is a small language family of the extreme northeast of Siberia, held together by two distant branches. The Chukotkan branch includes Chukchi and Koryak among others, while the Kamchatkan branch survives only in Itelmen on western Kamchatka. No link to another family has been proven. Its speakers hunted sea mammals on the coast and herded reindeer inland; Chukchi and Koryak share the endonym Luoravetlan, the real people.

Cossacks reached the Kolyma in 1643 and the Anadyr in 1649, founding Anadyrsk. From 1697 Vladimir Atlasov annexed Kamchatka, where Itelmen revolts met mass deportations and forced conversion; by the early 1800s a Russian-Itelmen creole called Kamchadal emerged.

The Chukchi defeated expeditions between 1701 and the 1750s, killing the commander Pavlutsky in 1747. Catherine the Great abandoned Anadyrsk in 1764, switching to tribute and trade fairs. The languages remained oral, carried by song and shamanic tradition.