Chilchi

Chilchi lies on the Nyukzha River in the Amur country of East Siberia. The Nyukzha is a tributary of the Olyokma about 583 kilometres long, draining a basin of some 32,100 square kilometres of forested mountains and valleys. Its name comes from an Evenki word meaning 'to wander', fitting a land where Evenki herders and hunters followed reindeer and game through the taiga. Evenki families lived along its banks and fished and hunted in the surrounding forest long before Russian Cossacks crossed the Transbaikal and Amur highlands in the seventeenth century.