Siberian Forest

The Ecigeen uplands lie in the forested lower Lena country. Before the opening of the period, Mongol conquest in the 13th century brought a large part of Siberia into the Mongol Empire, and Turkic-speaking Yakut groups migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from Mongol tribes between the 13th and 15th centuries. Siberia remained sparsely populated; it is doubtful the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons.

After the Golden Horde broke up, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir formed in the late 15th century. During the 16th and 17th centuries the growing Tsardom of Russia pushed eastward: traders and Cossacks entered the area, the army established forts farther and farther east, and towns such as Mangazeya, Tara, Yeniseysk and Tobolsk developed, Tobolsk becoming the de facto capital of Siberia from 1590. By the mid-17th century Russian control extended to the Pacific, and some 230,000 Russians had settled in Siberia by 1709. The long Russian conquest is placed between the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in 1582 and the annexation of Chukotka in 1778.

No specific fort, battle, mission or settlement is recorded for the Ecigeen uplands themselves. The documented story is therefore regional: a thinly peopled forest zone drawn gradually into wider Siberian networks of tribute, forts, trade and migration, without a local event that can be assigned to this place.