Kamenskoie

Kamenskoie denotes the country around Kamenskoye on the lower Penzhina River, near the head of Penzhina Bay in northeastern Siberia. The modern administrative settlement should not be projected unchanged into earlier centuries. The relevant older setting is western Koryak country, linked by the river with the northern Sea of Okhotsk and by inland routes with the Anadyr region.

Koryak livelihoods differed between settled coastal communities, often called Nymylan, and mobile reindeer herders known as Chauchu. Fishing and sea-mammal hunting sustained coastal households; reindeer supplied inland families with meat, skins, transport and materials for equipment. Salmon, roots and berries supplemented the herding economy. Russian expeditions and demands for tribute reached this wider country during the seventeenth century. Warfare and epidemic disease subsequently imposed severe losses: the smallpox epidemic of 1769–70 forms a major event in the history of the Koryak people. These are regional developments, not a dated town chronicle of Kamenskoye. Before 1837 the Penzhina landscape was shaped by Indigenous settlements, seasonal movement and the difficult encounter between Koryak communities and expanding Russian authority.