Kansk

Kansk grew from a Russian stockade in the Kan River country, inhabited by Kott and other Indigenous communities. In 1628 Yermak Ostafyev led fifty Cossacks from Krasnoyarsk toward the Kan and established a winter post near a major rapid. Its men began collecting yasak, the tribute claimed by the tsar, while local chiefs faced competing demands from neighbouring powers.

A permanent stockade followed in 1636 at the Bratsky crossing, with an annual garrison of fifty servicemen. The Kott chief Tymak and his followers returned from the Tuba country and paid tribute; a Krasnoyarsk account records gifts of clothing and food to local chiefs in March 1637. Such exchanges did not secure lasting obedience. In April 1640 the Tubin chief Ungur drew Kott tributaries into opposition and burned the stockade, killing its ten defenders. A force under Yelisey Tyumentsev rebuilt it that September. Tribute, negotiated alliances and violent resistance shaped the settlement's beginnings.