Of the peoples studied by the Jesup Expedition, the Sakha (Yakut) are by far the most numerous. Where hunting and reindeer-herding peoples number in the thousands, there are now roughly 400,000 Sakha. The Sakha are unusual in two other respects. They speak a Turkic language distantly related to the languages of Central Asia, and they are herders of horses and cattle. The Sakha probably entered northeast Siberia in the Middle Ages, moving northward from around Lake Baikal. They first settled along the lowland meadows of the middle Lena and lower Vilui and Aldan rivers where they found grass for grazing and protection from the worst extremes of northern climate.

The horse is a central symbol of Sakha culture; the white horse represents the sun whose light energizes plant and animal life. At the ysakh festival, in the spring, a sacred brew of fermented mare's milk is drunk from special wooden vessels called choron. Jochelson's prediction that the ysakh was dying out proved unfounded. In the post Soviet period, this festival celebrates a revitalized Sakha identity.

The traditional Sakha way of life contrasted with that of the nomadic herding and hunting Even, Evenk, and Yukagir whom they absorbed or pushed further north and east. However, Sakha living in the far north adapted the hunting, fishing, and reindeer breeding cultures of their neighbors to survive in the harsh climate. The Sakha language became a primary means of communication among many of their reindeer-herding neighbors. Some Russians living along the Lena River intermarried with Sakha and adopted Sakha culture.

Shamans were active among the Sakha, using numerous techniques for curing and leadership. During seances, shamans entered trance through drumming and dancing to act as intermediaries with the world of the spirits. The metal pendants that encrusted the shamans' costumes were the work of Sakha smiths, skilled metal workers whose products were also traded to neighboring peoples. By the time of the Jesup Expedition, Russian Orthodox missionaries had influenced Sakha beliefs but never fully eclipsed Sakha cosmology.

Heirs to a tradition of mounted raiding, many Sakha resisted Russians incursions in the 17th century, but were subdued and forced to pay the tsar's fur tax. As Yakutsk became a center for the Russian fur trade, the Sakha became skilled traders. As the forests were depleted of fur-bearing game, more Sakha moved to the northeast, exerting new ecological pressure on local populations. The 19th century saw the refinement of a Sakha alphabet and the emergence of a new class of university educated Sakha intellectuals. Some would initially support the Russian Revolution hoping to fulfill nationalist dreams, but these hopes would be suppressed by Stalinist and Soviet-era politics. The period of collectivization brought a decline in the Sakha population. Shamans and other leathers, targets of struggle in these years, maintained a subterranean significance as symbols of Sakha identity that had been immortalized in epic poetry from before Russian contact. The post-Soviet years would see a resurgent ethnic pride including an enthusiasm for shamanism among rural people, urban intellectuals, cattle herders, and diamond industrialists.

For more information:

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer. "A State Within a State: The Sakha Republic (Yakutia), in Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East, S. Kotkin and D. Wolf, eds. (M.E. Sharpe, 1995).

Waldemar Jochelson. The Yakut. (American Museum of Natural History, 1933).

Piers Vitebsky. "Yakut," in The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union, G. Smith, ed. (Longman, 1990).