Daur people

There is little land fit for agriculture east of the Yenisei River except for Dauria, the land between the Stanovoy Mountains and the Amur River, which is nominally controlled by China.

Vassili Poyarkov, sent to explore this land, had in 1640 been in Yakutsk as pismenyy golova (roughly, in charge of records and correspondence).

Poyarkov with one hundred and thirty-three men had started out in June of 1643 from Yakutsk, sent by the voevoda of Yakutsk, Peter Golovin.

Having no idea of the proper route, Poyarkov has traveled up the rivers Lena, Aldan, Uchur, Gonam.

Delayed by sixty-four portages, it is early winter before he reaches the Stanovoy watershed.

Leaving forty-nine men to overwinter, he pushes south over the mountains in December to reach the upper Zeya River in Daur country, where he finds a land of farmers with domestic animals, proper houses and Chinese trade goods who pay tribute to the Manchus, who are just starting their conquest of China.

He builds a winter fort near the mouth of the Umelkan river.

He employs excessive brutality to extract supplies from the natives, thereby provoking their hostility and making supplies harder to get.

His men survive on a diet of pine bark, stolen food, stray forest animals and native captives whom they cannibalize.

Only forty of Poyarkov’s men are left alive by the spring of 1644.

Joined now by the overwintering party, they push down the Zeya to the Amur.

They have to fight their way down the Amur through numerous ambushes, their reputation having preceded them.

They reach the Gilyak country at the mouth of the Amur by autumn.

Poyarkov, with so many enemies behind him, thinks it unwise to return by the same route.

They build boats this winter.

Poyarkov’s party works their way up the Sea of Okhotsk coast to the Ulia River in the spring, and spend the next winter in the huts that had been built by Ivan Moskvitin six years earlier.

Pyarkov’s party follows Moskvitin's route along the Maya River back to Yakutsk in spring 1646, arriving almost exactly three years after they left.

Contemporary accounts describe Siberia's mostly northern Russian settler population as Cossacks, following Yermak Timofeyevich's conquest of the region at the end of the sixteenth century, but only in the loose sense of being neither landowners nor peasants; the settlers have little connection to the Don Cossacks or Zaporozhian Cossacks.

Yerofey Khabarov, a native of the Veliky Ustyug area in the northern part of European Russia, had been a manager for the Stroganovs at the saltworks in Solvychegodsk.

Khabarov had sailed from Tobolsk to Mangazeya in 1625.

Three years later, he left the town with his expedition and reached the Kheta river in the eastern part of Taimyr.

He had taken part in a voyage from Mangazeya to Tobolsk in 1630.

Reaching the Lena River in 1632-1641, he founded a farming settlement with saltworks along the Lena at the mouths of the Kuta and Kirenga Rivers.

In 1649, Khabarov became the second Russian to explore the Amur after Vassili Poyarkov (1643-1646), whose route up the Aldan River was too difficult to be practical.

At some point Khabarov had attempted to reach the Amur via the Vitim River.

A hunter returning to Yakutsk from the Olyokma River in 1647 had reported that this might lead to the Amur.

In the spring of 1649, Khabarov set off at his own expense up the Olyokma River, then its branch, the Tungur, and  portaged to the Shilka River.

Reaching the upper Amur (Dauria) in early 1650, he had found the country nearly deserted, the Cossacks' reputation having preceded them.

Having pioneered a good route, he returns to Yakutsk in May, 1650 and gives his report.

He praises the land, warns of the danger of Chinese intervention and suggests a larger expedition with professional soldiers.

The Yakutsk voivode Frantsbekov decides, given the time delays in communicating with Moscow, to act on his own and sends Khabarov back south with a larger force.

The voivode also gives Khabarov letters from His Majesty Czar Alexis to the Daurian Prince Lavkai of Albazin and "Prince Bogdoi", asking these potentates to submit to the Russian Czar, and threatening to send a six thousand-strong army if they don't obey.

Frantsbekov assumed that this Prince Bogdoy is another Siberian chieftain.

He is, in fact, the Emperor of China.

Khabarov crosses the mountains in the fall of 1650 and this time is met with armed resistance.

He builds winter quarters at Albazin at the northernmost point of the Amur.

The Daurs are genetic descendants of the Khitan (as recent DNA analyses have proven).

Some or all of the Daurs live in the 1600s along the Shilka, upper Amur, and on the Zeya River.

They thus give their name to the region of Dauria, also called Transbaikal, now the area of Russia east of Lake Baikal.

When the Russian explorers and raiders arrive in the region in the early 1650 (notably, during Yerofei Khabarov's 1651 raid), they often see the Daur farmers burn their smaller villages and taking refuge in larger towns.

The Daurs, when told by the Russians to submit to the rule of the Czar and to pay yasak (tribute), often refuse, saying that they already pay tribute to the Shunzhi Emperor (whose name the Russians record from the Daurs as Shamshakan).

The Cossacks then attack, usually being able to take Daur towns with only small losses.

For example, Khabarov reports that in 1651 he had only four of his Cossacks killed while storming the town of the Daur prince Guigudar (another forty-five Cossacks were wounded, but all were able to recover).

Meanwhile the Cossacks report killing six hundred and sixty-one "Daurs big and small" at that town (of which, four hundred and twenty-seven during the storm itself), and taking two hundred and forty-three women and one hundred and eighteen children prisoners, as well as capturing two hundred and thirty-seven horse and one hundred and thirtyeen cattle.

The captured Daur town of Yaxa becomes the Russian town Albazin.

Yerofey Khabarov sets off down the Amur after receiving reinforcements in June 1651.

His expedition had reached the mouth of the Sungari by September, and had by the 29th reached Achansk, near present-day Khabarovsk; they decide to winter here.

They are attacked on October 8 by a thousand local people, who, upon being defeated, appeal to their Manchu overlords.

A force of two thousand Manchus and Koreans armed with artillery arrives from Ninguta and on March 24, 1652 attacks Achansk.

Khabarov somehow manages to defeat them (the Manchu general, Haise, will later be executed for his incompetence).

Not knowing how many more Chinese are in the area, on April 22 he had withdrawn up the Amur.

At one point, he had encountered another force of six thousand Chinese, but had been able to slip around them under cover of fog and darkness.

Further upstream, he had met a force of one hundred and seventeen Cossacks who had been sent as reinforcements.

He learned from a captive that a new Manchu army was being gathered on the Sungari.

On August 1, he reached the mouth of the Zeya, where one hundred and thirty-six of his men had mutinie leaving only two hundred and twelve loyal. (Since Khabarov, in his report, mentions the mutiny immediately after mentioning the question of where to build winter quarters, it may have been connected with the question of whether it was wise to remain on the Zeya and await a possible Manchu attack.)

From the Zeya he sends a report to the Yakutsk Voevode describing in a matter-of-fact way the burning of villages, slaughter of natives and the torture of prisoners.

They apparently winter at the Zeya.

The English sources become unclear from this point.

One hundred and fifty reinforcements appear in the fall of 1653 under Dimitry Zinoviev.

As a nobleman, Zinoviev demands full command; when Khabarov refuses, he is arrested.

Zinoviev, unable to gain the support of Khabarov's men and having no adequate way to deal with the Manchus, withdraws with part of the force from the Amur.

Onufriy Stepanov is appointed Khabarov's deputy in the region of Dauria (the upper reaches of the Amur River) and put in charge of the three hundred and twenty men who remain here.

Khabarov, deprived of his rank and property, is sent on a fifteen-month journey to Moscow to be tried.