Ostiaks

Ostiaks, or OSTYAKS, a Ural-Altaic people living along the lower course of the river Ob in western Siberia, where they struggle against chronic poverty, drunkenness, frequently famine, to get a living by fishing and hunting fur-bearing animals. They dwell in wretched and very dirty huts, eat flesh raw, use bows and arrows, and weapons of bone and stone; and are still in great part heathens. They are decreasing in numbers, and are estimated now at 27,000. Their language belongs to the Finnish division.