Samoyedes

Samoyedes, the name of a Ural-Altaic race widely spread over the extreme north of Europe and Asia, especially along the middle course of the Obi River and on the Arctic coast west of the Yenisei. They seem formerly to have possessed nearly all the vast regions between the Altai Mountains and the Arctic Ocean. Numerous grave-mounds of the bronze period that have been found in western Siberia are attributed to a semi-civilised nation of Ugro-Samoyedes. The Samoyedes were gradually driven northwards by the Turko-Tartar races (Huns, Ugrians, &c.), and are now rapidly disappearing under the combined influence of spirits and smallpox. They number about 20,000 in all probability, dress in skins, use bone and stone implements, keep reindeer, live by hunting and fishing, and are Shamans in religion (mixed with fetishism). See Fred. G. Jackson, The Great Frozen Land (1895).