Evenk man and horse

The Evenk people were very early divided into three major tribes, "Making Deer", "Making HorseBu", and "Making DogBu". It can be said that the Evenk people are also a horseback people, both men, women and children can ride horses. Horses, as a means of transportation, were loved by the Evenks, who preferred to let them die than slaughter them easily. The Evenks were also good at taming horses, and young and middle-aged men shuttled through the herd, wielding horse poles to subdue the fiercely born horses.

Historians study the Evenks. It is also often inseparable from its production method of "liking horses and shooting and hunting". Some historians believe that the Evenks may have learned to raise horses from the Mongols.

Because I love folk literature, I have seen and heard the folk literature of many nationalities, but in the folk tales of the Evenk nation, the whole process of capturing wild horses and the characteristics of the times is circulated in more detail. Folk tales are a microcosm of the trajectory of human childhood, especially the Evenk people, who have no writing, and pay more attention to the national folk culture that has been handed down orally.

The story of the domestication of the Evenk people's capture of the "Pegasus" is more widely spread among the people. Legend has it that a mother lived with three daughters and lived only by collecting wild vegetables. One day she went to the wild to pick wild leeks and met a strange woman, and the two of them talked to each other about their home. The strange woman asked her who was in the family, what their names were, how they lived at home, and so on, and the mother told her without reservation: she had three daughters, the eldest was called Alina, the second was called Elena, the third was called Neelihane, and so on.

When the strange woman knew all this, she revealed the truth and ate her. It turned out she was "full covered". After eating the mother, he disguised himself as the mother and went home. In the night she began to eat her third daughter, Nilihane, and the eldest daughter, the second daughter, found that Mangai was eating, and they also wanted it, and Mangai impatiently threw it to them, and when they touched her sister's finger, they fled in fright. They fled to a shed made of seven live trees and dragged the ladder up. Man Gai soon spotted them. But she was bulky and had no ladder, and she couldn't get up. The living tree grew taller, and the trellis grew tall with the tree. The shed was already in mid-air, full of teeth nibbling at seven trees, nibbling tired and sleeping. The sisters took the opportunity to climb down the tree and take a birch bark boat to escape to the other side of the river. Man Gai chased her to the river and asked for advice on how to cross the river, and the sisters told her to cut her stomach, pull out her intestines, tie up the stones, and hold the stones across the river, and she crossed the river in this way, and drowned.

The sisters spent their days picking wild vegetables, picking wild onions, and one of them ate one. I got pregnant. The younger sister ate first, her boy was the eldest, taking the name of Lemi, and the boy born after the sister was named Alamy.

Eremi and Alamy grew up to be handsome lads. In their dreams, they dreamed of an old man with a white beard, instructing them on what to do. After waking up, they walked in the southeast direction pointed out in the dream, walked for a long time to climb a big mountain, and saw a clear and clear lake, the lake overflowed, and drifted down the mountain gap, which was very spectacular. They followed the instructions of the old man in their dreams and hid. Suddenly, three horses descended from the sky to drink water from the lake. They crept up to the horse and jumped up, one of them mounting a horse, grabbing the mane with both hands and holding the horse's belly with both crotches. Following the instructions of the white-bearded old man, no matter how the horses were, they would ride on them. The other horse galloped back into the sky. The two horses, frightened and frenzied, screamed and cried for three days and three nights, but under the brave domestication of these two fierce young men, they finally had to obediently obey.

This is a detailed account of the Evenks taming wild horses. Its epoch is characterized by the fact that the Evenks were still in the age of matriarchal society. The fact that the mother lived only with her daughter and later gave birth to a child without a husband shows that it was a time when productivity was extremely low, and she lived only on picking wild vegetables, or eating human flesh with a full cover.

Aramis' mother died of illness, and he left his aunt and brother. I don't know how many days I walked to a shepherd's house, the shepherd's family had seven daughters, and Alamy married seven daughters as his wife. The shepherds lived on an island in the sea, and when they said "Taoke, Taoke" to the sea, they formed an ice road for the horses and cattle to pass by. The story also mentions that the horses of his father-in-law's family were snatched away by the phoenix spirits of the West, and Aramis waded through the mountains and rivers to find the robbed horses back through hardships.

The Evenk people live in rivers, lakes and seas, and when the horses breed more, they will put the horses that are not used for the time being, take advantage of the cold season, put them into the islands and rivers of the islands, so that the horses will return to nature like wild horses, and spend a spring, a summer, and an autumn. Wait until the winter ice freezes before arriving at the landfall to count. This method of horse herding lasted for a long time. When the Russian scholar Shi Luguo examined the way of life of the Evenk people, he also mentioned the way the Evenk people raised horses that were temporarily unserved into the river island for a long ice-free period.

The horses raised by the Evenk people, also known as the Sauron horse, are characterized by: "The horse's neck is short, the head size is moderate, the forehead is wide and the ears are small, the mane is short, the back is straight and gradually to the neck, the chest is broad and the abdomen is full, the tail is quite long and dense, the legs are quite thick, and the hoof size is proportional." "These horsehairs are usually light-colored, quite long, and slightly shiny. In winter, because of the day and night often stay outdoors, withstand all climate change, and even often the effect of severe cold, making the horse's hair more fluffy. These horses are known for their extraordinary endurance. Shi Luguo described the Evenk people when raising horses: "Moving to the riverbank, choosing a place with more abundant grassland to graze, during the migration, the people of Mado only took part of the horse herd as an envoy, and the rest of the horses, such as weak horses and pregnant horses, rushed to an island in the big river, stayed there until the river froze, rushed to the livestock on the island, wandered leisurely, found rich forage on the covered grassland, quickly grew fat, and restored the exhausted physical strength in winter." "If it snows heavily, it becomes more difficult to nibble on this forage," and the horses "easily use their front legs to cut through the snow and eat the forage under the snow." ”

The horses raised by the Evenk people love salt, and they often put some salt on their palms and stretch out their hands to call the horses: "Mohe, Mohe." The horses gathered obediently and licked the salt. Sometimes they often walked to the shacks on their own and licked the snow soaked in urine with relish. The Evenks cultivated a small amount, and the feed for the horses was even more scarce, feeding some wild meat in the winter when the task of serving was heavy and there was a shortage of feed.

The Evenk also have a unique name for various horses. For example, the pony is called: "Nokhon", the two-year-old horse is called: "Sapyyel", the mare is called "Grid"; "Adizhig"; "Atta" and so on. The colours of the horse are called: "Jerid" (jujube red), "Burile" (gray), "Suriel" (white), "Why Sun" (black), "Shirig" (yellow), and so on. Of course, there are also some horses with names that are basically similar to the Names of the Mongols, which is the embodiment of mutual interaction between ethnic groups and mutual penetration of cultures.

The Evenks also invented riding gear in their production practice. According to legend, the Evenks originally used horse pedals made of wood, which were later changed to copper or iron. The use of "Tuktu" (horse tripping) and "Tijiri" (three-legged horse tripping) when herding horses were gradually created by the Evenk people in the practice of horse breeding and grazing.

The author of this article, He Xiuzhi, was selected from Evenk Research, No. 1, 1998

Source: Evenk History and Culture