t all events, to be found among the
reindeer-Chukches living in the interior of the country. At least
there are among them men who can show commmissions from the Russian
authorities. Such a man was the starost Menka, of whose visit I have
already given an account. Everything, however, indicated that his
influence was exceedingly small. He could neither read, write, nor
speak Russian, and he had no idea of the existence of a Russian
Czar. All the tribute he had delivered for several years, according
to receipts which he showed to us, consisted of some few fox-skins,
which he had probably received as market-tolls at Anjui and Markova.
Menka was attended on his visit to the vessel by two ill-clad men
with a type of face differing considerably from that common among
the Chukches. Their standing appeared to be so inferior that we took
them for slaves, although mistakenly, at least with respect to one
of them--Yettugin. He afterwards boasted that he owned a much
larger reindeer-herd than Menka's, and talked readily, with a
certain scorn, of Menka's chieftain pretensions. According to
Russian authors there are actual slaves, probably the descendants of
former prisoners of war, among the Chukches in the interior of the
country. Among the dwellers on the coast, on the contrary, there is
the most complete equality. We could never discover the smallest
trace of any man exercising the least authority beyond his own
family or his own tent.

The coast Chukches are not only heathens, but are also, so far as we
could observe, devoid of every conception of higher beings. There
are, however, superstitions. Thus most of them wear round the neck
leather straps, to which small wooden tongs, of wooden carvings, are
fixed. These are not parted with, and are not readily shown to
foreigners. A boy had a band of beads sewed to his hood, and in
front there was fastened an ivory carving, probably intended to
represent a bear's head (fig. 6, on p. 117). It was so small, and so
inartistically cut, that a man could undoubtedly make a dozen of
them in a day. I, however, offered the father unsuccessfully a
clasp-knife and tobacco for it, but the boy himself, having heard
our bargaining, exchanged it soon after for a piece of sugar. When
the father knew this he laughed good-naturedly, without making any
attempt to get the bargain undone.

To certain tools small wooden images are affixed, as to the scraper
figured above (fig. 3, p. 117), and similar i