Cossack conquistador
Mystery of origin
The personality and deeds of the Cossack ataman Mikhail Stadukhin in Russian history have traditionally been in the shadow of another Cossack pioneer Semyon Dezhnev. However, the contribution of the Cossack Mikhail Vasilyevich Stadukhin to the development by Russia of the lands of Eastern Siberia does not need to be exalted. Over the 12 years he passed over land and on the Cossack kots (northern type of Zaporozhye boat) over 13 thousands of kilometers - more than any other explorer of the seventeenth century. The total length of the northern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk alone, for the first time in the history of European nations, passed by an ethnic Cossack, was about two thousand kilometers.
Despite such phenomenal achievements in joining the Russian state of the “Kolyma land”, the biography of Mikhail Stadukhin has been studied very superficially, there are many white spots and obviously mysterious circumstances. “The personality of this outstanding person,” writes the well-known contemporary historian A. A. Burykin, “the tireless and fearless pioneer of uncharted lands in Northeast Asia, who during his lifetime became part of the Russian state, still remains in the shadows”.
Still remains a mystery to researchers the origin of Mikhail Stadukhin. According to the official version, he was born in the Arkhangelsk north — either in Pinega, or somewhere else in the “land of the coast”. On this basis, it is concluded that the distinguished Cossack pioneer was an ethnic maritime.
At the end of the 19th century, this version was attempted by the Cossack encyclopedic historian Fyodor Shcherbina, who, on the basis of archival materials, came to the conclusion that Zaporozhian Cossack Vasily Stodukh was the father of Mikhail Stadukhin. Being the captain of one of the Zaporozhye hundreds in the Polish army of the Russian Time of Troubles (1601 — 1613), the Cossack Stodukh was captured by Muscovites, and among other prisoners of the Zaporozhian Cossacks was exiled to the eternal settlement in Pinega.
“The wild, indomitable blood of the Zaporozhyan centurion,” writes Fyodor Shcherbina, “leapt again into his son Michael, who was born on the edge of the White Sea ice. He did not return to his father’s homeland — to the Zaporizhian Sich, since far-off Asiatic Siberia became his destiny. ”
The version of the Zaporozhye origin of Mikhail Stadukhin seems quite convincing. In the Great-Russian ethnic environment with its primordial "Akanem", the generic name Stodukh could easily have turned into Stadukh, and then acquired the Russian ending "in." So from the Zaporozhye “nickname” Stodukh, the “Pomeranian” last name was Stadukhin.
The name of his brother Taras, very common among the Zaporizhzhya and Lower Don Cossacks and practically unknown in the Great Russian environment of the 17th — 18th centuries, also testifies to the version about the Cossack origin of the pioneer.
Battles on Indigirka and Kolyma
Mikhail Vasilyevich Stadukhin first appeared on the Lena River in the Yakutsk prison around 1633 of the year. Together with him were the brothers Taras and Gerasim, as well as the son of Jacob. It is possible that Stadukhin was in Yakutsk a little earlier than 1633 of the year, it was just that year that he led the first military expedition to the Vilyui River and, accordingly, this date fell into the historical chronicle.
In 1643, a large, almost three-year-old military expedition of Stadukhin to Kolyma took place. A detachment of the Cossack ataman passed along the route Yakutsk - the Oimyakon River - the Indigirka River - the Alazeya River - the Kolyma River.
The lands along the Oymyakon River (Stadukhin wrote in his notes - Emolcon) during that historical period were a true terra incognita. Coming out on horseback from the Yakut jail up the Lena, the Cossacks passed by a mountain pass through the northern part of the Suntar-Khayat ridge and descended into the Indigirka basin. At the mouth of the river Oymyakon Stadukhin gathered a large yasak (tribute) from local Yakuts.
Having made Cossack kochi, Stadukhin with his twin brothers floated down Indigirka towards them. Stopping at the mouth of the river Moma, he explored the surrounding river valleys and again took from the Aboriginal people yasak. Apparently, somewhere near the mouth of Moma, the Stadukhin detachment was winterized.
In the spring of 1643, the Cossack military expedition continued its raid. Descending on the cochs at the mouth of the Indigirka, Stadukhin again investigated and described the navigable channel of this river and entered the East Siberian Sea. In the summer of 1643, having traveled eastward along the coast of the Kolyma Bay over 500 kilometers, Kochi Mikhail Stadukhin entered the mouth of the Kolyma River. “The Kolyma is a great river, there is a Lena,” the Cossack chieftain later wrote.
It is curious that while sailing along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, in front of the mouth of the Alazeya River, Stadukhin saw "huge land" in the north rumba in the ocean. Thus was born the legend of the existence of a huge island in the western water area of the East Siberian Sea, which later became known as Sannikov Land. More than a hundred years after the raid of ataman Stadukhin, Russian industrialists, who were fishing for sea animals on the coast and islands of the Arctic Ocean, hoped that the mysterious Sannikov Land would still be found. They hoped that they would find there valuable “soft junk” (arctic fox fur), “overseas bone” (mammoth tusks), “writhing” (braids) with large rookeries of sea animals, especially the walrus, valued by their “fish tooth” (canines). Up to the period of the First World War, scientific expeditions were also looking for Sannikov Land - in vain.
What did Mikhail Stadukhin and his Cossack sisters see on the northern Rumba opposite the mouth of the Alazei? At present, the shallow sea in these latitudes has been thoroughly studied by hydrologists - no signs of a large island have been found. Perhaps it was an optical illusion - a mirage, quite often occurring in high latitudes? Or did Stadukhina fail the compass imperfection? This device in arctic latitudes, due to magnetic storms, is often prone to failures. Then, perhaps, the Cossack chieftain described a real-life land - the Bear Islands archipelago. These rather large islands are indeed located in the East Siberian Sea, but not to the north from the mouth of the Alazei, but to the east.
After seeing the mouth of the Kolyma River, Stadukhin climbed up to the middle course and here he founded a kind of trading post - a collection point for yasak. After wintering, when the severe Kolyma frost passed, the ataman descended again to the lower reaches of the river and laid the Lower Kolyma burg, the first Russian settlement on the coast of the eastern part of the East Siberian Sea, at the mouth.
“The Kolyma River goes into the sea under the same wind, east and north,” Stadukhin later wrote, “if you sail along the Kolyma, then there will be an island on your left hand; it lies in plain sight, so that the paddy, the mountains of snow, and the brooks are notable for everything. This island is long, and in winter the Chukchi people move to it by deer in one day. ”
The entire journey of the ataman Stadukhin to Kolyma was accompanied by military clashes with the northern aborigines, primarily with the Yakuts and Tunguses. In the lower reaches of the Oimyakon, for example, the Cossacks fought for two days with the militant "obscure Lamuck Tungus". A small detachment of fourteen Cossacks was attacked around the 500 Tungus, and although in the final battle the aborigines were forced to retreat, the Cossacks won the victory at a high price - “almost all were shot out [injured. “N. L.] and there was a great loss in horses.”
It should be noted that the military struggle against the aborigines was in many cases provoked by the actions of Mikhail Stadukhin himself. Being by nature a very tough, extremely imperious person, the Cossack chieftain was sometimes unjustifiably abrupt in his relations with “foreigners”: picking up a yasak often turned into blatant robbery, in controversial cases, whip was immediately used. The warlike native hunters, of course, did not remain in debt, and therefore the advancement of the Stadukhin military expedition along the Indigirka and Kolyma coast was more like a raid by the conquistadors. Not a trade exchange and Christian brotherly love, but a sharp sword and well-aimed shots from the squeaking pave the way for the Cossacks.
Raid on the river Pohycha
During the two years of his stay in Kolyma, the ataman Stadukhin gathered a large “sovereign yasachny collection” - 320 sables. In November, 1645, he brought the "soft junk" - the main "currency" of the then Muscovy - in the Yakut ostrog. In addition to the rich yasak, the Yakut administration of Muscovy received a detailed “reply” by Stadukhin, which not only summarized the landscape and navigation conditions of the Kolyma coast, but also gave practical recommendations on how best to get to these places, “where the beast did not flutter and the bird did not fly” . It seemed that the chieftain deserved a reward from the state. However, Stadukhin did not demand it: he himself rewarded himself for the laborer’s labors, collecting “four forty sables” as his personal property.
However, in a small Yakutsk, it was impossible to conceal information about a significant “sable junk” that fell into the chests of a successful ataman — and the competent “sovereign people” soon followed the Stadukhin. By order of the Yakut voevoda, instead of gratitude and payment for the service, "four forty sables" - the whole earnings of Stadukhin for several years of incredible hardship and heavy fighting - were withdrawn in favor of the treasury without any compensation.
Subsequently, Stadukhin somehow managed to find mutual understanding with the governor of Yakutsk. This was probably facilitated by the report of the ataman about mammoth tusks that melted from the permafrost, which literally formed “overseas bones” to the east of the mouth of the Kolyma. “And there are overseas bones, al fish teeth [a lot. “N. L.] on the shore, which could load several vessels,” so in his “reply” the ataman tried to interest the greedy Yakut governor.
Further in his report, Stadukhin pointed out that according to information received from local reindeer herders, “the Anadyr River is not so far away, but according to it there is also the Pohycha or Kovich river.” This river, further emphasizing the Cossack chieftain, is exceptionally rich in fur and bone, and that “if it is indicated will multiply people and send them to Anadyr and Pogychu, then we can expect from there to the treasury of great profits”.
The expectation of the next rich yasak turned out to be a decisive argument in favor of organizing the new military expedition of Mikhail Stadukhin to the east. In June 1647, Stadukhin received from the authorities of Yakutsk a detachment of Cossack volunteers he needed, as well as the order “to go to the Pohycha river, build a winter quarters, bring the local peoples to a yasash payment and see the island presented [t. E. On the Land of Sannikov. - N.L.]. Without wasting a single day, the ataman immediately went to the northeast.
The way there was not long. Before the winter of 1648, Stadukhin with the Cossacks managed to get only to the Yana River, where he spent the winter. In early spring, 1648, already on reindeer sledding, he reached the Indigirka River and, having built a small Koch, descended on it to the East Siberian Sea and swam to the mouth of the Kolyma River.
Here, on the Kolyma coast, the Cossacks decided to make two large coaches, so that “without fear of adversity, walk the sea to explore the river Pogychi”. When the ships were built, a group of Stadukhin sailed along the coast to the east.
This raid was unsuccessful. “I ran on seven-day sails,” Stadukhin wrote later in his report to the Order of Muscovy Stadukhin, “only he did not see any river; for the sake of stopping, he sent people to bring in tongues; but these rivers have not been announced; but on the coast there was a large stone, it was impossible to fish, and for this reason there was not enough supplies, and was forced to go back to the Kolyma River ”.
On the inhospitable Kolyma coast, Mikhail Stadukhin, unlike many other polar explorers, felt at home. He was completely free to sail across the East Siberian Sea on cocks, inspecting reindeer valleys of the northern rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean with reindeer. Apparently, this inner freedom, the eschatological community of the indomitable spirit of the Cossack ataman and the harsh nature of the Polar region, explains the phenomenon of the exceptional research effectiveness of Stadukhin.
“Mikhail Stadukhin’s indisputable priority,” writes A. A. Burykin, “is determined by the fact that during the Stadukhin’s voyage, the Arctic Ocean was first surveyed at a great distance east of the mouth of the Kolyma River. Neither Dezhnev, the first sea-going along the entire Arctic coast of Asia, nor those who sailed this route later, for example, Ivan Rubets, in the 60-ies of the seventeenth century, did not mention any of the geographical objects that are located on the East Coast. -Siberian and Chukchi seas. And only in the documents that recorded the results of Mikhail Stadukhin’s 1649 voyage of the year, we find clear names and descriptions of objects on the sea coast. ”
Meeting with Ataman Semen Motor
Returning to the mouth of the Kolyma, the ataman Stadukhin soon learned from the local Yukaghirs that it is much closer and faster to the valley of the Anadyr river you can pass through the mainland - by dry. Having attached to his squad an additional detachment of Cossacks, sent by the governor of the Yakutsk fortress, Stadukhin in the fall of 1649 of the year goes to his new, now land raid.
By the middle of winter, the Stadukhin detachment, having successfully covered almost 700 kilometers, entered the basin of the Anadyr River. What a surprise the chieftain was when he learned from local Chukchi reindeer herders that “Cossack people” had already lived on the river for a long time and successfully collected “sovereign yasak”. The meeting in the northern Chukchi wilderness of two Cossack detachments did not bring joy. The problem that seemed to Staudukhina to be unsolvable was the status of the chief commander of the Kolyma Territory, which was simultaneously claimed by atamans of both detachments.
All the people of the Anadyr detachment, which was headed by a Cossack centurion, a Cossack semen Motor, were well known to Stadukhin. Here were Semyon Dezhnev and Yuri Silvestrov - Stadukhin's former comrades in the military expedition of 1643 — 1645 to the Kolyma basin. The highly experienced Semyon Motor, who passed through the harsh life and military school during the uprising of Jacob Ostryanin (1637) in Ukraine, was in no way eager to recognize Mikhail Stadukhin as the chief ataman on the Anadyr river. In this capacity, he saw himself, and not without reason. The Zaporozhye centurion had a credential from the voivode of the Bratsk prison, who was in official position substantially higher than the Yakut voivode.
In general, with the arrogance of the Cossacks, Atamans of Motor and Stadukhin began to fight for the Bunchyuk of the High Ataman of the Anadyr Territory — verbal altercations began, dragging from one to another the Yasak Chukchi, finally, it came to fist fights.
Semyon Dezhnev, who knew from his past experience the unyielding, very hard character of Stadukhin, advised the Zaporizhian centurion to leave the Anadyr basin to the not so far, but significantly richer sable river Penzhin. “And we, servicemen and industrial people of Semyon Motor and Yaz, Semyon Dezhnev, with comrades,” Dezhnev later wrote, “run and hide from him, Mikhailov, banish, we went in the fall, along the forward path, to the beautiful Pyanjin [Penzhin. - N.L.] for the mines and drive under the sovereign the royal hand again uncangable people. "
The march on Penzhin in the harsh conditions of the beginning of the winter was for the Motors and Dezhnev detachment a difficult ordeal. Unable to find a conductor, the Cossacks spent three weeks in a mountainous deserted area on the watershed between the Anadyr basin and the upper reaches of the Penzhin. Unable to find a descent into the valley of Penzhina, they turned back. As a result, I had to admit the Supreme Atamanism of Stadukhin.
Fiercely fighting for the peace of mind of the “first” chieftain in peacetime, the Cossacks were able to quickly find a common language in a situation of military challenge from the “non-peaceful aliens”.
In the autumn of 1650, the warriors of the Chukchi Anaul tribe killed nine Cossacks from the Stadukhin detachment. The warring chieftains, having learned of such a call, immediately joined forces and marched against the rebels of the Chukchi. “And we went to them, to the anauls, down the Anadyr River, and found where they made an ostrozhek, and we called them out of that order, so that they would bring the tsar to the tsar and give the tsar's ruler from themselves. But they, anauli, have become a Dratz with us, ”this was subsequently described by this raid by Simon Dezhnev.
The siege of the Chukchi ferry lasted for several days. Resisting courageously, the Chukchi killed Cossack foreman Suhanko Prokopyev and three more Cossacks who were trying to break through the wall of the fortress. Several Cossacks were seriously injured, and one of the wounded, receiving a blow with an ax to the head, as Dezhnev writes, "was duke infirm throughout the winter."
The outcome of the assault was decided by the indomitable rage of Stadukhin. Having thrown off the deer from the shoulders of the park, left in one shirt of a blood-red cuber, with a saber in his right hand and with an ax in his left - the supreme ataman of the Cossacks of Anadyr personally rushed to the storm of the fortress. As on the wings, he flew up the ladder to the wall of the Chukchi fortress - and the brightly red band of enemy blood lay along its tracks. The Cossacks unanimously rushed forward for their chieftain and, in less than an hour, the main stronghold of the Chukchi-Anaules on Anadyr was destroyed. After the battle on the body of Stadukhin, the twin brothers counted seventeen wounds, fortunately, they were all amenable to treatment.
As a result of his Anadyr-Ohotsk odyssey, as the sources narrate, the ataman Stadukhin reconciled with many Cossacks from the Seed Motors squad, including Semyon Dezhnev. An archival instruction was preserved that during Semen Dezhnev’s trip to Moscow (with a report in the discharge order), Stadukhin sent his son Jacob with him “for experience and study”. On such a difficult, long journey with a long-time personal enemy, the Cossack, of course, would not let go of his son.
The path to the eternal distance
The next year after the war with the Chukchi-Anauls, a detachment of Mikhail Stadukhin through mountain passes successfully passed to the Penzhin River. At the mouth of this river, the Cossacks built Kochi and the Sea of Okhotsk passed to the mouth of the Gizhiga river. In the summer of 1652, ataman Stadukhin and his sister-in-law headed by sea to the south-west, along the high coast of the Gizhiginskaya Bay, and further along Shelikhov Bay. By the fall, they arrived at the mouth of the River Taui, where they built a new jail and successfully hunted sable for several years.
In the summer of 1657, Mikhail Stadukhin and the Cossacks of his squad reached the mouth of the Okhota River on a coch. Here they again made a significant stop, engaging in the harvesting of the fur-bearing animal and collecting yasak.
In the middle of 1659, through Oimyakon and Aldan (i.e., through the “cold pole” of Eurasia established by modern science), ataman Stadukhin and his companions returned to Yakutsk, closing a giant ring route across Northeast Asia more than seven thousand kilometers long.
In 1663, Ataman Stadukhin was summoned to Tobolsk, and then to Moscow - to report on his military expeditions. In the Order of Muscovy, Stadukhin brought not only the richest “sable treasury”, but also a detailed description of his way along the rivers and mountains of Yakutia and Chukotka, as well as a drawing of the Cossacks of the Kochay sailing off the shores of the East Siberian and Okhotsk seas.
There are a number of objective historical information that suggest that the Cossack Stadukhin is the first European! - Kamchatka "Cape Horn" - Cape Lopatka, which is extremely inhospitable by climatic conditions, went around from west to east. It is also possible that he climbed on his coves along the eastern coast of Kamchatka far to the north - right up to the Bering Strait. Only in this sense can we interpret some of the observations from Stadukhin's travel notes, which could not have been done by a person who had not personally visited the absolutely wild jungles of the Pacific ecumene then.
For example, he narrates about such a place on the mountains of Kamchatka, from which, in clear weather, one can clearly see in the west - the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, and in the east - the Bering Sea. Such a place on the Sredinny ridge of Kamchatka is to the west of the village Ivashka, which was ruined during the period of perestroika, in the upper reaches of the river of the same name. Without personally visiting the Ivashkinsky Pass of the Sredinny Ridge, it is impossible to know about this geographical phenomenon described in detail by the Stadukhin.
Ataman Stadukhin did not stay long in Moscow - immediately after receiving the discharge order, in the same 1663 year, he returned to Siberia, at Indigirka, as a clerk lost in the foothills of the Anazey wintery. He died in the winter of 1666 of the year, courageously fighting the Lamut Evens on the Janek ridge pass. In this battle against two hundred Lamouth warriors armed to the teeth, the Cossack "conquistador" could not win - there were only six Cossacks with him.
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