Among Taiga Hunters and Shamans
Reminiscences Concerning my Friend, the Scholar of Manchuria, Anatoliĭ Makarovich Kaĭgorodov (1927–1998)
This commemorative article introduces the person as well as the work of the scholar Anatoliĭ Makarovich Kaĭgorodov. It uses Kaĭgorodov’s accounts of his personal experiences with the Reindeer Evenki of the Great Hinggan (Northeast China). He was the son of a family of Russian emigrants in the Three River Region that had longstanding trading relations with the Reindeer Evenki hunters of the taiga. The article discusses the cultural significance of the trading relationships between the two ethnic groups, relationships that were based on mutual trust and friendship characterized by the term andak (friend, partner). Furthermore, it is an account of the unique opportunity Kaĭgorodov had to witness the life of the Evenki hunters, because he was the godchild of their most revered shamaness of the first half of the last century. As such he became an intimate witness of the daily life as well as of the religious/shamanic world of the Evenki hunters.
