The Evens

Approx. 19070 Evens live in Yakutia.

The origin of the ethnicon ‘even' is connected either with the ancient Uvan reindeer-herders, reminded in the VII century Chinese mines as the Baikal mountain taiga people, or with the proper even word in the eastern dialect ‘even' – ‘local', 'come down from the mountains'.

Parallel with the written above ethnicons, there are designations for the local groups Dondytkil, of ‘donre', ‘dunre', mean ‘land', ‘continent'. Even word ‘mene', meaning ‘settled' the Evens- herders used for the Okhotskoye seaside “foot Tunguses”.

Besides, in the even ethnonimics there were a lot of the terms for designation of the small territorial groups, e.g. Donretken “deep”, namankan “seaside inhabitants”. There was the tradition of the designation of the Evens on their generic names, e.g. tyuges, dutkil, etc. The Koryaks call the Evens ‘koyayamko', supposedly from the Koryak ‘kouanga'- “home reindeer”, ‘yamkyn' – “camping-ground”.

The Even language is the Northern Tungus subgroup of the Tungus-Manchurian group of the Ural linguistic family. The Even language dialects join territorially into the eastern, central and western groups.

The Evens were one of the most Christianized people of the North that was promoted by the active mission. In the places of the Evens settlements the orthodox churches and the chapels were built. The Christianity comprised almost all the aspects of the Evens life. Birth, marriage, death, everyday behavior, acting of rites and holidays – everything was powered by the orthodox tradition. The Gizhigin evens married with the Koryaks only if they adopted Christianity. The due house-decorations were the icons.

In the XXth century we could see the Evens returning to the fragments of life ritualism, trade and everyday behavior norms, which were based on the traditional world outlook and shamanism among the adult generation.

It is considered that the particularities of Even culture, language and anthropology were formed in the result of the interrelation of the Tunguses with the local people – the Koryaks and Yukagirs.

Provided by Youth Assembly of the Peoples of the Republic Sakhа (Yakutia).
Translated by Yulia Rodina, 4th year student of Foreign Languages Faculty, Yakutsk State University.