ABSTRACT
No one knows how long Yeniseian-speaking peoples occupied Inner Asia and South Siberia before these areas were incorporated into the Russian state during the seventeenth century. Some of the Chinese references to "barbarian tribes" in this region from Tang times onward may reflect their historic presence (Radlov 1884). The first unambiguous documentation of Yeniseian peoples and languages comes only after Russian expansion into western Siberia following Yermak's campaign of 1582. The Cossacks, fur trappers, and government officials who flooded into the taiga in search of personal enrichment left behind valuable bits of information on Yeniseian lifeways in the form of official reports, fur payment records, and other historical documents (Miller 1937–41; Dolgikh 1960).
