Mythologies of the Shor Tribe

"The first spring flower makes its way through the snow,

"Its whiteness and freshness pierce and conquer my heart.

"You are the creation of God.

"My hand does not deserve to pluck you."

Shors or Shorians (Shor: sg. шор-кижи, shor-kizhi, тадар-кижи, tadar-kizhi, шор, shor, тадар, tadar, pl. шор-кижилер, shor-kizhiler, тадар-кижилер, tadar-kizhiler, шорлар, shorlar, тадарлар, tadarlar) are a Turkic ethnic group native to Kemerovo Oblast of Russia. Their self designation is Шор (tr. Shor). They were also called Kuznetskie Tatars (кузнецкие татары), Kondoma Tatars (кондомские татары), Mras-Su Tatars (мрасские татары) in some of the documents of the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Shors live in the Tom basin along the Kondoma and Mras-Su Rivers. This region is historically called Mountainous Shoria. The Shors also live in Khakassia and Altai Republic. According to 2002 census, there were 13,975 Shors in Russia (12,601 in 1926, 16,042 in 1939, 14,938 in 1959, 15,950 in 1970, 15,182 in 1979 and 15,745 in 1989). The Shors speak their own Shor language. The region where the Shors currently reside was Turkicized under the influence of the Yenisei Kyrgyz during the medieval period. The Shors resulted from this ethnic mixing and adopted Turkic speech (the Shor language) as a result. Shor tribes began to become a distinct people around the 8th and 9th centuries AD. The Mongol conquest of the Altai-Sayan region in the 13th century added another layer of cultural influence over the local population and their languages. The region subsequently fell under the influence of the Oirats from the late 14th century to the early 17th century. Although Mongol control of the area was nominal, many of the languages (including Shor) contains significant amounts of Mongol loanwords. The Shors were a valuable asset to the Yenisei Kirghiz and Oirats as suppliers of ironware. Their ability to smelt iron from ore was a feat that only one other indigenous Siberian people (the Yakuts) were able to achieve before the Russian advance into the area.

The modern Shors are descendants of numerous Turkified Ugrian-, Samoyedic-, and Ketic-speaking groups and tribes, many of them unrelated to each other. The generic term "Shor" is actually the name of a single large group living in the Kondoma River valley; it was applied by the Soviet government to a large number of groups to simplify administration. Shor groups live separately and have their own names, often terms that reflect locality. Names like "Mrassa" (or "Mras Kizhi") and "Kondoma" refer to the specific sites of particular groups. "Chysh Kizhi" translates as "people of the taiga," a name by which many Shors sometimes refer to themselves. "Abans" is the name of a single seok (clan) studied in the eighteenth century; Shor people frequently identify themselves by their clan membership. "Blacksmith Tatar" refers to the Shors' earlier industrial specialization in smelting and forging iron goods. The Shors live in the Kuznets Alatau Mountains, in the middle reaches of the Tom River and its Kondoma and Mrassa tributaries (54° to 56° N, 87° to 90° E). The Kuznets Alatau is an irregular series of horsts and faults, rather than a single mountain range and, with peaks of 1,000 to 2,100 meters, is lower in elevation than the main Altai mountain system to the south. The Minusinsk Basin lies to the east, the Kuznets Basin to the west, and the Siberian taiga to the north. The territory of the Shors is in the center of the large Kuzbass industrial region, which gets much of its coal from the Kuznets Basin. The climate is continental, and winters are extremely cold. Higher elevations are covered with snow year-round. The rivers of the region flow north, which has long made communication with centers of civilization to the south difficult. The Shor region is at the southern end of the large northern forest. Physically, it is intermediate between the natural zone of the Siberian taiga and the natural zone of the Central Asian Steppe; its vegetation and soils have characteristics of both zones. In the northern part of the Shor range, in higher elevations, the forest is primarily Siberian pine, fir, spruce, and birch, with some cedar; in lower elevations and along river valleys are found mosses, shrubs, and grasses. In the southern Shor region, the trees are fir and aspen, and there is little moss; in higher elevations are found lindens and herbaceous meadows in burned and deforested sites. Fauna include Siberian elks (marais ), roe deer, sables, squirrels, otters, weasels, foxes, ermines, goats, bears, badgers, wolverines, lynx, grouse, partridge, salmon-trout, grayling, pike, and burbot. The entire area is rich in coal and iron deposits, which have been exploited since ancient times. The soils vary considerably. They are primarily loesslike clay loams, chernozems and degraded chernozems, and northern forest soils, which merge into podzols in the mountainous regions. Compared with the steppe areas, precipitation is heavy. The snow cover is deep and lasts many months.

In the mountainous regions of southern Siberia, an ancient people is losing ground. The Shor, an indigenous group with Turkic roots in the south Kemerovo Region of Siberia, are trying to hold on to their culture in spite of a declining population and a number of social, economic, and health challenges that threaten to push them to extinction. Like many indigenous populations around the world, they can recount a history of invasion, exploitation, and assimilation into the dominant culture. But they are battling to save their culture and contribute to the global indigenous community. The Shor have existed as a distinct population since as far back as the sixth century. When they were encountered by Russians in 1607, they were given the name Kuznetsk Tatars (the blacksmith Tatars) because they knew how to smelt iron and make iron objects. The Shor hunted and fished, harvested products from the forest, and engaged in a basic type of agriculture. Shamanism provided the core of their spiritual worldview. They described the universe as consisting of three worlds: Ulgen chef (upper), Orty cher (middle), and Aina chef (lower). They believed that humans share the middle world with numerous spirit-beings of nature -- those of the taiga, mountains, rivers, and lakes. The Shor lived in connection with the natural world. Their identity as an intact indigenous people, however, started slipping soon after the Russians "found" them. In 1618, Cossaks built the Kuznetsk Fortress on the Tom River, at the site of present-day Novokuznetsk (currently the industrial center of the Kemerovo Region). In the 19(th) century, Shor religious beliefs came under attack. Russian missionaries established themselves in the Shor homeland and began efforts to convert them. Christianity was forcibly imposed: shamans were persecuted and people were told that they would be exempt from taxes if they agreed to embrace Christianity, or were threatened with savage punishment if they did not.

The official name “the Shors” (or Shor as they call themselves) was finally established at the beginning of the twentieth century. By that time, the Shors did not have a self-called name; however, they did call themselves by the family names of the Karga, Kyi, and so on. Sometimes a Shor would call himself by the name of the river or locality he lived in. A few examples of this are the “Mrass Kizhi” (people of the Mrass territories), “Chysh Kizhi” (off-taiga people), or “Chernevoy” (taiga people). From the language and folklore investigations, the Shors are of the Turkirized and Ugric descendants, as well as the Samoyed-speaking tribes and the Keto-speaking aborigines of the northern taiga parts of Sayano-Altai Highlands. Anthropologically, the Shors are physically related to the Khants and Mansi by their stature. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Shors were primarily engaged in the blacksmith trade. It was so characteristic of this people that the Russian historical papers often called them the “blacksmith people.” By that time, the Shors not only forged many metal items, but they also mined and fused iron ore available in those territories. Agriculture was concentrated to the deforested southern gentle slopes. The Shor culture and everyday life underwent many changes during their time as a part of the Russian state. The blacksmith work had completely vanished by the end of the eighteenth century and it had great influence on the industrial balance of the Shor economy. Since that time, they entered into occupations of fur hunting and agricultural development. The Russian merchants penetrated the taiga area causing the cedar nut trade to become profitable business for the Shors.

A phone booth, that rarely works, is about the only sign of modern life to be found in Ust Anzas, a remote village in Siberia's Kemerovo Oblast. The Shor, an ethnic Turkic minority, live in isolation here, nestled amid the Abakan Range mountains and seemingly endless forests along the shores of the Mras-Su River. Cut off from roads, central heating, and with nearly no electricity, let alone the Internet, the Shor in Ust Anzas live off the land much like their ancestors have for centuries. Ust Anzas is one of dozens of villages in the region of Gornaya Shoria that the estimated 15,000 Shor call home. They cling to their traditional way of life, handcuffed by restrictions imposed by Moscow on hunting and fishing after much of their homeland was designated a national park in 1989. Despite efforts to revive their endangered language since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not more than 5,000 Shor can actually speak their native tongue today.

Shor is a Turkic language spoken by less than 10,000 people in the Kemerovo Oblast of the Russian Federation. The Shor language and culture are on the verge of extinction, although efforts are being made to keep them from disappearing altogether. According to the Foundation for Endangered Languages, the majority of the world's languages are being spoken by fewer and fewer people, with many of them on the verge of extinction. Recent estimates place the number of languages in the world at around 6,000, of which 52 percent are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. Twenty-eight percent of these languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people. On the other hand, the 10 major languages of the world are each spoken by more than 100 million people and are the mother tongues of almost half of the world's population. One of the languages whose survival is currently under threat is Shor, a Turkic language spoken by the Shor people, whose historic homeland is the Kemerovo Oblast in south-central Russia. Gennady Kostochakov teaches the Shor language and its literature at the Kuzbass State Pedagogical Academy in Novokuznetsk, Russia. Kostochakov wrote the following poem in Shor:

"The first spring flower makes its way through the snow,

"Its whiteness and freshness pierce and conquer my heart.

"You are the creation of God.

"My hand does not deserve to pluck you."

The Shors have been living in this area of southern Siberia since the 6th century. When they came into contact with Russians in 1607, they were named the ‘Blacksmith Tatars’, because they knew how to smelt and work iron. In 1926 a Russian decree established the ‘Mountain Shor National Region’ and officially recognised the Shors as an ethnic group. However, during the Soviet era Shor newspapers were shut down, books were destroyed, and Shor was no longer allowed to be spoken in schools. Out of the 12,000 Shors, approximately only 1,000 are still fluent in the Shor language. However, there are individual Shors who are dedicated to preserving their language, culture and traditions. Among them is Lubov Arbachakova, a well-known Shor artist and poet. She also founded a local society to encourage the revival of the Shor language and folklore. Another famous Shor poet, Gennady Kostochakov, published a book with the rather sad title ‘I am the Last Shor Poet’. Today, the Shors grapple with many problems such as low life expectancy and low birth rates due to widespread alcoholism and other factors. The Shors, like other Northern Altai peoples, mainly survived by hunting, fishing, and gathering nuts, berries and mushrooms in the forest. To this day they harvest pine nuts to be sold to oil manufacturers. This year’s harvest coincided with the time that we visited the village of Ust-Anzas. Most of the Shors were away living in the forest for several days at a time, collecting sacks of pine nuts. The Shors have a close connection with the natural world and worship the gods of nature in the trees, mountains, lakes and rivers around them. In the Shor worldview there are two main gods that rule the world; the benevolent Ulgen and the evil Erlik, both of whom have many spirits at their service. The mediator between gods and mankind is the shaman, who conducts sacrificial rituals, divines and performs sorcery. The Orthodox Church sent missionaries to the Shors in the 19th century, which resulted in a strange syncretistic mix of shamanism and the Orthodox faith.

Shor (endonym: шор тили, тадар тили) is a Turkic language spoken by about 2,800 people in a region called Mountain Shoriya, in the Kemerovo Province in Southwest Siberia, although the entire Shor population in this area is over 12000 people. Presently, not all ethnic Shors speak Shor and the language suffered a decline from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. During this period the Shor language was neither written nor taught in schools. However, since the 1980s and 1990s there has been a Shor language revival. The language is now taught at the Novokuznetsk branch of the Kemerovo State University. Like other Siberian Turkic languages, Shor has borrowed many roots from Mongolian, as well as words from Russian. The two main dialects are Mrassu and Kondoma, named after the rivers in whose valleys they are spoken. From the point of view of classification of Turkic languages, these dialects belong to different branches of Turkic: According to the reflexes of the Proto-Turkic (PT) intervocalic -d- in modern languages (compare PT *adak, in modern Turkic languages meaning 'foot' or 'leg'), the Mrassu dialect is a -z- variety: azaq, the Kondoma dialect is a -y- variety: ayaq. This feature normally distinguishes different branches of Turkic which means that the Shor language has formed from different Turkic sources. Each Shor dialect has subdialectal varieties. The Upper-Mrassu and the Upper-Kondoma varieties have developed numerous close features in the course of close contacts between their speakers in the upper reaches of the Kondoma and Mrassu rivers.