The Fighting Chukchi

In the lore of Soviet humor, the Chukchi people of Siberia are the butt of innumerable jokes - what the Polish joke is to American humor, the Chukchi are to the Russians.   This is not so for those tribes who are neighbors to the Chukchi, who are - I was surprised to find out - perceived as a ferocious fighting people.

The following excerpts are from the Lamut story "A Tale About the Chukchee Invasion," included in Waldemar Bogoras collection Tales of Yukaghir, Lamut, and Russianized Natives of Eastern Siberia.  

The tale recounts how the Lamut people were driven out of their homeland by the invading Chukchee:

In the morning at dawn there came from the east enemies as numerous as flees [sic].  Even the snowy mountains grew black with the multitude of men.  They were the Chukchee.  They moved on in large herds like reindeer.  They attacked the tents in front, and were killing the people.  At that very time those in the rear gathered a few things and moved off.   They rode along.  The Chukchee saw them and followed afoot, so nimble and light of foot were they.

The Chuckchi followed the Lamut for a while, and the Lamut eventually settled on the place where the Chuckchi stopped following them, at the foot of the Oloi mountain.   

Tale was collected by Borogas from the Lakut storyteller Hirkan in 1896.

This imagery of the savage Chuckchi is in stark contrast to the image of the Chuckchi as a backwoods rube as commonly portrayed in humor.   Some sample Chuckchi jokes:

• A Chukcha comes into a shop and asks, "Do you have color TV's?" -  "Why, yes, we do."  "I'll take a green one."
• A Chukcha applies for membership in the Union of Soviet Writers.  Shocked, they ask him what literature he is familiar with.  "Have you read Pushkin?"  - "No."  - "Dostoevsky?"  - "No." -  "Tolstoi?"  - "No."  - "Well, what have you read?"   - "Chukcha not reader!  Chukcha writer!"

(Yes, I am trying to spell the word Chuckcha every possible way.)