Russia is |
Peoples of Russia
Tofalars
The Tofalars are a native small-numbered people of Russia in the Eastern Siberia. Few use the designation Tofalars, most call themselves Tofa, or more rarely Karagas. Until the early 20th century, the Tofalars were known as Karagas – this was the name of one of the kinship groups, the self-designation of which was transferred to the whole people. Only in the Soviet times the ethnonym Tofa – Tofalars appeared, the origin of which is in the name of the medieval people Dubo (Tuba). In 2000, they were given the status of native small-numbered people.
Language
The Tofalar language belongs to the taiga range of the Sayan subgroup of the Siberian (Eastern Turkic) group of the Turkic branch of the Altai language family.
Dispersion
Almost all Tofalars live in the west of the Nizhneudinsk district of the Irkutsk region, in the villages Alygdjer, Nerkha, Upper Gutara.
Society
Until the early 20th century, the eight kinship-tribal unions (nen), the members of which supposedly originated from a common mythical ancestor, preserved their significance. There were also patriarchal kinship groups descending from real ancestors through parental lineage. Each such kinship group consisted of nuclear families. The families of one kinship group migrated together in summer and separately in winter.
Traditional occupations
The Tofalars are reindeer breeders and foragers; they also hunted bears, hoofed mammals (moose, elk, roe), fur animals (sable, squirrel, beaver, otter) using reindeer. Until the end of the 19th century, they hunted with bows and arrows. The Tofalars rode reindeer (including on hunts) and used them to transport cargo. They also milked reindeer. They rarely used them for meat, only in case of unlucky hunts. The crafts they practiced included processing birch bark, leather, horn and wood.
Dwellings
Until the 1970s the Tofalars lived in chums, pole-based conical constructions that in summer were covered with boiled birch bark and in winter by koshma blankets sewn from moose and elk skins or from felt. They bartered felt for fur from Tuvans and Buryats. Currently they mostly live in log buildings.
Food
In the Tofalar diet, the bulbs of the yellow daylily played a very significant role; they were almost the single source of vitamins in the cold season; also significant were reindeer milk and meat (of elks, bears, musk deer, hares and other animals). Milk was drunk boiled, added to tea, in winter preserved frozen in cleaned-out elk stomachs and intestines.
