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Indigenous People Between Empires: Sakhalin through the Eyes of Charles Henry Hawes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
In 1901, British traveller Charles Henry Hawes (1867–1943) made a journey down the Tym' River on the island of Sakhalin, visiting villages occupied by indigenous Nivkh and Uilta people along the river and at its mouth on the Sea of Okhotsk. The island was at that time under Russian control, and had become notorious as a penal settlement, but Japanese influence was also strong: four years after Hawes' visit, following Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, the southern half of the island would become the Japanese colony of Karafuto. Hawes had some ethnographic knowledge, but arrived in the island as an interested amateur, more concerned to record his encounters along the route than to develop any particular ethnographic theory. For that reason, he recorded what he saw with an unselective immediacy which sheds light on the fluid and dynamic interactions between indigenous communities, Russian colonisers, Japanese mercantile and fishing interests and other groups. While Hawes' published book, In the Uttermost East, has been used as a source by some scholars of the region, the notebooks that he kept on his travels have lain for years in the Bodleian Library, largely unnoticed by researchers. This article uses these notebooks, Hawes' published work, and photos that he took or collected on his travels, to shed light on aspects of indigenous society in Sakhalin at a crucial moment in its history.
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Notes
1 Transcribed version of Charles Henry Hawes' Diaries (account of travels in Sakhalin, hereafter CHHD-S) held in the manuscript collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Eng. misc. c. 1040, pp. 111.
2 The presence or absence of reindeer herding is often seen as a defining distinction between Nivkh and Uilta communities, but as Heonik Kwon observes, at least by the second half of the twentieth century some Nivkh communities also kept reindeers; see Heonik Kwon, Maps and Actions: Nomadic and Sedentary Space in a Siberian Reindeer Farm, University of Cambridge PhD Thesis, 1993, pp. 5–6.
3 CHHD-S, pp. 111–112; see also Charles Henry Hawes, In the Uttermost East, London, Harper and Brothers, 1903, pp. 232–234.
4 ‘I do not know how far in what follows the interpreter (Mr. Clay) imparted his own ideas into the questions put, and therefore in answers’, CHHD-S, p. 112.
5 CHHD-S, p. 113.
6 See Lev Shternberg (ed. Bruce Grant), The Social Organization of the Gilyak, New York and Seattle, American Museum of Natural History / University of Washington Press, 1999; Bronislaw Piłsudski, ed. Alfred F. Majewicz, The Collected Works of Bronislaw Piłsudski, 4 volumes, (hereafter: Collected Works), Berlin and New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1998.
7 On the museum and Piłsudski's role in its development, see M. M. Prokof'ev, N. A. Samarin and V. V. Shcheglov, Sakhalinskii Muzei 120 Let: Ot Otkrytiya do nashikh Dnei (1896–2016 gg.), Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalinshkii Oblastnoi Kraevedcheskii Muzei, 2016, pp. 10–21.
8 CHHD-S, p. 157. In the diary Hawes refers to Endyn as ‘Imdin?’ and Piłsudski as ‘Pilsordsky’, but he corrects the spelling of Piłsudski's name in his published book. On Emdyn, see also ‘Researcher and Friend of the Sakhalin Natives: The Scholarly Profile of Bronislaw Piłsudski’, in Piłsudski, Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 26.
9 See letter from Bronislaw Piłsudski to Charles Henry Hawes, 12 September 1902, held in Bodleian Library.
10 This photograph appears in a collection of photos entitled Vidy Ostrovo Sakhalina (Views of the Island of Sakhalin) produced by the Sakhalin Museum around the beginning of the twentieth century. A copy of this is available online in the collection of the Library of Congress, accessed 15 June 2020). Most of the photos in that collection are by Ivan Nikolaevich Krasnov.
11 See, for example, Yamamoto Yūkō, Karafuto Genshi Minzoku no Seikatsu, Tokyo, Arusu, 1943; Yamamoto Yūkō, Karafuto Ainu no Jūkyo, Tokyo, Sagami Shobō, 1943 (Yamamoto's given name is also sometimes romanized as ‘Sukehiro’); Ishida Eiichrō, ‘Hōryō Minami Karafuto Orokko no Shizoku ni tsuite - 1’, in Ishida Eiichirō Zenshū, vol. 5, Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō, 1970, pp. 333–75.
12 See Roger Sanjek, ‘The Ethnographic Present’, Man, vol.26, no. 4, pp. 609-628, quotation from p. 613.
13 Good examples of this are B. Douglas Howard's Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, London, Longmans, Green and Co, 1893, and Harry de Windt's The New Siberia, London, Chapman and Hall, 1896, particularly pp. 112–117. Hawes notes in his diary that (according to Landsberg) de Windt spent only one day on Sakhalin, and (in Hawes' words), wrote a lot of ‘trash about the island’, see CHHD-S, p. 97. Howard's account is even more disturbing. In one particularly repellent passage he describes stealing a look at the naked body of an elderly hospitalized Ainu woman, which he proceeds to describe in utterly dehumanizing terms, by pretending to be a doctor; see Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, p. 8. Less egregious but similarly exoticized images appeared in Japanese guidebooks and travel accounts like Hishinuma Uichi's Karafuto Annai Chimei no Tabi, Tokyo, Chūō Jōhōsha, 1938.
14 See Bronislaw Piłsudski, 'B. O. Piłsudski's Report on his Expedition to the Ainu and Oroks of the Island of Sakhalin in the Years 1903–1905, in Collected Works, pp. 192–221.
15 See, for example, Richard Zgusta, The Peoples of Northeast Asia Through Time: Precolonial Ethnic and Cultural Processes Along the Coast Between Hokkaido and the Bering Strait, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2015, pp. 80–84.
16 The earliest written references to the Uilta appear to come from a report by Japanese official Takahashi Moriaki, who visited the island in 1715, and from information collected by French Jesuit scholar Jean-Baptiste du Halde from missionaries who visited the Lower Amur region in the last decade of the 17th century. See J B du Halde, Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique et Physique de l'Empire de Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, vol. 4, The Hague, Henri Scheurleer, 1736, p. 15; Koichi Inoue, ‘Uilta and their Reindeer Herding’, in Murasaki Kyoko ed., Ethnic Minorities in Sakhalin, Yokohama, Yokohama Kokuritsu Daigaku Kyōiku Gakubu, 1993, pp. 105–127, particularly p. 108; Tat'yana Roon, Uyl'ta Sakhalina: Istoriko-Ethnograficheskoe Issledovanie Traditsionnovo Khozyaistva I Material'noi Kul'tury XVIII – Serediny XX Vekov, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalinskoe Oblastnoe Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 1996, p. 7.
17 Zgusta, Peoples of Northeast Asia, p. 132.
18 For example, Leopold von Schrenck, Reisen und Forschungen in Amur-Lände in den Jahren 1854–1856, vol. 3, St. Petersburg, Commissionäre der Köningliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1858; Lev Yakovlevich Shternberg, Gilyaki, Orochi, Gol'dy, Negidal'tsy, Ainy, Tokyo: Nauka Reprint, 1991; Shternberg, Social Organization of the Gilyak; Nakanome Akira, Karafuto no Hanashi, Tokyo, Sanseidō, 1917; Nagane Sukehachi, Karafuto Dojin no Seikatsu, Tokyo, Kōyōsha, 1925; Ishida Eiichrō, ‘Hōryō Minami Karafuto Orokko no Shizoku ni tsuite - 1’, in Ishida Eiichirō Zenshū, vol. 5, Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō, 1970, pp. 333–75. For other general anthropological works on the indigenous people of Sakhalin see also Kawamura Hideya, ‘Senjū Minzoku Orokko, Giriyāku no Seikatsu to Fūzoku, Karafuto Chōhō, no. 6, 1937, pp. 155–165; M. G. Levin and L. P. Potapov, The Peoples of Siberia, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964; Chuner M Taksami, Nivkhi: Sovremenoe Khozyastvo, Kul'tura i Byt, Leningrad, Nauka, 1967; E. A. Kreinovich, Nivkhgy, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalinskoe Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 2001 (originally published in 1973); Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Healing among the Sakhalin Ainu, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
19 See, for example Bronislaw Piłsudski, ‘Wants and Needs of the Sakhalin Nivhgu’, in Piłsudski, Collected Works, vol. 1, pp. 105–136; Piłsudski, ‘B. O. Piłsudski's Report on his Expedition to the Ainu and Oroks’; Bronislaw Piłsudski, ‘Selected Information on Individual Ainu Settlements on the Island of Sakhalin’, in Piłsudski, Collected Works, pp. 311–130; Bronislaw Piłsudski, ‘Statistical Data on Sakhalin Ainu for the Year 1904‘, in Piłsudski, Collected Works, vol. 1, pp. 331–345.
20 See, for example, Tanaka Ryō and D. Gendānu, Gendānu: Aru Hoppō Shōsū Minzoku no Dorama, Tokyo, Gendaishi Shuppankai, 1978; Karafuto Ainu Shi Kenkyūkai, ed., Tsuishikari no Ishibumi, Sappor,: Hokkaidō Shuppan Kikaku Sentā, 1992; Fujimura Hisakazu and Wakatsuki Jun eds., Henke to Ahachi: Kikikaki Karafuto de no Kurashi, soshite Hikiage, Sapporo: Sapporo Terebi Kabushiki Kaisha, 1994; Nikolai Vishinevskii, Otasu: Etno-Policheshie Ocherki, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Dal'nevostochnoe Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 1994; Kwon, Maps and Actions; Bruce Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995; Roon, Uyl'ta Sakhalina; Hokkaidō Dōritsu Hoppō Minzoku Hakubutsukan, Karafuto 1905–45 – Nihonryō Jidai no Shōsū Minzoku, Abashiri: Hokkaidō Dōritsu Hoppō Minzoku Hakubutsukan, 1997; Tangiku Itsuji, ‘Aru Nibufujin no Senzen to Sengo’, Wakō Daigaku Gendai Jinbun Gakubu Kiyō, 4, March 2011, pp. 129–143; Inoue Koichi, ‘A Case Study on Identity Issues with Regard to Enchiws (Sakhalin Ainu)‘, Journal of the Centre for Northern Humanities, 9, March 2016, pp. 75–87.
21 See entry for Charles Henry Hawes in the UK census of 1891.
22 Mary Allsebrook (ed. Annie Allsebrook), Born to Rebel: The Life of Harriet Boyd Hawes, Oxford, Oxbow Books, 1992, p. 126.
23 Allsebrook, Born to Rebel, p. 126.
24 See Christina M. Spiker, ‘“Civilized” Men and “Superstitious” Women: Visualizing the Hokkaido Ainu in Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Track in Japan, 1880‘, in Kristen L. Chiem and Lara C. W. Blanchard, Gender, Continuity and the Shaping of Modernity in the Arts of East Asia, 16th–20th Centuries, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2017, pp. 287–316, see particularly p. 292.
25 CHHD-S, p. 94; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 87.
26 CHHD-S, p. 106.
27 CHHD-S, p. 96; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, pp. 80 and 82. In his published book, Hawes calls his interpreter ‘Mr. X’, but in his diaries he names him as ‘Mr. Lochvitsky’. Here I use the romanization of his name which Lochvitzky himself used after moving to the US.
28 ‘Vanka’ is a Russian diminutive of Ivan. Hawes does not give Vanka's Nivkh name, and is uncertain whether he has recorded Armunka's name correctly, see Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 156.
29 CHHD-S, p. 101; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, pp. 157, 302.
30 CHHD-S, p. 115.
31 CHHD-S, p. 117; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, pp. 181 and 277.
32 See, for example, A. V. Smolyak, Etnicheskie Prosessy u Narodov Nizhnevo Amura i Sakhalina, Moscow, Nauka, 1975, p. 174; Piłsudski, ‘Selected Information on Individual Ainu Settlements’, p. 312.
33 ‘Exiled Russian in the Pulpit’, The Journal and Tribune (Knoxville, Tennessee), 28 June 1909, p. 4.
34 CHHD-S, pp. 102–103.
35 CHHD-S, p. 107. In the transcription, the word ‘panelled’ has been rendered as ‘paralleled’, but this is clearly a mistake. Hawes uses the word ‘panelled’ in this passage when it appears in his book.
36 CHHD-S, p. 116-117.
37 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 207; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 292.
38 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 206.
39 CHHD-S, p. 117
40 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, pp. 158 and 176
41 For example, Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 232.
42 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, pp. 229–230.
43 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 273.
44 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 274; see also CHHD-S, p. 113.
45 ‘Cham’ is a transcription of the Nivkh word for shaman. Hawes suggests that there is a difference between cham, whose role was primarily judicial, and the more religious ‘shaman of the Orotskis, the Golds and the Tungus on the mainland’, but this is not a difference recognised by other scholars of Nivkh culture. See Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 234–235. On the role of shamans in Nivkh society, see for example Kreinovich, Nivkhgu, pp. 455–471.
46 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 233.
47 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 234.
48 CHHD-S, p. 109.
49 CHHD-S, p. 108.
50 CHHD-S, p. 113.
51 In his book, Hawes calls Landsberg ‘Mr. Y’. See CHHD-S, pp. 74–75; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, pp. 79–81; On Landsberg, see also Vlas Doroshevich (trans. Andrew A. Gentes), Russia's Penal Colony in the Far East: A Translation of Vlas Doroshevich's ‘Sakhalin‘, London and New York, Anthem Press, 2011, Part 2, Chapter 7.
52 CHHD-S, pp. 139–140.
53 CHHD-S, p. 132.
54 CHHD-S, p. 129.
55 ‘Dread Sakhalin: “In the Uttermost East”, a Timely Travel Book, by Charles H. Hawes’, New York Times, 11 June 1904.
56 ‘In the Far East’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 1904.
57 Just one of Piłsudski's essays, his survey of Karafuto Ainu villages (translated and edited by Ueda Susumi) was published in Japanese in 1906; see ‘Karafuto Ainu no Jōtai: Rokoku Pirusudosukī Shi Kikō‘, parts 1 and 2, Sekai, no 26, 1906, pp. 57–66 and no. 27, 1906, pp. 42–49 (NB This journal Sekai, published by Kyōka Nippōsha from 1904-1917, is distinct from the more famous post-war Japanese journal of the same name).
58 Aizawa Hiroshi, Karafuto Jijō, Tokyo, Kinkōdō, 1905, p. 3.
59 CHHD-S, p. 100.
60 CHHD-S, p. 102.
61 CHHD-S, p. 120.
62 CHHD-S, p. 108.
63 CHHD-S, p. 108.
64 CHHD-S, p. 107.
65 CHHD-S, pp. 106-107.
66 Hawes notes that the going rate of exchange established by one Manchurian merchant from Nikolaevsk was three bricks of tea for one sealskin, CHHD-S, p. 140. Hawes himself carried tea as a trade item, and in Yrkyr' paid 20 kopeks and half a brick of tea for a dog skin, CHHDS, p. 118.
67 The problem is compounded by the fact that Hawes sometimes uses ‘old style’ dates (according to the Julian calendar, which was still used in Russia at that time) and sometimes uses ‘new style’ Gregorian calendar dates.
68 Nivkh people moved annually back and forth between two houses – a wooden chalet like summer house (ke ryf) and a semi-underground winter house (tulf tyv); see for example Lydia Black, ‘The Nivkh (Gilyak) of Sakhalin and the Lower Amur’, Artic Anthropology, vol. 10, no. 1, 1973, pp. 1–110, particularly pp. 6 –16.
69 CHHD-S, p. 113.
70 See Tezuka Kaoru, ‘Amūru-gawa Shimoryūiki to sono Shūhen no Hitobito’, in Hokkaidō Kaitaku Kinenkan ed., Santan Kōeki to Ezo Nishiki, Sapporo, Hokkaidō Kaitaku Kinenkan, 1996, pp. 5-9.
71 This information comes from a report sent to Nicolaes Witsen, a Dutch scholar, statesman and avid collector of geographical knowledge, who included it in his 1705 magnum opus on Siberia and East Asia – see Nicolaes Witsen, Noord en Oost Tartarye, ofte Bondig Ontwerp van eenige dier Landen en Volken welke Voormaels Bekent zijn Geweest, Amsterdam, François Halma, 1705, p. 63.
72 Shiro Sasaki, ‘A History of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Activities between the Russian and Chinese Empires', Senri Ethnological Studies, vol. 92, pp. 161-193, 2016 (see particularly pp. 168-170); Mamiya Rinzō, Tōdatsu Kikō, Dairen: Minami Manshū Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha, 1938 (Original written in 1810 and first published in 1911).
73 CHHD-S, p. 113.
74 Piłsudski, ‘Wants and Needs of the Sakhalin Nivhgu’, p. 126.
75 See Smolyak, Etnicheskie Prosessy, p. 174.
76 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 217.
77 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 219.
78 CHHD-S, p. 115.
79 CHHD-S, p. 116.
80 CHHD-S, p. 140.
81 CHHD-S, p. 114; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 258.
82 Piłsudski, ‘Wants and Needs of the Sakhalin Nivhgu’, p. 125.
83 CHHD-S, pp. 104 and 109.
84 Roon, Uyil'ta Sakhalina, p. 74.
85 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 219.
86 Piłsudski, ‘B. O. Piłsudski's Report on his Expedition to the Ainu and Oroks’, p. 207.
87 CHHD-S, p. 104.
88 CHHD-S, p. 109.
89 CHHD-S, p. 111.
90 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 230.
91 See Uchiyama Yoshita and Akashi Kiichi, Saharintō Senryō Keieiron, Tokyo, Tōkaidō, 1905, p. 4.
92 See Aizawa Karafuto Jijō, p. 96.
93 On Bahunke [also written Bafunke or Bohunka], see Uchiyama and Akashi, Saharintō Senryō Keieiron, p. 40; ‘Researcher and Friend of the Sakhalin Natives’, pp. 27–28; Bronislaw Piłsudski, ‘An Outline of the Economic Life of the Ainu on Sakhalin’, in Piłsudski, Collected Works, vol. 1, pp. 271–295, particularly p. 292; Sentoku Tarōji, Karafuto Ainu Sōwa, Tokyo, Shikōdō Ichikawa Shoten, 1929, pp. 6 and 50–51.
94 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 189.
95 CHHD-S, pp. 112–113.
96 CHHD-S, p. 115.
97 Piłsudski, ‘Wants and Needs of the Sakhalin Nivhgu’, pp. 128–129.
98 CHHD-S, p. 119.
99 Piłsudski, ‘B. O. Piłsudski's Report on his Expedition to the Ainu and Oroks’, p. 215.
100 Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 329.
101 See, for example, Piłsudski, ‘B. O. Piłsudski's Report on his Expedition to the Ainu and Oroks’, pp. 199 and 213.
102 See, for example, Nakanome, Karafuto no Hanashi, p. 36.
103 See Tangiku, ‘Aru Nibufujin no Senzen to Sengo’, p. 132.
104 See Tanaka and Gendānu, Gendānu, particularly pp. 33–37.
105 See, for example, CHHD-S, pp. 113 and 118; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 214.
106 CHHD-S, p. 118; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 302.
107 CHHD-S, p. 122; Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 306.
108 CHHD-S, pp. 114–115.
109 CHHD-S, p. 152.
110 ‘Offers a Course in Anthropology: Subject Never Has Been Taught at Wisconsin’, Iowa County Democrat, 17 October 1907, p. 4.
111 ‘Offers a Course in Anthropology: Subject Never Has Been Taught at Wisconsin’, Iowa County Democrat, 17 October 1907, p. 4.
112 ‘Offers a Course in Anthropology: Subject Never Has Been Taught at Wisconsin’, Iowa County Democrat, 17 October 1907, p. 4.
113 For a detailed discussion of the Val collective, see Kwon, Maps and Actions.
114 See Bruce Grant, ‘Afterword: Afterlives and Afterworlds: Nivkhi on the Social Organization of the Gilyak, 1995‘, in Shternberg (ed. Grant), Social Organization of the Gilyak, pp. 187 and 224; Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture, p. 90.
115 A good example of the campaign against shamanism is the short story ‘In the Valley of the Tym“, by Sakhalin novelist Semyon Bytovoi, published in 1957. Bytovoi's hero, the communist pioneer Matirnyi, persuades the Nivkh of the Tym’ valley to form a collective, but his efforts to encourage potato growing are sabotaged by the local shaman, who accuses Matirnyi of digging up the ground in order to steal it from the Nivkh people. When Matirnyi tells the local villagers that the potatoes they plant will be multiplied many-fold, the shaman promptly unearths the newly-planted potatoes to demonstrate that there are still the same number as were originally put into the ground. It is only gradually and through great hardship that (in Bytovoi's tale) the Soviet hero is able to wean the indigenous community away from its ”naîve“ dependence on tradition; Semyon Bytovoi, ‘V Doline Tym'i’ in Semyon Bytovoi, Sady u Okeana, Leningrad, Sovietskii Pisatel', 1957, pp. 3-45; for further information on the effects of the purges, see for example Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture, pp. 93–108; Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 226–229.
116 The other two are in Nogliki and Nekrasova; Tjeerd de Graaf and Hidetoshi Shiraishi, ‘Documentation and Revitalisation of Two Endangered Languages in East Asia: Nivkh and Ainu’, in Erich Kasten and Tjeerd de Graaf ed., Sustaining Indigenous Knowledge: Learning Tools and Community Initiatives for Preserving Endangered Languages and Local Cultural Heritage, Noderstedt, SEC Publications / Kulturstiftung Siberiens, 2013, pp. 49–63, see particularly, p. 59.