A Description of Siberian Peoples. The Knights of the Taiga

G.F. Mueller, translated and published by A.Ch. Elert

Russian history-lovers are practically unfamiliar with the name of Gerhard Friedrich Mueller or Gerard Friedrich Miller, as he called himself in Russia. Even if they heard of the name, it was more likely in connection with M.V. Lomonosov’s struggle against the so-called “Norse” theory of origin of the state in Ancient Russia, one of whose founders was Mueller. In 2005, the international scientific community celebrated the third centennial of the birth of the German scientist on a large scale. Does it mean that his accomplishments are worthy of this? The question is more than appropriate. It is high time that we got rid of historical clichs that have proved unable to stand the test of time and started revising the views on the great German who has done much for the formation and development of Russian science.

Mueller’s participation in the Second Kamchatka expedition as an informal leader of the Academic Detachment during the journey across Siberia in 1733—1743 was the most important milestone in the scientist’s destiny. Mueller visited all the districts of the Urals and Siberia, studied the archives of the cities he visited, and in ten years of travel accumulated a vast file of valuable materials on the history, economy, geography, demography, archeology, ethnography, and languages of Siberian peoples. In his ethnographic texts, Mueller wrote about the “forest” peoples of Siberia with particular sympathy. Among the most important qualities that were inherent in them, he named their natural kindness, compassion, sympathy towards their kinsmen, inability of deliberately inflicting offence, and so forth...

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