and the
Anadyr River. The mouth of the Kolyma is very close to the vertical line on the Arctic coast which marks today's administrative borders. Dezhnyov was a
Pomor Russian, born in 1605, possibly in the town of
Veliky Ustyug or the village of
Pinega. According to the anthropologist
Lydia T. Black, Dezhnyov was recruited for Siberian service in 1630, possibly as a
service man or government agent. He served for eight years in
Tobolsk and
Yeniseisk, and then went to
Yakutia in 1639, or possibly earlier. He is said to have been a member of the
Cossack detachment under
Beketov, who is credited with founding
Yakutsk (on the
Lena River) in 1632. In any case, no later than 1639 he was sent to Yakutia, where he married a
Yakut captive and spent the next three years collecting (otherwise known as fur tribute) from the natives. In 1641, Dezhnyov moved northeast to a newly discovered tributary of the
Indigirka River where he served under
Mikhail Stadukhin. Finding few furs and hostile natives and hearing of a rich river to the east, he, Stadukhin and Yarilo Zyrian sailed down the Indigirka, then east along the coast to the
Kolyma River, where they built an
ostrog (or fort) (1643). This was at the time the easternmost Russian frontier. The Kolyma soon proved to be one of the richest areas in eastern Siberia. In 1647, 396 men paid head-tax there and 404 men received passports to travel from Yakutsk to the Kolyma. From about 1642, Russians began hearing of a 'Pogycha River' to the east which flowed into the Arctic and that the nearby area was rich in sable fur, walrus ivory and silver ore. An attempt to reach it in 1646 failed. In 1647,
Fedot Alekseyev, an agent of a Moscow merchant, organized an expedition and brought in Dezhnyov because he was a government official. The expedition reached the sea but was unable to round the
Chukchi Peninsula because it had to turn back due to thick drift ice. They tried again the following year (1648). Fedot Alekseyev was joined by two others, Andreev and Afstaf'iev, representing the Guselnikov merchant house, with their own vessels and men, while Alekseyev provided five vessels and the majority of the men. Gerasim Ankudinov, with his own vessel and 30 men, also joined the expedition. Dezhnyov recruited his own men, 18 or 19, for fur gathering for private profit, as was the custom at the time. The whole group numbered between 89 and 121 people, travelling in traditional
koch vessels. At least one woman, Alekseyev's Yakut wife, was with this group. On 20 June 1648 (old style, 30 June new style), they departed from (most likely)
Srednekolymsk and sailed down the river to the Arctic. During the next year it was learned from captives that two koches had been wrecked and their survivors killed by the natives. Two other koches were lost in a way that is not recorded. Some time before 20 September (o.s) they rounded a 'great rocky projection'. Here Ankudinov's koch was wrecked and the survivors were transferred to the remaining two vessels. At the beginning of October a storm blew up and Fedot's koch disappeared. In 1653/4, Dezhnyov rescued from the indigenous Koryaks Fedot's Yakut woman, who had accompanied him from the Kolyma. She said that Fedot died of scurvy, that several of his companions were killed by the Koryaks, and that the rest had fled in small boats to an unknown fate. Dezhnyov's koch was driven by the storm and was eventually wrecked somewhere south of the Anadyr. The remaining 25 men wandered in unknown country for 10 weeks until they came to the mouth of the Anadyr. Twelve men went up the Anadyr, walked for 20 days, found nothing and turned back. Three of the stronger men got back to Dezhnyov and the rest were never heard of again. In the spring or early summer of 1649 the 12 remaining men built boats from driftwood and went up the Anadyr. They were probably trying to get out of the tundra into forested country to obtain sables and firewood. About 320 miles upriver they built a
zimovye (winter quarters) somewhere near
Anadyrsk and subjected the local
Yukaghirs to tribute. In 1649, Russians on the Kolyma ascended the
Anyuy River branch of the Kolyma and learned that one could travel from its headwaters to the headwaters of the Pogycha-Anadyr. In 1650 Stadukhin and Semyon Motora followed this route and stumbled onto Dezhnyov's camp. The land route was clearly superior and Dezhnyov's sea route was never used again. Dezhnyov spent the next several years exploring and collecting tribute from the natives. More cossacks arrived from the Kolyma; Motora was killed and Stadukhin went south to find the
Penzhina River. Dezhnyov found a walrus rookery at the mouth of the Anadyr and ultimately accumulated over 2 tons of
walrus ivory, far more valuable than the few furs found at Anadyrsk. In 1659, Dezhnyov transferred his authority to Kurbat Ivanov, the discoverer of Lake Baikal. In 1662 he was at Yakutsk. In 1664 he reached Moscow and after selling 4.6 tons of walrus tusks from the North, he became a wealthy man. Also, for his merits as a researcher, he was awarded the title of chieftain. He later served on the
Olenyok River and the
Vilyuy River. In 1670 he escorted 47,164 rubles (a soldier was paid about 5 rubles a year) of tribute to Moscow and died there in late 1672.
Dezhnyov's 1648 expedition results As stated above, Dezhnyov traveled with Fedot Alekseyev and two others, Andreev and Afstaf'iev. Except for Dezhnyov, none of the other leaders of this expedition survived to tell their tale. Dezhnyov rounded the eastern extremity of Asia,
East Cape, now known to Russians as Cape Dezhnyov, possibly made landfall on the
Diomede Islands, sailed through the
Bering Strait, reached the
Anadyr River, ascended it and founded the
Anadyr ostrog. Four of the seven vessels were lost before reaching Bering Strait, and Ankudinov's koch was wrecked in or near Bering Strait. This meant that only two vessels went beyond the strait. Alekseyev's boat is believed by some to had made landfall in the vicinity of the
Kamchatka River, further down the coast of
Kamchatka. It appears that scholars agree only on the fate of Dezhnyov's vessel, which was not lost. It was widely believed at the time that these vessels had reached the American shore and that their men had founded a Russian settlement there. Such a colony was searched for by many Russian expeditions launched by the
Russian-American Company from 1818 on and during the early 1820s. ==A discovery and its re-discovery==