, 1769 , 1769 (
Tondon), and the
Ketching people further down the Amur (where Nanai,
Ulch, and
Nivkh people live now) Some of the earliest first-hand accounts of the Nanai people in the European languages belong to the French
Jesuit geographers travelling on the
Ussuri and the
Amur in 1709. According to them, the native people living on the Ussuri and on the Amur above the mouth of the
Dondon River (which falls into the Amur between today's
Khabarovsk and
Komsomolsk-on-Amur) were known as Yupi Tartars, while the name of the people living on the Dondon and on the Amur below Dondon was transcribed by the Jesuits into French as
Ketching. According to the Jesuits, the language of the Yupi people seemed to occupy an intermediate position between the
Manchu language and that of the "Ketching" people (); some level of communication between the Yupi and the Ketching was possible. Some Han Chinese are said to have founded clan subdivisions among the Nanai, and the Nanai have absorbed Manchu and Jurchens. Nanai culture is influenced by Han Chinese and Manchu culture, and the Nanai share a myth in common with southern Chinese. The Nanais at first fought against the Nurhaci and the Manchus, led by their own Nanai Hurka chief Sosoku before surrendering to
Hongtaiji in 1631. Mandatory
shaving of the front of all male heads was imposed on Amur peoples conquered by the Qing including the Nanai people. The Amur peoples already wore the queue on the back of their heads but did not shave the front until the Qing subjected them and ordered them to shave. The term "shaved-head people" was used to describe the Nanai by Ulch people.
Economy As described by early visitors (e.g.,
Jesuit cartographers on the Ussuri River in 1709), the economy of the people living there (who would be classified as Nanai, or possible
Udege people, today) was based on fishing. ) or the "Kin (
Jin) Tartars", as well as the lands of the "Yupy Tartars" (Nanai and related tribes) further east. The traditional clothing was made out of fish skins. These skins were left to dry, struck repeatedly with a mallet to leave them completely smooth, and sewn together. In the past centuries, this distinct practice earned the Nanai the name "Fish-skin
Tartars" (). This name has also been applied, more generically, to other aboriginal groups of the lower Sungari and lower Amur basins. Agriculture entered the Nanai lands only slowly. Practically the only crop grown by the
Yupi villagers on the Ussuri River shores in 1709 was some tobacco. The Nanai believe that each person has both a soul and a spirit. On death, the soul and spirit will go different ways. A person’s spirit becomes malevolent and begins to harm their living relatives. With time, these
amban may be tamed and can later be worshipped; otherwise, a special ritual must be performed to chase the evil spirit away. After death, a person's soul is put into a temporary shelter made of cloth, called a
lachako. The souls of the deceased will remain in the
lachako for seven days before being moved to a wooden sort of doll called a
panyo, where it will remain until the final funerary ritual. The
panyo is taken care of as if it is a living person; for example, it is given a bed to sleep in each night, with a pillow and blanket to match its miniature size. The closest family member is in charge of taking care of the deceased’s
panyo. Each night this family member puts the
panyo to bed and then wakes it in the morning. The
panyo has a small hole carved where the mouth of a person would be, so that a pipe may occasionally be placed there and allow the deceased to smoke. If the family member travels they will bring the
panyo with them. The dead’s final funerary ritual is called
kasa tavori and lasts three days, during which there is much feasting and the souls of the deceased are prepared for their journey to the underworld. The most important part of the
kasa tavori is held on the third day. On this day, the dead’s souls are moved from the
panyo into large human-looking wooden figures made to be about the size of the deceased, called
mugdeh. These
mugdeh are moved into a dog sled that will be used to transport them to the underworld,
Buni. Before leaving for
Buni, the shaman communicates any last wills of the deceased to the gathered family. For example, in the anthropologist Gaer’s account of this ritual, one soul asked his family to repay a debt to a neighbor that the deceased was never able to repay. After this ceremony, the shaman leads the dog sleds on the dangerous journey to
Buni, from where she must leave before sunset or else she will die. After
kasa tavori, it has previously been practiced that the living relatives could no longer visit the graves of the deceased, or even talk about them. The souls of Nanai infants do not behave in the same manner as an adult’s. For the Nanai, children under a year old are not yet people, but are birds. When an infant dies, its soul will turn into a bird and fly off. When an infant dies they are not buried. Instead they are wrapped in a paper made of birch bark and placed in a large tree somewhere in the forest. The soul of the child, or the bird, is then free to enter back into a woman. It is common practice in preparing a funeral rite of an infant to mark it with coal, such as drawing a bracelet around the wrist. If a child is later born to a woman that has similar markings to those drawn on a deceased child then it is believed to be the same soul reborn. The deceased were normally buried in the ground with the exception of children who died prior to the first birthday; these are buried in tree branches as a "wind burial". Many Nanai are also
Tibetan Buddhist. ==Modern population==