The Kumandins also known as the Kumandy, Kumanda, Qumandy and Qumanda are a people indigenous to Central Asia. They reside mainly in the Altai Republic of the Russian Federation. According to the 1926 census, 6,335 Kumandins lived within the territory of Russia. In the 2010 census, the number was only 2,892, but possibly the 1926 census included some related peoples. Some Kumandins, living on the banks of the Biya River, from the Kuu River downstream, almost to the city ofBiysk, and along the lower course of the riverKatun River, by 1969 were conflated with the ethnic Russian population.
Origins
claimed that kuman- in the name of the Kumandins is identical in meaning to the names given to the Turkic people, Cumans-Kipchaks and Polovets. However, the seoks of the Kumandins have varying origin myths; L. Potapov proposed that they were originally a federation of peoples from different backgrounds: nomadic steppe pastoralists, taiga hunters, deer pastoralists, and fishers. By the 17th century, the Kumandins lived along the river Charysh, near its confluence with the river Ob. A subsequent relocation to the Altai was driven by their unwillingness to pay yasak to the Russian sovereign. N. Aristov linked the Kumandins – and the Chelkans – to the ancient Turks, "who in the 6th-8th CC. CE created in Central Asia a powerful nomadic state, which received... the name Turkic Kaganate". Potapov regarded the Kumandins as being related anthropologically to the peoples of the Urals, and suggested that they were less East Asian than the Altaians proper. This subjective impression has been borne out to an extent by genetic research suggesting that most Kumandin males belong to Y-DNA haplogroups that are generally found in populations further to the west, such as R1b and N-P43. However, a majority of mitochondrial DNA lines belonged to the North East Asian haplogroups C or D with also a large minority of west Eurasian lineages such as U5a1, H8, U4b1b, X2e, and T1a. Six seoks have been identified: An ancient Turkic legend recorded in the Chinese annal mentions the origin of the Göktürks' ancestors from a possession or state named Suǒ, located "north of the Xiongnu country". The name of the seok Ton is explained as an ethnonym that reflects their economic specialization, as a word meaning "deer" and "reindeer breeder". The remote ancestors of this Kumandy seok Ton were reindeer breeders, reflected in Kumandy hunting legends and fairy tales, for example about milking deer. The memory about breeding and milking reindeer belongs to some remote historical ancestors of a part of Kumandy; they can be explained by participation in the Kumandy ethnogenesis of the southern Nenets tribes, who cultivated riding deer, typically used not only for transport but also for food and dress.
Culture
The Kumandins were originally hunters and animals living in the taiga were vital to the localsubsistence economy. The traditional dwellings of the Kumandins included polygonal yurts made out of bark or log and topped with a conic bark roof. Other types of dwellings also included conic yurts made out of bark or perches. Traditional Kumandin dress included short breeches, linen shirts, and single-breasted robes.
