Tunguses I

Tungusic peoples spread across the vast forests and river valleys of Manchuria and eastern Siberia lived lives that would have bewildered agricultural civilizations to the south. They hunted elk, deer, and wild boar through dense taiga, fished the great rivers, trapped fur-bearing animals whose pelts brought wealth when traded to Chinese or Korean merchants. Their communities remained small and mobile - a few extended families occupying hunting territories vast by southern standards but barely sufficient by northern ones. They knew every stream, every game trail, every place where fish spawned or berries ripened. This intimate knowledge of terrain made their territories nearly impassable to outsiders. Foreign armies attempting to move through Tungusic lands found themselves lost, starving, paying exorbitant amounts for guides and supplies from the only people who knew how to survive there. Each unit trying to move through these territories needed feeding, and only local knowledge revealed where food could be found.

The settlements Tungusic groups built reflected their practical approach to life. They constructed quickly with available materials - wood, bark, hide - creating shelters that served immediate needs without the elaborate infrastructure that characterized sedentary civilizations. These weren't permanent cities meant to last centuries but functional camps that could be expanded when populations grew and abandoned when circumstances changed. Building a new settlement cost far less in resources and labor than the massive undertakings southerners considered necessary for urban life. This flexibility meant Tungusic groups could establish presence across wide territories without committing to any single location. When Chinese expeditionary forces occasionally penetrated their lands, they found little worth conquering - scattered communities that could simply move away, settlements too crude to garrison, populations too dispersed to control.

Tungusic peoples participated in larger historical events primarily through trade and occasional raids. Their furs, particularly sable, commanded high prices in Chinese markets. Korean kingdoms on their southern borders sometimes faced Tungusic raids but also traded with them, exchanging metalwork and grain for furs and information about northern territories. The Tungusic approach to politics mirrored their approach to settlement - pragmatic, flexible, non-committal. When powerful neighbors pressured them, they moved or submitted temporarily, resuming independence once pressure relaxed. They attended to shifting political situations, gaining benefits from events that affected more powerful peoples without getting destroyed in conflicts they couldn't win. Their lifestyle meant they accumulated little surplus and built nothing monumental, but also meant they had little to lose. Empires rose and fell to their south, steppe confederations formed and dissolved to their west, but Tungusic hunters continued following game through forests that remained essentially unchanged, their way of life enduring precisely because it demanded so little and adapted so easily.