was an element which would not submit to absorption, and as the Russians dotted their villages along the plains of Western Siberia and began to break up the land and graze over the steppes, those Tartars who did not care to compromise with the new conditions broke away southward into the Kirghiz steppes, or south-eastward into the Altai plateaus, or north-west into the sub-Arctic forests. This process has been continuing gradually for centuries, and in the time of Catherine the Great large tracts of land were set apart as native reserves, where Russians might not colonize and where the natives could have their own land without fear of disturbance.
It is undeniable, however, that in the early days the natives were exposed to some tyranny in the shape of excessive taxation and tribute; but the responsibility for this rested upon the authorities in European Russia, who, ignorant of the local conditions, wished to utilize the natives as a means of obtaining by forced labour the treasures of the fur trade. Thus in 1753 a tribute of ten squirrels and two linxes was levied from each Samoyede hunter, and ten sables and five hundred fish from the Ostiaks. The tribute was arbitrary and unjust, and arrears accumulated annually. The tribal chiefs, moreover, were made responsible for the tribute of each member, just as the Mongol khans are made responsible for the tribute of their subjects in Mongolia to-day.
But in 1822 a commission was appointed by the Russian Government, and the Siberian natives were divided for the purpose of taxation into classes according to their mode of life and livelihood. The old tribal system as a basis of assessment for taxation
