total eight per cent. of native population are Tobolsk and Tomsk Tartars, one per cent. are Kirghiz from the steppes of Western Siberia; the Finnish group is represented by the Samoyedes, Ostiaks and Voguls, who comprise one and a half per cent. of the total population; and the third group of Tartarized Finns is represented by the Altaians, who comprise one per cent. of the total.
The Tobolsk and Tomsk Tartars, who are the direct descendants of the Tartars of the Sibir Khanate overthrown by Yermak, are, along with the Kirghiz, the purest relics of the Turkish stock in Siberia. When the Russians conquered Siberia they found these Tartars a comparatively highly cultivated people living in settlements and even in small towns, cultivating and irrigating the land, and understanding the use of metals. In course of time the Cossacks and Russian immigrants settled and intermarried with them, and the type has become further modified by admixture with the natives of the Altai. These Tartars, representing the relics of the old Siberian Turkish stock, correspond to the Kazan Tartars in European Russia. Their present distribution is in the southern forest belt of the Tobolsk and Tomsk governments. They are found also in colonies along the Ishim and Tobol rivers, and in considerable numbers on the so-called Vasyugan steppe between the rivers Irtish and Obi. They engage in agriculture, fishing and trading—in fact they pursue the same occupations as the Russians round them. Like all Tartars, however, they show considerable talent for commercial bargaining. Their houses are of one or two storeys with log walls and a turfed roof, but they differ from the Russian houses
