one in the family is ill," he replied, "then they call in the shamman witch doctor to drive away the bad devils. When we have someone ill the priest prays to the Bogomater (Mother of God); but for Tartars, the shamman beats a drum and the illness goes. That is his business, and that is our business, but never mind, when they are well they come to church. We are all brothers."
This curious medley of religious ideas is interesting, showing as it does the Tartar actually in process of Russification. The Abakansk Tartars were originally nature-worshippers, as all the native tribes of Siberia once were and as many of the tribes still are. They held in reverence the objects of nature, such as rivers, lakes, hills and trees, and used a witch doctor to beat a drum and drive illness away from a family. But by contact with the Russians they began to imitate their religion, and when they found, as they sometimes did, that the shamman doctor did not answer, they took to praying to the Bogomater in the Greek church of the Russian village. It illustrates, too, the forbearance of the quiet Russian peasant. "We are all brothers," he says. "God made Christianity for me, and Mohammedanism for the Kazan Tartar. For the Abakansk Tartar he made Christianity too, but if he finds that his shamman doctor keeps the devil away and does him good, let him use him, as we use our felsher, or village doctor."
We came one afternoon to a Russian village called Borodina, in the middle of the steppe. The Russian peasants were all on a prasnik or holiday, and would not move a finger to take us on to the next village, so we had to stay there for the day. The whole village, young and old, was engaged in holiday-making,
