Semyon Dezhnyov - Biography

Biography

He was Pomor, born about 1605, possibly at Veliky Ustyug or the village of Pinega. According to Lydia Black (2004: 17), Dezhnyov was recruited for Siberian service, possibly as a service-man or government agent, in 1630. He served for eight years in Tobolsk and Yeniseisk, and then went to Yakutia in 1639, or possibly earlier. He ”is said to have been a member of the Cossack detachment under Beketov, who is credited with founding Yakutsk (on the Lena River) in 1632. In any case, no later than 1639 he was sent to Yakutia, where he married a Yakut captive and spent the next three years collecting tribute from the natives.

In 1641 Dezhnyov moved northeast to a newly-discovered tributary of the Indigirka River where he served under Mikhail Stadukhin. Finding few furs and hostile natives and hearing of a rich river to the east, he and Stadukhin and Dmitry Zyrian sailed down the Indigirka, then east along the coast and until the Kolyma River and built an ostrog (1643). This was the time the easternmost Russian frontier. The Kolyma soon proved to be one of the richest areas in eastern Siberia. In 1647 396 men paid head-tax there and 404 men received passports to travel from Yakutsk to the Kolyma.

From about 1642, Russians began hearing of a ‘Pogycha River’ to the east which flowed into the Arctic and was rich in sable fur, walrus ivory and silver ore. An attempt to reach it in 1646 failed. In 1647 Fedot Alekseyev, an agent of a Moscow merchant, organized an expedition and brought in Dezhnyov because he was a government official. The expedition reached the sea but were unable to round the Chukchi Peninsula because they had to turn back due to thick drift ice.

The following year (1648), they tried again. Fedot Alekseyev was joined by two others, Andreev and Afstaf’iev, representing the Guselnikov merchant house, with their own vessels and men, while Alekseyev provided five vessels and the majority of the men. Also Gerasim Ankudinov, with his own vessel and 30 men, joined the expedition. Dezhnyov recruited his own men, 18 or 19, for fur gathering for private profit, as was the custom at the time. The whole group numbered between 89 and 121 men, travelling in traditional koch vessels. At least one woman, Alekseyev’s Yakut wife, was with this group.

On 20 June 1648 (old style, 30 June new style) they departed from (most likely) Srednekolymsk and sailed down the river to the Arctic. Next year it was learned from captives that two koches had been wrecked and their survivors were killed by the natives. Two other koches were lost in a way that is not recorded. Some time before 20 September (o.s) they rounded a ‘great rocky projection’. Here Ankudinov’s koch was wrecked and the survivors were transferred to the remaining two. At the beginning of October a storm blew up and Fedot’s koch disappeared. (In 1653/4, Dezhnyov captured from the Koryaks Fedot’s Yakut woman who had accompanied him from the Kolyma. She said that Fedot died of scurvy, several of his companions were killed by the Koryaks and the rest fled in small boats to an unknown fate). Dezhnyov’s koch was driven by the storm and was eventually wrecked somewhere south of the Anadyr. The remaining 25 men wandered in unknown country for 10 weeks until they came to the mouth of the Anadyr. Twelve men went up the Anadyr, walked for 20 days, found nothing and turned back. Three of the stronger men got back to Dezhnyov and the rest were never heard of again. In the spring or early summer of 1649 the remaining 12 men built boats from driftwood and went up the Anadyr. They were probably trying to get out of the tundra into forested country for sables and firewood. About 320 miles upriver they built a zimov’ye (winter quarters) somewhere near Anadyrsk and subjected the local Anauls to tribute. Here they were effectively stranded.

In 1649 Russians on the Kolyma ascended the Anyuy River branch of the Kolyma and learned that one could travel from its headwaters to the headwaters of the Pogycha-Anadyr. In 1650 Stadukhin and Semyon Motora followed this route and stumbled onto Dezhnyov’s camp. The land route was clearly superior and Dezhnyov’s sea route was never used again. Dezhnyov spent the next several years exploring and collecting tribute from the natives. More cossacks arrived from the Kolyma, Motora was killed and Stadukhin went south to find the Penzhina River. Dezhnyov found a walrus rookery at the mouth of the Anadyr and ultimately accumulated over 2 tons of Walrus ivory which was far more valuable than the few furs found at Anadyrsk.

In 1659 Dezhnyov transferred his authority to Kurbat Ivanov, the discoverer of Lake Baikal. In 1662 he was at Yakutsk. In 1664 he reached Moscow in charge of a load of tribute. He later served on the Olenyok River and the Vilyuy River. In 1670 he escorted 47,164 rubles (a soldier was paid about 5 rubles a year) of tribute to Moscow and died there in late 1672.