Nikolai Ivanovich Daurkin

Nikolai Iwanowitsch Daurkin ( Russian: Николай Иванович Дауркин , Chukchi Tangitan ; * 1734 in Chukotka , Russian Far East , † after 1795 ) was a Chukchi-Russian explorer and interpreter .

Life

Detail from Daurkin's map of 1765 with Cape Deschnjow , the Diomedes Islands and Alaska .

Daurkin was the son of the Koryak Omschat and a Tschuktschin born, raped as a child by the Chukchi and called Tangitan ( "stranger" or "enemy"). At the age of ten he came into the hands of Dmitri Ivanovich Pavluzki on a Russian punitive expedition , who held him prisoner in the Anadyrski Ostrog before sending him to his family in Yakutsk . It was here that the boy was baptized and given his Russian name. As a servant in Anna Filippovna Pavluzkaja's house, he learned not only to speak Russian , but also to read and write. He was later trained in arithmetic and the basics of physics and astronomy . In order to escape from service with the Pavluzkaya, he turned to Governor General Soimonov in 1760 with a request to join the Russian military . He returned to Anadyrski Ostrog in 1762 as a soldier and interpreter. In 1763 he undertook a trip along the Anadyr with the commandant of the Ostrog, Friedrich Plenisner . He then left the Russian troops on his own initiative and traveled via the Chukchi Peninsula and across the ice to St. Lawrence Island . In 1764 he returned to the Ostrog , accompanied by some relatives who recognized Russian rule and agreed to pay taxes, and was arrested as a deserter . Before he was sent to Yakutsk as a simple soldier, he wrote a report on his travels and made a map in 1765 that included and expanded all geographical knowledge of the Chukchi Peninsula and also reproduced the Diomedes Islands and Alaska with sufficient accuracy. Areas well known by the Chukotka's indigenous peoples were still foreign to the Russians at the time and were first recorded in a way accessible to Europeans.

Daurkin wrote a letter to the new governor general and was summoned to Irkutsk. He submitted a plan for an expedition to the Bering Strait , but it was not accepted. In 1767 Daurkin was rehabilitated and raised to the rank of "Siberian nobleman" (Сибирский дворянин). 1768-1770 he took an active part in the expedition of surveyors I. Leontjew, I. Lyssow and A. Pushkarev to the Bear Islands . In 1774 he created a new and improved map of Chukotkas and Alaska. It covers a larger area than the map from 1765, in particular the entire coast from Okhotsk to Chukotka including the Kamchatka peninsula and the commanders' islands .

Daurkin initially stayed in Gischiginsk , where he played an important mediating role in the negotiations and in 1778 in the peace agreement between Russians and Chukchi. At the beginning of the 1780s he worked as an interpreter in Gischiginsk. From 1787 he worked as a translator for the Northeast Pacific expedition of Joseph Billings and Gawriil Andrejewitsch Sarytschew . He visited the two Diomedes Islands and King Island with the Cossack Ivan Kobelew and crossed over to Alaska. In 1792 he returned to Yakutsk with the expedition, which had benefited greatly from his geographical knowledge and his negotiating skills. In 1795 he was dismissed from the service as an interpreter at his own request while retaining his salary.

The eastern tip of Chukotka with Cape Deschnjow has been named Daurkin Peninsula in honor of Nikolai Daurkin since 1975.

Works (selection)

• Map of the Anadyr River with nearby locations as well as Chukotkas and part of North America , 1765. Copy in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, No. 3562/123
• Две записки о сношениях с чукчами в 1774–1776 годах. In: Памятники новой русской истории, Saint Petersburg 1873, pp. 360–371.
• Известия о Чукотском носе. In: Месяцеслов исторической и географической на 1780 г., Saint Petersburg 1779, pp. 36–46.
• Special news about the Chukchi headland and neighboring islands . In: New Nordic contributions to the physical and geographical description of earth and peoples, natural history and economics . Volume 1, 1781, pp. 245-248.

literature

• Sardana Boyakova: Daurkin, Nikolay . In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . tape 1 . Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-436-5 , pp. 466–467 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
• Diana Ordubadi: The Billings Saryčev Expedition 1785–1795 . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0509-1 , p. 67 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

• А. С. Зуев: Дауркин, Николай Иванович in the history dictionary of Siberia (2009, Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ History Lexicon of Siberia , 2009
2. ^ Ordubadi: The Billings-Saryčev Expedition 1785–1795 , 2016, p. 70.
3. ↑ Ordubadi: The Billings-Saryčev Expedition 1785–1795 , 2016, p. 199.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Sardana Boyakova: Daurkin, Nikolay , 2003.
5. ↑ GP Awetissow: Daurkin Nikolai Ivanovich (? 1734 -) . In: Imena na Karte Rossijskoi Arktiki , Nauka, Sankt Petersburg 2003, ISBN 5-02-025003-1 , accessed on August 26, 2017 (Russian).