Wassili Danilowitsch Pojarkow

Wassili Danilowitsch Pojarkow ( Russian Василий Данилович Поярков ; † 1646 ?) Was a Russian Cossack leader and explorer.

Due to the lack of food supply for the Russian colonists in the Far East, he was sent by the governor of Yakutsk , Pyotr Golovin, to lead the tribes living in the legendary land of " Dauria " into the Russian tribute obligation. The Dauren on the upper reaches of the Amur had fruit and vegetable cultivation, farming and several farm and domestic animals, they also traded with the Chinese, so they were wealthy.

With 133 men, Pojarkow followed the Lena tributary Aldan and its tributaries Uchur and Gonam upwards, passed the Stanowoy Mountains (leaving about 50 people behind) and moved along the Seja , a tributary of the Amur, on to the Dauren . At first they received him in a friendly manner, but the Cossacks soon tried to extort taxes or alleged wealth by taking hostages and torturing them. So the Dauren stopped the delivery of food and locked Poyarkov's men in the Umlekan gorge in the winter of 1643/44, with 40 people starving to death of prisoners or dying of disease despite cannibalism . The survivors reached the Amur and went downstream on it, encountering resistance everywhere. In autumn 1644 they reached the mouth of the Amur. There they plundered the Niwchen (thanks to some chiefs being taken hostage) , then sailed north in boats across the sea and returned to Yakutsk via the Maja , Aldan and Lena rivers (1646). The results of the expedition included a map and reports on the landscape and population. However, Poyarkov was sued by the survivors of the expedition for his cruelty and his traces are lost.

Not least because of Poyarkov's reports and failures, another Cossack, Jerofei Khabarov , was incited to subjugate Transbaikalia and Dauria, which he tried from 1650 onwards. Since the latter was more successful than Poyarkov, he is less forgotten today as the namesake of the city of Khabarovsk . A district administrative center in the east of Amur Oblast , Pojarkowo , is named after Pojarkow .

literature

• Gudrun Ziegler: The eighth continent: The conquest of Siberia , Berlin 2005
• Sabine A. Gladkov: History of Siberia , Regensburg 2003
• Bruce Lincoln: Conquest of Siberia , Munich 1996