Demid Pyanda

Demid Sofonovich Pyanda or, according to some sources, Panteley Demidovich Pyanda , He may have discovered Yakutia and was possibly the first Russian to meet Yakuts as well as Buryats. He also proved that the Angara (a Buryat name) and Upper Tunguska (Verkhnyaya Tunguska, as initially known by Russians) are one and the same river.

Name and identity

Pyanda was a nickname, meaning a fur brim of malitsa, which was a kind of Samoyedic clothes made from reindeer skin. Pyanda was made from dog fur of different colours and was added to malitsa for beauty.

In the first third of the 17th century there were two men in Yakutia with the nickname Pyanda. One was Pyanda Safonov (the son of Safon, or Sofon) named Demid – his name appeared in documents in 1637. The other was Panteley Demidovich Pyanda (probably a son of Pyanda Safonov) – his name was recorded in 1643. The great explorer most likely was named Demid Sofonovich Pyanda.

Only a few original documents on Pyanda exist, and his deeds are mostly known by the records collected some 100 years later, in the 18th century, especially during the Great Northern Expedition, launched by the Russian government to establish the Arctic and Pacific coastline of Russia and find a way to the Americas. At the same time, the so-called Academic Squad of that expedition pioneered the research of the Siberian nature and history.

The German-born historian Gerhardt Friedrich Müller found a document in the Siberian archives, proving that the winter settlement Pyandino on the upper part of the Lower Tunguska already existed in 1624, which meant that it had been established at least a year before.

The legend of Pyanda and his journey on the Lena and Angara was recorded by naturalist Johann Georg Gmelin (another German in the Russian service), while he was travelling in the regions of the Yenisey and Lena. Müller also recorded some legends about Pyanda in Siberia.

On the basis of the Cossack hearsay stories, the document about Pyandino and a few mentions of Pyanda's name in other documents academician Alexey Okladnikov reconstructed Pyanda's alleged journey, as it is presented in the sections below. Siberian river routes. Pyanda's route was from Turukhansk upstream the N. Tunguska to the Lena River, then downstream Lena to the location of future Yakutsk, then back upstream and via the Angara River back to the Yenisei.

Ascent of the Yenisey and Lower Tunguska Demid Sofonovich Pyanda came to prominence in Mangazeya around 1619, coming there from the Yeniseysky ostrog. He had some money and riches of unknown origin. Taking about 40 men with him, he went to Turukhansk on the Yenisey near the mouth of the Lower Tunguska (or Nizhnyaya Tunguska in Russian). While buying furs from the locals there, he heard stories about a large river to the east of the Lower Tunguska, called Elyu-ene, which in Evenk language means "large river". Russians, in their own manner, rendered it to Lena (a shorter form of the Russian feminine name Yelena, corresponding to Helen).

According to some notes made by Englishmen in Pustozersk in 1611–1612, Siberian Cossacks knew about the existence of Lena already in 1611–1612. This corresponds to the first year of Pyanda's journey as reconstructed by Alexey Okladnikov, but there is no conclusive evidence that Pyanda or his men reached Lena that early, while the existence of the Pyandino settlement near the confluence of the Lower Tunguska and Lena suggests that Pyanda more likely discovered Lena that way.

While many sources name Pyanda or Penda as the first known explorer of Lena, others start the account of Lena's exploration from Vasily Bugor's name. Bugor was not the first Russian on the Lena, but his journey was the first well attested one, and the very first via the Angara and Kirenga Rivers. Between Pyanda's journey in 1620-24 and Bugor's voyage in 1628–30, attempts to reach the Lena were made by several other explorers. Grigory Semyonov sought the Lena in 1625 (one of his men, Matvey Parfyonov is thought to have reached the river); Bazhen Kokoulin traveled to the Lena in 1626 and Martemyan Vasilyev in 1627–28. All of them descended to the Lena via its tributary the Vilyuy, unlike Pyanda or Bugor. Since 1632, when Yakutsk was established in the central Yakutia by Pyotr Beketov, the presence of Russians in the Lena region became continuous.