First published in English in 1918 by the American Museum of Natural
History in its series of Anthropological Papers, the stories told here
in Tales of Yukaghir were collected among Russianized natives of Eastern
Siberia at the end of the nineteenth-century while Bogaras was exiled
into North-Eastern Siberia for revolutionary activities. These tales
tell of kings, young heroes on horseback, and adventurous animals with
varied powers, relating details of native life that clearly show their
Russian or Turko-Mongol provenance. In addition to delighting audiences
around the world, Bogoras's work in ethnography and ethnology proved
valuable to the development of the field of linguistics.