Forest hunters of the Sikhote-Alin, the most isolated of all the Manchu-Tungus peoples: they roamed the taiga by family in summer, travelled on long skis, hunted, fished and dug ginseng, and had no common name for themselves - each river group used its own.
Not an ending: the Udege wore their hair in two plaits rather than the Qing queue, a visible mark of never having submitted, until the 1860 Treaty of Peking transferred the Ussuri-to-the-sea country to Russia over their heads; about 1,500 Udege remain, and their fight for the Bikin river valley has continued into the present.
Fieldwork narrative from the Samarga and Bikin Udege country that describes the surviving Udege villages and the Sikhote-Alin river-taiga they hunt.
Used for Udege clan organisation, their isolation from the Manchus, and the 1860 treaty that annexed the Ussuri maritime region.