The Cossack
Horse and Cat
Who are the Cossacks? This group of warriors originated in the 15th century in Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeast Ukraine formerly known as Aleksandrovsk, or Oleksandrivk. The city was founded in 1770, when the Aleksandrovskaya Fortress was built downstream from the Denieper Rapids, as part of the Dnieper Defence Line to protect the southern territories of Russian from the Crimean Tatar invasions. The Tatars were groups of Turkic speaking people found across Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, and they attacked Ukraine in the borderland regions between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the territories to the east. The Cossacks were of two types: the steppe Cossacks, and town Cossacks. No matter where they lived, they developed strong military skills and evolved into formidable combat units.
It seems, however, that they had not stayed in Ukraine, although they might have started there. When Simpson arrived in Okhotsk, he learned that the district that surrounded the town of Okhotsk “contained numerous ostrogs or forts, garrisoned by a few Cossacks, who by virtue of their descent from the original conquerors of Siberia, are at once the military and the police of the country.” And here’s how they got there, according to Simpson.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century [1500s], and in the first quarter of the seventeenth [1600s], a few handfuls of Cossacks were successfully cutting their way from the Uralian Chain to the Lena [River], there to encounter and subdue the Tungusian hordes, which, by the most extraordinary contrast in the history of the world, were, at one and the same time, falling before the mere outposts of Russia, and trampling under foot the ancient dynasty of China. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Russians had advanced a considerable way down both sides of the Amoor [through China, I gather, as the Amoor River runs through China], having the Pacific Ocean , as it were, already in their view, when China, having acquired a new interest to the northward through her involuntary connection with the Tartars, turned her arms toward the same quarter. After a good deal of fighting, in which the Russians, notwithstanding their uniform inferiority in numbers, always dealt the hardest blows, the Chinese, partly by trickery and partly by being much nearer to their resources, forced their dangerous enemy by treaty to recede from the Amoor to a line of boundary terminating in the Sea of Ochotsk on nearly the same parallel of latitude as afterwards divided Russia from England or the eastern shore of the Pacific.
Confusingly, the Tartars are the same as the Tatars, mentioned above. In this case the term refers to the Mongols or those people who lived in Mongolia. And Simpson’s dates seem to be close to correct, as in 1570s, Ivan the Terrible, Tsar of Russia, instructed the Stroganov merchant family to spearhead the eastward expansion into Siberia. The Stroganovs recruited Cossack fighters to invade Siberia on behalf of the Tsar, and the Cossacks elected a man named Yermak Timofeyevich as the leader of their army. In October 1582, Yermak and his soldiers overthrew Kuchum Khan’s Tatar empire at Qashliq in a battle known as the “conquest of Siberia.” So that is when the Cossacks invaded and defeated the Siberians. And enslaved them, as you will see. Simpson’s story is true.
So Simpson also said that the Cossacks became the military and police in Siberia. Yes, indeed, they were. And here is how they behaved. A Cossack was assigned to Sir George Simpson’s party to ensure that Simpson had help in crossing Siberia to Russia, and Simpson would soon learn how the Cossacks used their power. First of all, Governor Simpson experienced some difficulty in finding horses and guides for his journey west because those people were inclined to drive hard bargains, he said. “But on being marched before Governor Golovin by a party of Cossacks,” Simpson wrote, “they agreed to convey us to Yakutsk in eighteen days, at the rate of forty-five roubles a horse.”
On June 27, Simpson’s party boarded a boat in Okhotsk and ascended the Ochota River for ten miles, to an encampment where the princeling, Jacob, and his caravan of horses awaited them. Now, a princeling was a man who had some power of his own, but it seems that did him little good. Simpson said that, “Whilst we partook of a farewell dinner with our hospitable friend, packs were arranged, harness repaired, and horses laden. Our little band consisted of my two fellow travellers (McIntyre, and a Russian) and myself, my servant, a Cossack and three Yakuti, with about thirty horses.” The Cossack had been assigned the duty of smoothing out the difficulties on Simpson’s journey through Siberia, it seems, and the Yakuti were the original occupiers of eastern Siberia, a massive territory long conquered by the Cossacks. They commenced their journey after dinner, and Simpson said their progress “did not exceed four or five miles an hour, Jacob being ready with the standing apology of all first days, that the horses, being fresh from the pasturage, must not have their bellies shaken.”
At the end of the day, Jacob’s pack train had made only thirty verst (a verst being equivalent to 2/3 of a mile.) Simpson, who was already worried about being able to cross Russia before the snow flew, kicked up a fuss with the princeling, who “always found some pretext or other for moving at a snail’s pace; while the Cossack gravely inquired whether he should not administer a dose of the whip for Jacob’s benefit. In spite of my objections to the proposed measure, the man in authority dealt out two or three cuts, which certainly were of some service, for there was a visible improvement in our next stage.”
The “man in authority” comment suggests that Simpson had no control over the Cossack. Its more likely, of course, that Simpson chose not to control him, because of his usefulness in speeding up the journey. Simpson was pressed for time, and it was the Cossack’s assignment to ‘argue the points,’ whatever they may be. “I should never have got on…without my Cossack,” Simpson said, whose “peculiar mode of infusing activity into all and sundry” guaranteed prompt action. The Cossack’s argument proved effective, and the next day the pack train made sixty-two verst instead of thirty.
On their eleventh day out of Okhotsk, they climbed the thousand-foot heights of Nanukau, where their road improved a little. The mountains ceased at last, and Simpson and his companions, including the Cossack, pushed ahead of Jacob’s caravan and galloped to the banks of the Aldan River. The roads were so good that Simpson determined “to push on ahead of our baggage all the way to Yakutsk, still distant three hundred and fifty versts.”
Simpson and his party began their journey the next morning, “with fresh horses, accompanied by two Yakuti, and also to Jacob’s great delight, by our Cossack.” That day they covered seventy-eight versts and reached Amginsk, on the Amga River. The next day they made eighty versts, and ‘our Cossack’ had a heavy fall when his horse stumbled on broken corduroy roads. A few days later, in mid July, they galloped into Yakust, a major town on the northward-flowing Lena River. They were now 620 miles from the Sea of Okhotsk to the east, but had a great distance yet to travel before they reached St. Petersburg, their Russian destination.
Jacob and his pack train reached Yakutsk three days after Simpson’s arrival, and one day after he was scheduled to arrive. It seems that Jacob’s job ended at this large town. Simpson actually considered not paying Jacob his money in full, but eventually did so. On the next leg of his journey west, Simpson and his party travelled by boat up the length of the broad, sluggish Lena River, tracked or hauled with lines by horses a distance of 2,500 versts to the south against the current. Simpson fell into a depression when he thought about the long, dismal journey ahead. The Cossack still accompanied them, however, and by making some noise got better drivers for the boats. Then a few days later the boat passed an island, “and our steersman, seeing seven or eight fellows sleeping on the bank without any thought of a towing line, pointed out the providential reinforcement to his wearied companions. The Yakuti awoke just in time to make a good race of it; but after a sharp hunt among the willows, they were all forced to lend a hand at the rope.” The men submitted to the enforced recruitment, Simpson reported. And a day later the Cossack went ashore in a small boat to berate those same men (who were still tracking the boat), and beat them roundly with a stick. “The unresisting wretches seemed to feel the wanton outrage far less than ourselves,” Simpson said, as “they took the whole thing as a matter of course.”
On the last day of July Simpson’s party reached Doobroffskaya. At the next stop Simpson’a party was to change to horses, it seems, but the people did not have their animals ready for the journey and the Cossack punished them. The next day, August 7, 1842, the passengers were “all in high spirits at the prospect of leaving our prison [the boat] and proceeding by land to Irkutsk.” Then, “our long voyage on the lazy Lena, lazy upwards from the shallowness of its waters, as well as downwards from the slowness of its current, came to an end.” At Figoloffskaya, carriages awaited to convey Simpson’s party to Irkutsk, and they exchanged the slow boat for the jolting travel of travelling in wagons of various sizes drawn by horses. They pushed on all night, stopping only to change the horses, and finally overlooked Irkutsk, at the southern end of Lake Baikal.
They left Irkutsk on August 15, on their way to Tobolsk, and travelling at a greater speed in their Russian wagons. They passed through the handsome and flourishing town of Tomsk, where the wagon broke down and they were billeted in the houses of local citizens. On September 1, they left Omsk on their way to Toolsk, which they reached on September 4. The weather now indicated that winter was approaching. “There was a good deal of snow,” Simpson said, “and the nights were frosty. These symptoms were anything but pleasant, in as much as we had not yet accomplish the half of our journey.”
The major thing that happened, however, is that the Cossack has disappeared from the records. He apparently reached Irkutsk, but there is no sign of him after that. The Russian, too, fell behind because his wagon broke, and when he caught up to them he was cranky and silent. Somehow, they managed to reach Moscow and left it again. It was October when they finally reached St. Petersburgh, “thus terminating our travels through the Russian Empire, about five and twenty weeks after our arrival at Sitka from the Sandwich Islands,” Simpson wrote.
He and McIntyre embarked on the steamer Nicoli for Europe, and “on the eighth day from [St.] Petersburg I reached Hamburg, lying in ruins, like Kazar, from the effects of the recent conflagration.” In May 1842, the great fire of Hamburg had begun its three day rampage, burning 1,700 buildings and killing 51 people. Simpson’s record continues. “In five days more I reached London, having accomplished the whole of my contemplated journey…round the world, as it came in the northern hemisphere, within the space of nineteen months and twenty-six days.” He would spend the winter in London, with part of his time being spent in discussions with the London Committee, making plans for John McLoughlin’s future at Fort Vancouver.
To see more Governor Simpson’s stories, go here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/governor-george-simpson/
To return to the beginning of this journey west from Sitka, go here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/mysterious-mcintyre/
I think this is the last I have to say of this journey, but if I think of something else, I will post it here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/whatever-i-call-it/
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2026. All rights reserved.
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