General information

The small people of the Oroch lives on the coast of the Tatar Strait and along the Amur’s shores.

The Oroch belong to the Baikal type of the North Asian race, the larger Mongoloid one, and speak the Oroch language of the Amur sub-group of the Tungus branch of Tungus-Manchu languages. The 2002 Census put the number of the Oroch at 686 persons, and the 2010 Census at 596 persons. Most of the Oroch live in the Khabarovsk Territory: in the city of Sovetskaya Gavan and in the villages of Lososina, Zavety Ilicha, Maysky, Innokentievsky in the Sovetskaya Gavan sub-district; in Vanino and in the villages of Datta, Uska-Orochskaya, Akur, Tuluchi, Kenada in the Vanino sub-district; in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and in the village of Snezhny in the Komsomolsk sub-district; in the town of Amursk and in the village of Novoe Ommi in the Amursk district; in the villages of Solontsy, Tsimmermanovka, Kalinovka, Dudi in the Ulchi district. Several Oroch families live in the Primorye Territory in the villages of Krasny Yar and Agzu.

The total number of Orochi, according to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, is 530 people (232 men and 298 women).

   

The Oroch settled over a vast territory: in the late 19th century, the coastal (Tumnin, Koppi, etc.) Oroch and the Amur Oroch lived thousands of kilometers from each other. In the 19th century, the Oroch lived in over 30 villages in the Tumnin River’s catchment area and along the coast of the Tatar Strait, including the villages of Botchi, Khadi, Dyuanko, Datta, Uska, Khutu-Data, Muli-Data, Khunda, Akur-Data. In the late 19th century, the Oroch moving to the Amur established Peda Keuti, Gauni, Angan, Ochi camping areas. In the early 20 th century, they partially settled in the Ulchi villages of Karpachi, Bolbi, Ferma, Vayi, Geri. At the same time, a group of the Oroch moved from the tributaries of the Tumnin, the Akur, and the Muli to the Khungari River and established Ukut, Ilika, Podi, Monchi, and Udomi camping areas. In the late 19th-early 20th century, a small group of the Oroch moved to Sakhalin around the Duysky outpost. Thus five territorial groups of the Oroch were formed: the Amur, the Khungari, the Tumnin, the Primorye (Khadin), and the Koppi groups.

At present, nearly half of the Khabarovsk Territory Oroch live in multi-ethnic urban-type settlements like those in the Vanino (44 %), Komsomolsk (17 %), and Sovetskaya Gavan (13 %) districts. The largest are Vanino, Sovetskaya Gavan, Komsomolsk-on-Amur. A large Oroch community accounting for about 9 % of their total number has recently emerged in Khabarovsk.

The origins of the Oroch’s endonym are not entirely clear. The etymology of the word “orochi” is linked with the Tungus word “oron” (reindeer). In combination with the “chi” suffix meaning possession, “orochi” can be translated as “having reindeer.” The Ulchi and the Nanai, the indigenous population living along the Amur, have long called these people the Oroch, and Russians in the 19th century followed suit. In the 1930s, the same ethnonym was entered into the Oroch’s passports. Following the data of the 1897 Census, ethnographers noted that the Oroch did not have a single common endonym and they called themselves after their clan and settlement area. Later, the endonym Nani (local residents) was discovered, the same as used by the Ulchi and the Nanai. The Oroch themselves claimed that this endonym was “brought” from the Amur by their fellow Oroch who had long lived among the indigenous population of the Amur. However, this endonym did not get major traction among the main cohort of the Oroch living along the rivers of the Tatar Strait.

Research into the history and culture of the Oroch began in the mid-19 th century when the Amur River region and Primorye were integrated into Russia. The year 1888 saw the publication of the first study of the Oroch. Later, research into of the Oroch waxed and waned. Currently, comprehensive research of the Oroch history and culture is mostly conducted in the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnology (Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Science) and in Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera).