Evenki

Tea

The reindeer Evenki had no tea bush and never did — tea reached them as a trade good. According to taiga trade records from the late Qing and Republican years, Russian merchants in Chikan and Dubovoye (Keygorodov, Viatorov, Garin, Andreev) and Chinese ones (Zheng Fa, Han Fuqing, Li Xiangcai) brought them 茶 chá, salt, flour, black bread, iron cauldrons and frying pans, and took back furs, antlers 鹿茸 lùróng, and musk. Hence their tea utensils are an iron cauldron and birch-bark containers, not porcelain.

Crown growth

Birch-bark scroll: a loosely rolled cylinder of birch bark turned with its inner side outward — a warm reddish-brown tone with dark lenticels; the outer edge has peeled away and stands along the body as a straight flat wing, with a layered spiral visible on the upper cut. The end of the roll is cut straight and does not curl anywhere. At 6 mm — a short column with one flat wing along the side: a neat, regular-geometry post belongs to the Dai (here the edge has peeled and the body is uneven), a twisted two-strand cord — to the De’ang, an S-shaped twist — to the She, a hook and a flat curl — to Yanka.

Headwear

圆锥形皮帽 yuánzhuīxíng pímào — the Evenki winter conical fur hat made of lynx or otter, fur side out, with no brim at all. Low and wide at the base, shorter than the cone of a conical hat; a red tassel 红缨穗 hóngyīngsuì has been moved to the back seam because the crown is given over to the slit for the scroll.

Outline at 6 mm. Low cone: a triangle sitting directly on the skull, no brim and no mass behind the nape. Differs from Yanka’s 斗笠 by having no brim and a crown half the height; from Ugolek’s 风帽 in that it does not descend onto the shoulders; from the pointed hood of the Jino in having no rear panel.

Clothing

A suede jacket with an asymmetric wrap and smoked trim, a narrow belt with bone plaques without carving, leather unty with high uppers.

Palette

Smoky-gray suede, reddish-brown fur, bone, and birch-bark ochre with dark lenticels, muted red only in the tassel at the nape.