Mongol people

“ The Mongol people, though in a sense slaves or serfs to their chiefs, really enjoy every liberty. They pay tithes to their lords of the produce of their herds, but there is no exaction, and no apparent discontent. The forty-eight chieftains enjoy the Chinese title of wang, i.e., prince, or king, and though tributary to the Emperor, they receive from him more than they pay. ”

“ The Mongol is perhaps above all others the type that perpetuates itself with most energy, and most obstinately resists the influence of foreign admixture continued through a long series of generations. We have found it in all its originality among the Cossacks, the Tatars, and every other people dwelling in the vicinity of the Kalmucks. Is it not then a most curious fact to see it vanish immediately under the influence of the Hindu blood, and produce instead of itself a thoroughly Caucasian type? ”

“ In this sense the word Mongol co-ordinates vast numbers of people, immense groups of men who are like one another in some traits, and widely dissimilar in others. It embraces the Chinese, the Coreans, the Japanese, the Manchus, the original Mongols with their near relatives the Tartar, or Turkish tribes which hold Central Asia, or most of it. Moving westward from China this term covers the Tibetans and with them all the non-Aryan nations and tribes until we reach India and Persia. ”

“ The order to slay the Tangut sovereign and the people of the city was carried out strictly, and the kingdom of Tangut was added to the Mongol Empire.
“Since the beginning of time,” writes the Chinese historian, “no barbarous people have ever been so mighty as the Mongols are at present. They destroy empires as a man plucks out herbs by the roots, such is the power in their possession. Why does Heaven let them have it?”
The remains of the great Khan were taken back to his birthplace. Lest his death might be known the troops who conducted them slew every person whom they met as they traveled. ”

“ One portion of the interior is invariably furnished with a kind of altar, on which are placed various religious emblems; for the Mongols are a sincerely devout people, and their devotions form an important item in their daily routine. The residence of a noble or rich Mongol is usually composed of several yourts for the different members of the family, and is often gorgeously furnished, one or two I have visited having valuable carpets and curios in them which simply made my mouth water. In such dwellings of rich Mongols one yourt is specially set apart for the reception of visitors ”

“ This Mongolian pride makes most Mongols, even those that try to be calm and well-balanced, to be pitied for their narrow-mindedness and petulance, in spite of all their other numerous good qualities. A Mongol has it in him to become a great leader like Genghis Khan ”

“ Mongolia extends for 1,500 miles along the northern frontier of China, and as its eastern border is coterminous with Manchuria, a few words regarding the Mongols may not be out of place in these notes. The race is said to come with the Manchus from a common Tartar stock, but, except in colour and features, there is little resemblance between the two races. The Mongol is essentially a nomad, hating towns and houses. He prefers to wander about the steppes, pitching his 'yourt,' or felt tent, wherever water and pasture are for the time most plentiful. ”

“ THE DESERT OF GOBI. The population of Mongolia, an elevated plateau lying about four thousand feet above sea-level, is roughly estimated at between three and four millions, but the difficulties of obtaining anything like an accurate census of the tribes inhabiting this vast tableland are obvious. Of this number, over thirty thousand inhabit Urga, the capital and residence of the “Kootookta,” or living God of the Mongol religion, “Buddhism.” The power of this human deity is purely nominal. ”

“ We were now left alone, at sunset, and our poor lama was left lamenting on his bad day's work, his waste of much good liquor to no purpose, and his broken tent-poles.
The Mongols are a pitiable set on foot, with their loose clumsy leather boots, but they are at home on horseback. From their earliest years they may be said to live on horseback, and the women are almost as expert as the men, mounting any animal that comes handiest, whether horse, cow, or camel, with or without saddle. Huc says he never saw a Mongol unhorsed ”

“ He will do surprisingly well, in fact, if he succeeds in his new attempt to govern himself. The traveler cannot but be struck by the astonishing scarcity of children in Mongolia, especially if he has just come from Japan and China, until he learns that fully a third of the population of the country as a whole are lamas, and notes the prevalence of missing noses among both sexes and all classes in the streets of Urga. The most educated Mongol, in our Western sense, with whom I came in contact declared that within a century his race will completely have disappeared. ”

“ To the Europeans who cowered in horror before them, the squat, slit-eyed, brawny horsemen, “with faces like the snouts of dogs,” seemed as hideous and fearsome as demons, and as irresistible by ordinary mortals. They conquered China and set on the throne a Mongol dynasty. India also their descendants conquered, and there likewise erected a great Mongol empire. Persia in the same way fell into their hands. Their armies, every soldier on horseback, marched incredible distances and overthrew whatever opposed them. ”

“ It runs its way like a shuttle through all the broad lands of the earth, waving an eternal, unbreakable fabric. Time and again, in the past, the Mongol power has gone down before the gathered strength of other races, snatching at and taking the luring jewel of dominion. Time and again we returned to the attack; we shivered the fetters; we enslaved the enslavers. Time and again, in the future, the Mongol power shall go down before the gathered strength of other races, snatching at and taking the luring jewel of power. ”

“ In India, whose most striking history in modern ages is Mongol, nearly all populations save Aryans and Semites are classified with Mongols. In Persia where the dynasty is Mongol that race is preponderant in places and important throughout the whole kingdom, [2] though in a minority. In Asia Minor the Mongol is master, for the Turk is still sovereign, and will be till a great rearrangement is effected.
Five groups of Mongols have made themselves famous in Europe: the Huns with their mighty chief Attila, the Bulgars, the Magyars, the Turks or Osmanli, and the Mongol invaders of Russia. ”

“ But only by years of training can one hope even to approximate the Mongols. They have been born and reared upon the plains, and have the inheritance of unknown generations - 114 - whose very life depended upon their ability to come and go at will. To them, the hills, the sun, the grass, the sand—all have become the street signs of the desert.
In the afternoon of our second day I remained at the tents to measure specimens, while Yvette and the lama rode out toward the scene of our morning hunt to locate an antelope which one of our Mongol neighbors had reported dead not far away. ”

“ The Mongol has a flat face, with prominent cheek bones, the chin short and retiring, the forehead sunken, the eyes small and oblique, of a yellow tint, as though full of bile, the hair black and rugged, the beard scanty, the skin of a deep brown, and extremely coarse. The Mongol is of middle height, but his great leathern boots and large sheep-skin robe, seem to take away from his height, and make him appear diminutive and stumpy. ”

“ One cannot travel in Mongolia, amongst a pastoral and nomad population, without one’s mind involuntarily going back to the time of the first patriarch, whose pastoral life had so close a relation with the manners and customs which we still find amongst the Mongol tribes. ”

“ With or without government aid the Chinese are coming in. They get land from the Mongols very much, I imagine, as did the first English settlers in America, buying for a song what the owner does not know he is selling. And once established they are not easily dislodged, for they are good farmers, thrifty and untiring. In the end they will oust the Mongol from the best lands as sure as fate, unless Russia first ousts them, as apparently she is doing. ”

“ Almost all these merchants, from horse-dealers to hawkers of lama rosaries and alleged photographs of the “Living Buddha,” are Chinese; the Mongol is frankly a nomadic herdsman and scorns any other occupation. Even in the purulent meat and vegetable market stretching along the carrion-lined stream just outside our window there were but few native venders. The more lowly members of the tribe might consent to slash up and distribute the still bleeding carcasses of cattle and sheep which Urga consumes in surprising daily quantities; even out on the plains that is a necessary and respectable task. ”

“ The military enthusiasm in the Mongols is only dormant, not dead. We have seen, four or five years ago, with what alacrity Sang-ko-lin-sin, himself a Kalka Mongol, and one of the forty-eight kings, brought a force into the field to bar our entrance into Peking, and with what zeal and energy the Mongol troops acquitted themselves. Given a sufficient motive, and a man to lead them, and the shepherds could soon be put in motion again. By nature they are faithful to their chiefs, and their head lama has but to hold up his finger to stir up the sleeping prowess of the shepherds. ”

“ Such are the dwellings of the Mongols, and so much are they attached to them, that even where they live in settled communities, as in Urga, where they have every facility for building wooden houses, they still stick to their yourts, merely enclosing them with a rough wooden paling. In the whole journey I did not meet with a single instance of a Mongol living in a house, or in anything else than a yourt or girai. The Mongols are very superstitious, and certain rules of etiquette have to be observed in riding up to and entering a yourt. ”

“ The Mongolian of Asia is not indeed to be spoken of as one unvarying type any more than the American. But the extent to which the Mongolian head-form and peculiar physiognomy characterise one widely diffused section of the population of the eastern continent, gives it special prominence among the great ethnical divisions of the human race. Morton assigns 1421 as the cranial capacity of eighteen Mongol, and only 1234 as that of 164 American skulls other than Peruvian or Mexican. ”

“ In the careless freedom of his magnificent horsemanship a Mongol seems as much an untamed creature of the plains as does the eagle itself which soars above his yurt. Independence breathes in every movement ”

“ The obtuseness of the Mongol is enough to exhaust one's patience; you are no longer talking to the same man you knew in his native state, you have now to do with a child, full of curiosity, but incapable of understanding what you tell him. ”

“ The Kitats are skilful to talk and to lie. It is impossible for a Mongol to gain a suit against a Kitat. Sirs Lamas, the kingdom of Gechekten is undone!” So saying, the poor Mongol rose, bowed, mounted his horse, and rapidly disappeared in the desert.
We travelled two more days through this kingdom, and everywhere witnessed the poverty and wretchedness of its scattered inhabitants. Yet the country is naturally endowed with astonishing wealth, especially in gold and silver mines, which of themselves have occasioned many of its worst calamities. ”

“ Though the Mongol wave retired, as it seemed almost by an immediate act of Providence, when Europe lay at its feet, it had levelled or covered all political barriers from the frontier of Poland to the Yellow Sea, and when western Europe recovered from its alarm, Asia lay open, as never before or since, to the inspection of Christendom. Princes, envoys, priests—half-missionary, half-envoy—visited the court of the great khan in Mongolia; and besides these, the accidents of war, commerce or opportunity carried a variety of persons from various classes of human life into the depths of Asia. ”

“ Living, therefore, in such [255] human pigsties, it is not to be wondered that the ordinary Mongol presents an extremely unsavoury appearance, so that it is often difficult to tell whether nature gave him a black or a white skin; for they are not a water-loving race, cleanliness evidently not being one of the appurtenances of godliness from Mongol-Buddhist point of view. ”

“ The fatherland proper of the Mongols is Mongolia (q.v.) . The sum total of the Mongol population under Chinese government is calculated at between two and three millions.
Generally the whole Mongol tribe may be divided into three branches: East Mongols, West Mongols and Buriats.
1. The East Mongols are divided into the Kalkas in the borders just mentioned, the Shara Mongols south of the Gobi along the Great Wall north-eastward to Manchuria, and lastly the Shiraigol or Sharaigol in Tangut and in northern Tibet. ”

“ When we rode off, our hands were heaped with cheese and slabs of mutton which were discarded as soon, as we had dropped behind a slope. Mongol hospitality is whole-souled and generously given, but one must be very hungry to enjoy their food.
A day and a half of traveling was uneventful, for herds of sheep and horses indicated the presence of yurts among the hills. Game will seldom remain where there are Mongols. Although it was the first of July, we found a heavy coating of ice on the lower sides of a deep well. ”