For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. 'They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests,' reported a fifteenth-century tale. 'They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people,' complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. 'Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other,' huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are 'children of nat