Exactly 250 years ago, on 4 July 1776, while Ablai Khan was fighting to preserve the independence of the Kazakh Khanate amid internal strife and the rivalry of the great powers, skillfully balancing between the Russian and Qing Empires, something else was happening on the other side of the world. In Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the United States Declaration of Independence. Thus began the history of a new nation that would eventually become one of the world's leading powers.
On this occasion, Qalam has decided to turn the clock back and revisit a lesser-known corner of that era: the journals and memoirs of the first American travelers to visit the Kazakh Steppe, men who ventured into a world completely foreign to them. Their accounts are vivid, colorful, though not always impartial, and offer us a fascinating record of their encounters.
Western Union and the Kazakh Steppe
One of the first Americans to publish a standalone account of his travels through the Kazakh Steppe was Perry McDonough Collins (1813–1900), who was appointed the United States commercial agent on the Amur River in 1856. The following year, he embarked on an extensive journey from Moscow to Irkutsk, which he recounted in his 1860 book A Voyage Down the Amoor: With a Land Journey Through Siberia, and Incidental Notices of Manchooria, Kamschatka, and Japan.
This is how he described his first encounter with the Great Steppe:
We crossed the steppe of Ischem, which lies between the main western branch of the Oby and a southern branch of the Irtish; this is a prolongation of the great
Kirgeese Steppe; the road was well beaten, and we made very good time over a portion of it.
The American merchant also wrote about his encounters with the people he came across: ‘It was evident from the looks of the people,’ he wrote, ‘that we were quite as great curiosities to them as they and their wares were to us.’
Perry McDonough Collins’s proposed overland telegraph via the Bering Strait and Siberia. J. H. Colton, 1864 / Boston Public Library
To be sure, Perry Collins never became a great authority on the culture or geography of the Kazakhs. His observations, while vivid, were those of a businessman and traveler, not a scholar. He did, however, secure his place in history as the driving force behind, and one of the founders of, a project so audacious it captured the imagination of an age—the Russian-American Telegraph project, also known as the Collins Overland Telegraph.
Abai and English Philosophy
The Russian-American Telegraph founded by Perry Collins brought another of its employees to the Kazakh Steppe—one who achieved little success in the telegraph business but went on to become a celebrated traveler and writer. Unlike Collins, George Kennan (1845–1924), a native of Ohio, had the good fortune to spend considerably more time in these lands. The future Associated Press correspondent and National Geographic writer became known for his detailed descriptions of interiors, clothing, and conversations. It was Kennan who famously described the road to Ust-Kamenogorsk (now the largest city in eastern Kazakhstan) as ‘worse than any neglected wood-road in the mountains of West Virginia’.
Kazakh horsemen. 1885 / George Kennan Papers, Library of Congress
Incidentally, the Russian translation of his book on his travels through Siberia and eastern Kazakhstan was published in Paris in 1890, a year before the English edition titled Siberia and the Exile System.
George Kennan also wrote about his meeting with the ethnographer Alexander Leontiev, who had been exiled to the Semipalatinsk region for his involvement in the revolutionary populist movement:
The general conversation which followed our introduction to the assembled company was bright, animated, and informal. Mr Leantief, in reply to questions
from me, related the history of the Semipalatinsk library, and said that it had not only been a great boon to the political exiles, but had noticeably stimulated the intellectual life of the city. Even the Kazakhsi
He continued:
‘I know a learned old Kazakh here, named Ibrahim Konobai, who not only goes to the library, but reads such authors as Buckle, Mill, and Draper.’
‘You don't mean to say,’ exclaimed a young university student, ‘that there are any old Kazakhs in Semipalatinsk who actually read Mill and Draper!’
‘Yes, I do,’ replied Mr Leantief coolly.
The very first time I met him he astonished me by asking me to explain
to him the difference between induction and deduction. Some time afterward I found out that he was really making a study of English philosophy, and had read Russian translations of all the authors that I have named.
‘Do you suppose that he understood what he read?’ inquired the university student.
‘I spent two whole evenings examining him upon Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe,’ replied Mr Leantief, ‘and I must say that he seemed to have a very fair comprehension of it.’
And thus, it is thanks to Kennan that we learn of Abai Qunanbaiuly's interest in English philosophy.
George Kennan. Tomsk, August 1885 / Photo by Matsaevich & Co. (Tomsk), George Kennan Papers, Library of Congress
However, Kennan's memoirs are about more than the intellectual and cultural life of Semipalatinsk. He also wrote about the city's commercial vitality and economic potential:
The city of Semipalatinsk, which has a population of about 15,000 Russians, Kazakhs, and Tatars, is situated on the right bank of the River Irtish, 480 miles southeast of Omsk and about 900 miles from Tiumen. It is the seat of government of the territory of Semipalatinsk, and is commercially a place of some importance, owing to the fact that it stands on one of the caravan routes to Tashkend and Central Asia and commands a large part of the trade of the Kazakh Steppe. The country tributary to it is a pastoral rather than an agricultural region, and of its 547,000 inhabitants, 497,000 are nomads, who live in 111,000 kibitkas or felt tents, and own more than 3,000,000 head of livestock, including 70,000 camels. The province produces annually, among other things, 45,000 pounds of honey, 370,000 pounds of tobacco, 100,000 bushels of potatoes, and more than 12,000,000 bushels of grain. There are held every year within the limits of the territory eleven commercial fairs, the transactions of which amount in the aggregate to about $1,000,000. Forty or fifty caravans leave the city of Semipalatinsk every year for various points in Mongolia and Central Asia, carrying Russian goods to the value of from $150,000 to $200,000.
Steppe Fashion and the ‘Tartar Guitar’
Unlike the two other American travelers who came to the Kazakh Steppe in the hope of helping build a Western Union telegraph line, Januarius MacGahan (1844–1878) was already a well-known journalist and war correspondent. He was in Khiva during the Russian siege and, after the khanate had effectively fallen, he joined a group of Syr Darya Kazakhs. In 1874, he published an account of his experiences under the title Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva.
Januarius MacGahan. Wood engraving by Thomas Dewell Scott, after a photograph. The Illustrated London News, 22 June 1878 / Wikimedia Commons
Unlike George Kennan and Perry Collins, MacGahan did not have to jolt from one settlement to another in the horse-drawn carriages of the imperial postal service. In a sense, he was far more fortunate: he found himself in a Kazakh auli
I would here remark that my sojourn with the Kirghiz left a most favourable impression upon me. I have always found them kind, hospitable, and honest. I spent a whole month amongst them, travelling with them, eating with them, and sleeping in their tents. And I had along with me all this time horses, arms, and equipment, which would be to them a prize of considerable value. Yet never did I meet anything but kindness; I never lost a pin's worth; and often a Kirghiz has galloped four or five miles after me to restore some little thing I had left behind.
MacGahan devoted considerable attention to the clothing of the Kazakhs he encountered. Here, for example, is how he described the dress of Kazakh women:
They were dressed in khalats, or tunics of red silk, ornamented on the sleeves and around the edges with a kind of embroidery in various colours, and covered with a number of broad thin silver buttons. The khalats were fastened at the throat with a coral button, but hung loosely open in front, exposing a chemise of white silk, reaching to the knee, and worn carelessly open on the bosom in a very piquant manner. White trousers of the same material, with red boots, completed a very simple, but, for the desert, very becoming costume.
As it turned out, however, it was not only the women who dressed in bright, colorful attire:
The brother wore a short, tight-fitting jacket of some red stuff, half silk, half wool, likewise ornamented with silver buttons; wide leather trousers of a bright yellow, and embroidered nearly all over in a variety of curious patterns; a sash of yellow silk, in which were stuck a knife and an old flintlock pistol very prettily inlaid with silver; a light jaunty cap made of the fur of some animal; and loosely-fitted boots of unblacked leather.
MacGahan was equally impressed by the Kazakhs' love of merrymaking, especially the sound of dombyra. He referred to the instrument as a ‘Tatar guitar’, remarking that its shape reminded him of a pear split lengthwise:
Our supper over, I asked my young friend for some music, pointing at the same time to the guitar. He complied very readily, and sang three or four songs, accompanying himself on the instrument. One or two of the songs were hailed with shouts of laughter and merriment. He also sung one or two war songs, in which he celebrated the feats of some Kirghiz hero against the Turcomans, and these also were greeted with applause.
Interior of a Kazakh yurt. Illustration from Januarius MacGahan’s Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva. 1874 / Internet Archive
The Kazakhs through the Eyes of the First American Diplomat
Perhaps the best-known American traveler to explore the Kazakh lands in the nineteenth century was Eugene Schuyler (1840–1890). Born in New York State in 1840, Schuyler was no ordinary adventurer. Before he ever set foot on the steppe, he had already distinguished himself as a scholar of remarkable promise, earning a doctorate in psychology from Yale University. Indeed, Schuyler was among the first three people in American history to receive a PhD.
Eugene Schuyler. Constantinople, c. 1870s / Library of Congress
It was not psychology, however, that brought him to the Kazakh Steppe, but diplomacy. In 1867, he was appointed consul in Moscow, and in 1873, he was appointed secretary to the American legation in St. Petersburg. From there, he ventured deeper into the Russian Empire than any American diplomat before him, eventually becoming the first American diplomat to set foot in Central Asia. He described his journeys in the two-volume Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja, published in 1876.
Kazakh encampment. Illustration from Eugene Schuyler’s Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja. 1876 / Internet Archive
Schuyler began his account of the Kazakhs with the basics:
They do not call themselves Kirghiz, which is a name given them by the Russians, but are known only as ‘Kazak’, the same as the Russian Cossack. In order to distinguish this from the Russian word, the Russians are in the habit of calling the race ‘Kirghiz Kaisak’, an entirely erroneous and meaningless name. The name Kazak, as used in Central Asia, means simply a vagabond or wanderer, and its application is evident. It is convenient, however, to follow usage and continue to speak of them as Kirghiz.
He also offered a brief excursion into Kazakh history:
The Kirghiz speak a language which is one of the purest dialects of Tartar, though as a race they contain many foreign elements. They originated from several Turkish tribes and families, which in the second half of the fifteenth century followed sultans Girei and Janibek in their flight from the tyranny of their rulers to the neighbourhood of Lake Balkash. They were soon joined by others, and rapidly became a flourishing community, known by their neighbours as Kazaks. The kernel of the race is evidently Turkish, and many of the tribes and families have the same names as Uzbek tribes in Khokand and Bukhara.
And, as a diplomat, he could hardly avoid commenting on the political situation in the Kazakh Steppe:
The Kirghiz had great respect for their aristocracy, and the common people, or ‘black bone’, were led by the ‘white bone’ (the Kirghiz term for ‘blue blood’), or the descendants of the old Khans and ruling families. These men stood up for their tribes and families in defence of the honour and safety of their members. Reverencing at the same time bravery, dash, and boldness, and loving their freedom, they were always ready to follow the standard of any batyr or hero, such as Syrym, Arunhazi, or Kenisar, who might appear in the steppe. The sultans regent were either mere Russian creatures, entirely destitute of influence, or they were themselves inclined to revolt at times, and neither they nor the annual military expeditions from Orenburg could succeed in maintaining order in the steppe.
Schuyler also devoted considerable attention to the everyday lives of the Kazakhs and the realities of nomadic life.
The accounts of Collins, Kennan, MacGahan, and Schuyler are more than travel narratives from the second half of the nineteenth century. They are rare eyewitness testimonies to life in the Kazakh Steppe on the eve of profound and, in many respects, tragic transformations. For all their inevitable errors, biases, and outsider perspectives, these travelers preserved vivid portraits of the everyday life, culture, and political realities of Kazakh society. Their journeys also marked the beginning of the historical relationship between Kazakhstan and the United States.