A legend prevalent among the
Chukchi people of Siberia tells of a chief Krachai (or Krächoj, Krahay, Khrakhai), who fled with his people (the Krachaians or Krahays, also identified as the Onkilon or Omoki--
Siberian Yupik people
Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits (russian: Юиты), are a Yupik people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far northeast of the Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Central Siberian Yupik (a ...
) across the ice to settle in a northern land. Though the story may be mythical, the existence of an island or continent to the north was lent credence to by the annual migration of
reindeer across the ice. As well as the appearance of slate spear-points washed up on Arctic shores, made in a fashion unknown to the Chukchi. Linguist
Michael E. Krauss
Michael E. Krauss (August 15, 1934 – August 11, 2019) was an American linguist, professor emeritus, founder and long-time head of the Alaska Native Language Center. He died on August 11, 2019, four days before his 85th birthday. The Alaska Na ...
has recently presented archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence that Wrangel Island was a way station on a trade route linking the Inuit settlement at
Point Hope, Alaska with the north Siberian coast, and that the coast may have been colonized in late prehistoric and early historic times by Inuit settlers from North America. Krauss suggests that the departure of these colonists was related to the Krachai legend.
[Krauss, Michael E. (2005]
Eskimo languages in Asia, 1791 on, and the Wrangel Island-Point Hope connection
''Études/Inuit/Studies, vol. 29'' (1-2), 2005, pp 163-185.
References
{{reflist
History of Siberia
Prehistory of the Arctic
Circumpolar mythology