Tofalar
The Tofalar (also Karagas or Tofa; Тофалары, тофа (tofa) in Russian) people, are a Turkic people who live in Tofalariya, in the southwestern part of Nizhneudinsky District, Irkutsk Oblast of Russia. The Tofalar population is highly mixed with Russians due to the presence of Russian settlers and high rates of intermarriage. Prior to Soviet rule, the Tofalar led a nomadic lifestyle in the taiga, engaging in reindeer husbandry and hunting. Afterwards, they were resettled by the Soviet government and forced to adopt sedentarism and were discouraged from practicing hunting and shamanism. According to the 2010 census, there were 762 Tofalar in Russia. Etymology Tofalar is an endonym and contains the Turkic plural suffix -lar, thus translating to "Tofas"; Tofalar means "people of the deer." The Tofalar were formerly known as 'Karagas,' which was derived from the name of one particular Tofalar clan, the Kara-Kash or Karahaash. History Origins The ancestors of the Tofalar (and the closely related Soyots, Tozhu Tuvans, and Dukha) were proto-Samoyedic hunters-gatherers who arrived in the Eastern Sayan region by the end of the end of third millennium BCE and beginning of the second millennium BCE. During the Old Turkic period, the ancestors of the Tofalars underwent