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From:

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/people/jeoh2/2t_1908.htm

By: Joachim Otto Habeck

jeoh2 at cam.ac.uk
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Many authors included the reports of Russian and Tungus (Evenki)
eye-witnesses in their studies. However, as far as I know, none of the
books, films, web pages etc. mention how the native people themselves
explained the apocalypse that affected them and their land. Therefore,
I want to quote a Soviet ethnographer who was travelling through this
part of Siberia in the 1920s.
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Innokentiy Mikhaylovich Suslov (b. 1893, d. 1972) worked as
ethnographer and geographer in the Far North of the Soviet Union. He
was also involved in organising Soviet power in the Tunguska region.
The following quotations are extracted from a text written by Suslov,
based on his 1926-8 fieldwork on the religious ideas of the Evenki in
that very region. The text dates from approx. 1930 and, apparently,
was to be published, but this did not happen in Suslov's lifetime.
Karl H. Menges translated the text into German and made it available
to the public in 1983.
The remarks on Suslov given above were taken from Menges's
introduction. The exact title of the text is as follows: 

Materialien zum Schamanismus der Ewenki-Tungusen an der Mittleren und
Unteren Tunguska. Gesammelt und aufgezeichnet von I. M. Suslov
1926/1928. Eingeleitet, übersetzt, mit Anmerkungen, etymologischen
Glossar und Indices versehen von Karl. H. Menges. Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz 1983. xv, 131 pp.

The text was translated from German into English by myself. Russian
and Evenki names are transliterated according to The Times Atlas of
the World and The U.S. Board on Geographic Names.
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"[page 4] The Tungus have only one expression for the thunder -
agdy -, by which they also describe the old man, the lord of the
thunder as well as all the thunderbirds that come down to earth and
cause the thunder. The Agdy birds are as big as black grouses, are
made of iron, and their eyes are fiery. The thunder arises from
their flight above the earth and their eyes flash like lightning.
All the Agdy have close relationships to certain shamans, because
the ancestors of the thunder live in Khergu(1) where also the souls
of the shamans can be found perpetually. Some old shamans were
great friends of the thunder, and this friendship has passed to
their descendants. That is why any wicked shaman can call the Agdy
in order to do harm to a group of people he hates or even to a
whole clan.

The famous story of the Tunguska meteorite, which L. A. [page 5]
KULIK tries to investigate since 1927, (2) was explained to me by
the Tungus at the mouth of the Chunya on the Stony Tunguska (3) in
a very simple way. When, in 1926 at the Chunya, I talked with the
Tungus about the catastrophe of 30 June 1908 - in order to obtain
more exact data to be used for the forthcoming search operation for
the meteorite - they persistently kept silent and deflected the
inquiry into this event again and again; however, I persisted in my
questions and they reported the following:

For a long time, there had been tribal feuds between a group of
Tungus clans in the basin of the Stony Tunguska and clans living
along the right tributaries of the Lower Tunguska. Eventually, this
hostility resulted in the shamans sending their evil spirits
against each other to cause diseases. Then one of the shamans
called the Agdy to destroy the hated enemies. In the early morning
of the 30th June 1908 an interminable legion of Agdy came flying
down upon the grounds of the Shanyagir clan (4) and brought
disaster to many families of the Shanyagir: some tents flew into
the air, «higher than the forest», and the people sleeping inside
suffered from bruises; (5) From [the herd of] Andrey Onkoul, a
Tungus, 250 reindeer vanished without any trace; other Tungus' dogs
and some reindeer were killed; the storage platforms with bread and
equipment were destroyed; the forest, a real, ancient taiga, was
flatened within a few seconds to an expanse of approximately 10,000
km² in the catchment areas of the rivers Chambe, Zhilushmo and
Khushmo; there was a tremendous thunderous noise, which caused
crevices in the earth (at this moment, the seismograph of Irkutsk
recorded a really extraordinary type of earthquake). Owing to these
impressions, the inhabitants of that part of the taiga fled in
panic in all directions, leaving every last one of their belongings
behind. All this is blamed on the Agdy.

Now many Tungus believe that only the Agdy can live at the place of
that catastrophe; it has already been 20 years since then, and
still nobody dares turn up in this area."

"[page 63] Already in the years 1912 to 1914 I had the opportunity
to listen to not a small number of stories, which I was told by the
Tungus from the Ilimpiya, (6) about the «miracles» of [the shaman]
Magankan. It seems that there is not a single Tungus among the ten
clans of Ilimpiya who has not heard about how Magankan wanted to
punish the spirits that resisted submission to his Khargi (7) and
abided in his body: he got those present to shoot directly with a
rifle at him. He then caught the bullet when it came out of his
body and showed it to all people present. Similarly, Magankan
stabbed a knife to his chest with all his force, but no wound and
no blood could be found. The members of the clan Shanyagir ascribe
the impact of the famous Tunguska meteorite, which at present is
searched for by L. A. KULIK between the Stony Tunguska and the
Chunya, to Magankan, too."
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Annotations

* (1) [Khergu is the lower world. It is inhabited by the deceased,
but the souls of the (living) shamans are found here as well. Most
of the encounters between shamans and spirits happen in this world
(cf Suslov/Menges, pp. 2-3). JOH.]
* (2) [Annotation 15 as given by K. H. Menges, pp. 98-99:] In the
meantime, the problem has been solved to the most part, but
research is still not finished, cf. Bol'shaya Sovetskaya
Entsiklopediya, vol. 26 (1977), p. 303, where, for some strange
reason, the coordinates of the impact are missing. A short account
was recorded by VASILEVICH in 1936 at the [river] Chuyungo in the
Stony Tunguska area; there the catastrophe is also presented as
having been caused by the Agdi [sic]: "Istoricheskiy fol'klor
evenkov", M., L., 1966, pp. 375, 379. Some Evenki from the Tokma,
nomads living to the east of the area where the meteor came down
and thus not immediately affected, told VASILEVICH in 1925 that a
piece came off the sun, fell on the earth and burnt the taiga
"Evenki", Leningrad, 1969, p. 211.). KHM.
* (3) [Stony Tunguska (russ.: Podkamennaya Tunguska) and the
"Mittlere Tunguska" which is mentioned in the title of the text
are one and the same river. Compare the map. JOH.]
* (4) [Annotation 16 as given by Menges, p. 99:] Report according to
the words of Ivashka, 70 years old, son of Okhchon of the
Shanyagir clan, who himself had suffered from the catastrophe.
* (5) [Annotation 17 as given by Menges, p. 99:] Cf I. M. SUSLOV: "K
rozysku padeniya bol'shogo meteorita (On the search for the impact
of the big meteorite)", in: Mirovedeniye, No. 1, 1927.
* (6) [The Ilimpiya is a tributary of the Lower Tunguska (russ.:
Nizhnyaya Tunguska). However, the term "Tungus from the Ilimpiya"
refers to a much larger area: the northern half of what is
nowadays the Evenki District. Compare the map. JOH.]
* (7) [The spirit named Khargi has considerable influence on the
shaman, especially during his shamanic sessions, indeed, it is
actually the Khargi who gives instructions to the shaman (cf
Suslov/Menges, p. 22). JOH.]
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