M. A. Czaplicka

Maria Antonina Czaplicka

h. Lubicz

NOTE: M. A. Czaplicka was the daughter of "Felix Lubicz Czaplicki"

CONTENTS:

1. Photo album

2. New York Times - Article 1916

3. New York Times - Article 1918

4. New York Times - Article 1920

5. Polish Biographical Dictionary - Article - Czaplicka, Maria Antonina

Maria Antonina Czaplicka

Photo Album

М. А. Чаплицка фотоальбом

The Photographs are presented here with the permission of CURZON PRESS, 15 The Quadrant, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1BP, England. All Photographs are Copyright 1999 CURZON PRESS. They are from their publication, COLLECTED WORKS OF M. A. CZAPLICKA by David Collins (Four Volumes)

Beware the Shaman - "Not me, not me, but you, O mighty spirits, Chunga has offended. Not for myself, I call for vengeance, but for you. Let Chunga kill me if he will, but let him not escape the vengeance due... Chunga Hiragir shall live alone among his reindeer-lone as this pointing forefinger- without child or workman to bear him aid." - From Vol. 3. MY SIBERIAN YEAR, PAGE 218.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, DECEMBER 3, 1916 - PAGE 583.

"RECENT TRAVEL IN RUSSIA AND SIBERIA...

MY SIBERIAN YEAR

MY SIBERIAN YEAR. By M. A. Czaplicka. Illustrated from photographs. New York:

James Pott & Co. $3.

It is well to know something about Siberia, one of the countries of the future. Miss Czaplicka makes clear the various nations that make up the country-native Siberians, Sibiriaks, (a mixture of exile and native blood) political and criminal exiles from Russia, hunters, fishermen, adventurers and traders, Poles, Germans, Jews, and Finns. The author tells of the cruel way in which the trader exploits the native, and shows that the prohibition of alcoholic liquor has raised the price of vodka and made illicit sales more common. The native is willing to pay any price for it. Sometimes he will have to fish and get fur for the trader all his life; the debt will even descend to his son.

The Siberian is very hospitable and kind to travelers who spend the night in his chum, (tent.)

The conversation, or rather examination, almost always followed one stereotyped model:

"You have passed many waters, many lands to reach our tundra. Tell us what you have seen and heard."

After I had answered with a cursory description of cities and men and railways and steamships:

"There are doubtless good and bad people in your tundra. Do you bring us good or evil?"

"Tell us the name of your tundra and what Tsar has sent you here."

" Is your tundra rich in fishing waters, or rather in wild reindeer and white foxes?"

Children and reindeer are closest to the hearts of the tundra folk. If there are no children in the "chum" of a family they will adopt some. The children are intelligent and lively. The calendar is colored by the importance of the reindeer; the sixth month is described as that in which "the sun no longer hides itself, the snow falls, and the doe gives birth to her young."

The marriages are arranged by a paid matchmaker and a "kalym" sometimes of as much as 50 foxskins and 300 reindeer is paid for the wife.

The time for the wedding having arrived a feast was held in the chum of the bride's

parents. When the feast was over the bride was bundled up in a specially heavy fur coat and a

kerchief was tied over her face. She was carried out of the chum across the pool of blood

made by the slaughter of the deer, and thrown like a biece of baggage on her sledge. Behind

it a long train, and this was now attached to that of the bridegroom's mother, whose duty it

was to drive her daughter-in-law to her new home.

Widows are compelled to go to the family of their husband's eldest brother.

The native council is recognized by Russian law, but no Russian official takes part in it. A man from each tribe attends, and a native Prince is President. Disputes over reindeer, judgment on thieves, libel actions, &c. are decided in this primitive tribunal.

Shamanism is the native religion, though women combine it with Christianity, no doubt wanting to be on the safe side! They believe in spirits and deities, and the "Shaman" deals with them. He is a person of strong personality and imagination, who chants and ceremonizes to exorcise the evil spirits. He is also a prophet. Who be to him who is cursed by a Shaman! Miss Czaplicka tells an eerie tale of a man she knew who offended a Shaman.

Not me, not me, but you, O mighty spirits, Chunga has offended. Not for myself I call

for vengeance, but for you. Let Chunga kill me is he will, but let him not escape the

vengeance due. Chunga Hiragir shall live alone among his reindeer-lone as this pointing

forefinger-without child of workman to bear him aid.

And-the curse kept faith.

There is an enlightening chapter of the "Sibiriaks, their struggles, and the hardihood induced by them."

THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1918...

"SAVING SIBERIAKS.

Of disorders in Siberia, of the pro and con of intervention in Siberia by the Allies or by Japan, great has been and will be the talk. In the mass of rumors and surmises the Siberians themselves are hardly seen, Mr. (sic) M. A. Czaplicka in the New Europe gives a glimpse of the Siberians of Siberia, the Siberiaks, colonists, and descendants of colonists. Neither the Cossack conquest nor the forcible settlement on the land by the autocracy has had the part of volunteer colonization in Siberia, and moral, more than economic, reasons caused the migration. The hardships of a new country were preferred to submission to the Moscow and Petrograd Government.

The Siberiak colonies are older historically that those of the United States and Canada. If in culture they are inferior, their distance from cultured centres, their dependence upon an unprogressive, tyrannical metropolis and government, their long subjection to bureaucracy and their highly heterogeneous racial character more that account for that. Every strain of all the Russias is found in Siberia. Even races like the Poles and Finns have helped form the composite and Siberiak people. On account of the scarcity of Russian women, the settlers for some generations intermarried with the natives of Central and North Siberia. Thus the Siberiaks are a Eurasian race, physically more Asiatic than the European Russians, and morally with "the tolerance and broadmindedness" of new countries like the United States and Canada.

A people self-reliant and co-operative, they never had the Zemstvo. That was steadily denied them. Their love of autonomy has been quickened by that denial. They are not separatists. They are substantially united for certain agrarian and trade reforms. They don't want to throw off Federal relations with Russia. The few centres where Bolsheviki rule and ruin are on the railroad, are "under the direct control of the Bolshevist Government, as they were once under the control of the Czar." Moreover, any body of highwaymen can pose as Bolsheviki or members of any other party.

Without regard to military or political considerations, the economic problem of Siberia is this: A rich butter, grain, and cattle country must either fall in anarchy, to the ruin of production and exportation or be organized by the Central Powers. The hostile influences come from two sources, "one direct, Petrograd-Kiev; the other indirect, via Persia and Turkestan." If the Allies refrain from political activity, Mr. (sic) CZAPLICKA tells them, "they will, in the end, find themselves deprived of the valuable ally that Siberia may eventually become." Why is such a democratic, self-reliant people as he (sic) paints unable to defend itself? Any powerful military action in Siberia for the benefit of the Central Powers seems out of the question at present. Those Austrian and German prisoners, so variously counted, are perhaps less formidable than the wandering bands of other ruffians, it any distinction be made between them and the Bolsheviki. The Allies have their hands full in the west. Of course, self-preservation of self-interest may ultimately force Japanese intervention. But let Mr. (sic) Czaplicka speak:

If Siberia is to be saved from anarchy and from evemy interference the Allies must help the Siberiaks to take the affairs of the country into their own hands by immediate economic arrangements with such allied neighbors as Canada, the United States, China, and Japan. The Siberiaks were and are the most stable element of the Russian Empire and the most practical in political affairs. When approached directly, they cannot fail to appreciate economic and possibly strategic help, which is the only way of saving and assuring the further development of their new nation. and possibly of redeeming their kindred in European Russia from entire disintegration.

With the best of wishes for the Siberiaks, the "saving" of Siberia, all Russia, the degermanization of Russia, must be done on the western front."

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 1920. PAGE 12.

"A WOMAN EXPLORER

MISS MARIE ANTOINETTE CZAPLICKA, F., R G. S., F. R. A. I., just now near the end of a lecture tour in America, has the unique record of having been the only woman member of anthropological expeditions into the heart of the Caucasus and Siberia.

Miss Czaplicka was born in Warsaw, Poland. She comes of an ancient family, of which there is a saying in Poland, "You can rely on me as on a Zawisza." The knight, Black Zawisza, was one of Miss Czaplicka's ancestors on her mother's side.

In 1908 Miss Czaplicka was a member of the Polish geographical expedition to the Caucasus. In 1910 she went to England, where, two years later, she took a diploma in anthropology at Oxford. When the expedition to Arctic Siberia was organized in 1914 under the joint auspices of Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania Museum it was placed under her leadership. She spent one year in the territory of the Tungus, Samoyed, and Ostyaks.

Entering the wilderness of almost unknown Central Siberia at the town of Krasnoyarsk, the expedition trekked to the Arctic and located at Golchikha on an inlet of the Kara Sea, 450 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The exploration of the territory involved more than 3,000 miles of travel by reindeer and sledge, often when the thermometer registered 80 degrees below zero.

Miss Czaplicka remained in the Siberian wilds much longer than her companions, traveling 1,500 miles on the Yenisei River, passing a Summer on the Tundra of the Talmyr Peninsula and a Summer among the Tungus tribes. She has made a full record of the manners, customs and the pagan religious observances of the people of that isolated part of the world."

REF.: Polska Akademia Umiejętności. Polski Słownik Biograficzny. Tom IV/1, Krakow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1937. s. 173 -

"Czaplicka Maria Antonina (1886-1921). Jako stypendystka kasy im. Mianowskiego wyjechała do Anglii Na studia uniwersyteckie, najpierw w Londynie, potem w Oxfordzie. Po ich ukończeniu w r. 1912 wykładała etnologię na uniwersytecie oxfordzkim, potem londyńskim, a ostatnio bristolskim. Brała czynny udział w pracach Król. Towarzystwa Geograficznego i Król. Instytutu Antropologicznego w Londynie. W r. 1914 i 1915 prowadziła badania terenowe na Syberii jako uszestniczka wyprawy naukowej. finansowanej przez uniwersytety w Oxfordzie is w Filadelfii. W szczególności przeprowadzała studia nad kulturą Tunguzów u ujścia rzeki Jenisiej i nad Samojedami. W zakres jej badań wchodziła też historia i kultura współczesna ludów turańskich. Prace z tej dziedziny przyniosły Cz-ej duże uznanie w nauce światowej i nagrodę Murchisona, przyznaną przez Król. Tow. Geograficzne w r. 1920. Jako Polka nie zaniedbywała też akcje propagandowej na rzecz swego kraju na terenie angielskim. Śmierć jej w Bristolu w Anglii (pochowana 2 VI 1921 Oxfordzie) nie pozwoliła jej ukończyć książki o Polsce. Do pierwszych prac Cz-ej należą artykuły drukowane w (Stanowisko etnografii w dobie dzisiejszej, 1911, t. II, s. 193-5, 209-11; Piorun w wierzeniach różnych ludów, 1912, t. III, s. 754-6, 770, 772). Główne prace Cz-ej zostały ogłoszone w języju angielskim: Aboriginal Siberia, a study in social anthropology, Oxford 1914; My Siberian year, London 1916; The Turks of Central Azia [Asia] in history and at the present day 1916.

O Cz-ej artykuły w »Kurierze Warsz.« 1921, nr 155 z 7 VI i w »Czasie«1921 nr 133 z 13 VI; wzmianki:W. Koppers, »Anthropos« 1832 XXVII, 518; Nowakowski St., Geografia jako nauka i dzieje odkryć geograficznych [1937], s. 308 (tu podobizna Cz-ej)

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Kazimierz Dobrowolski"