Itelmens

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The Itelmens (Itelmen: Итәнмән, romanized: Itənmən; Russian: Ительмены, romanized: Itel'meny) are an indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family, but it is now virtually extinct, the vast majority of ethnic Itelmens being native speakers of Russian. Native peoples of Kamchatka (Itelmen, Ainu, Koryaks, and Chuvans), collectively referred to as Kamchadals, had a substantial hunter-gatherer and fishing society with up to fifty thousand natives inhabiting the peninsula before they were decimated during the Russian conquest, both by brutal repressions of the rebellions of locals and by a major smallpox epidemic, in the 18th century. So much intermarriage took place between the natives and the Cossacks that Kamchadal now refers to the majority mixed population, while the term Itelmens became reserved for persistent speakers of the Itelmen language. By 1993, there were fewer than 100 elderly speakers of the language left, but some 2,400 people considered themselves ethnic Itelmen in the 1989 census. By 2002, this number had risen to 3,180, and there are attempts at reviving the language. According to the 2010 Russian census, there were 3,193 Itelmens. Itelmens resided primarily in the valley of the Kamchatka River in the middle of the peninsula. One of the few sources describing the Itelmen prior to assimilation is that of Georg Wilhelm Steller, who accompanied Vitus Bering on his Great Northern Expedition (Second Expedition to Kamchatka).