{{Short description|Legendary Chukchi chief}} {{About|the legendary chief|the Thai spice (fingerroot)|Boesenbergia rotunda}}
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) across the ice to settle in a northern land.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nordenskiöld |first=Adolf Erik |author-link=Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld |year=1881 |title=The Voyage of the Vega Round Asia and Europe: With a Historical Review of Previous Journeys Along the North Coast of the Old World |url=https://archive.org/details/voyagevegaround02nordgoog |translator=Alexander Leslie |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |pages=[https://archive.org/details/voyagevegaround02nordgoog/page/n492 443]–448}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Rink |first=Signe |year=1905 |title=A Comparative Study of Two Indian and Eskimo Legends |journal=Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists |pages=280|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FcViAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA280}}</ref> 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 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.<ref>Krauss, Michael E. (2005). [http://www.erudit.org/revue/etudinuit/2005/v29/n1-2/013938ar.pdf "Eskimo Languages in Asia, 1791 on, and the Wrangel Island–Point Hope Connection"]. ''Études/Inuit/Studies'', vol. 29 (1–2), pp. 163–185.</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
Category:History of Siberia Category:Prehistory of the Arctic Category:Siberian shamanism