Information AboutItelmens |
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Theirs was a substantial hunter-gatherer and fishing society with up to fifty thousand natives inhabiting the peninsula before they were decimated by the Cossacks in the Eighteenth Century . So much Intermarriage took place between the natives and the Cossacks that ''Kamchadal'' now refers to the majority mixed population, and the term ''Itelmens'' at some point becane reserved for persisting speakers of the Itelmen language. By 1993 , there were less 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. External links |