The
first Russian document mentioning the Meshchera is “Tolkovaya Paleya”
(13cAD). The tribe was also often mentioned in Russian chronicles and other
documents before the 16th century.
The Will of the Moscow prince Ivan Ivanovich (1358) mentions the village of Meshcherka which, as we can learn from another document, had been purchased from the indigenous Meshcherian prince Alexander Ukovich. There are some indications that this western Meshcherian dynasty had been baptized to Orthodoxy and was vassals of the Moscow princes.
Generally speaking, we can easily find the Meshchera in Russian documents of the13th-16th centuries, unlike the other Finnish tribes: Merya and Murom which had been assimilated by Slavs before the 10th-11th centuries AD. A number of the documents mentions the Meshchera in connection with the Kazan campaign of Ivan the Terrible (16c). Some of those mentions relate to the Temnikov Meshchera, a state where the indigenous Meshchera of that time had lost their national identity in many ways by being assimilated by the Tatars and Mordvins. There is a written confirmation of this by Prince A.M.Kurbsky, which pointed out to the “spoken Mordvin language in the Meshchera land”.
We believe that some Arabic documents also could have information on the Meshchera history, as long as the Moslem clergy was active in the east of the tribal territory converting the locals into Islam.
The
most information on the Meshchera way of life may be found by archaeology.
The archaeological studies of the Meshcherian heritage started in
1870, when a ground burial site was discovered by chance in the village
of Zhabki, Ryazan province (now Egorievsk district, Moscow region). A collection
of women’s bronze burial (or maybe partly casual) decorations was dated
by the 5th-8th centuries AD and identified as Finno-Ugric. A number of
similar finds were made shortly after in Ryazan and Vladimir provinces.
The almost identical material culture let the scientists specify these
burial sites as Meshcherian.
12 of these burial grounds were discovered along the Oka river from the Moskwa (Moscow) river mouth to the town of Kasimov (which earlier had been called “Gorodets Meschersky”). Some specific features of the artifacts from the Oka valley led to their different classification as the Oka-Ryazan culture. Now the majority of specialists believe that the people of the Oka-Ryazan culture were Meshchera.
The Meshcherian women’s burial set had many things typical for the other Volgo-Finns of the 4th-7th centuries: jingling pendants, buckles, neck rings, rings, etc. One of the specific features was the presence of massive round-shaped breast plates with a distinct ornament, the varieties of which could be related to different Meshcherian clans or to carry some other information unknown today.
A number of the women’s burials were well preserved with copper oxides of the decorations. They contained long black hair locked into one or two with little bells and pendants woven in.
All these artifacts allow to reconstruct the woman’s burial costume in detail, but we still know very little what the casual clothes of men and women looked like.
The Finno-Ugrian culture of the Oka valley was changed abruptly by the 10th century AD by the material culture of Vyatich Slavs. The more northern sites demonstrate a mixture of styles. The artifacts there had been Finno-Ugrian till 12AD with strong Slavic influence.
The
most ancient source of the Meshcherian culture in Oka valley had disappeared
by the 10th-11the centuries. There are no obvious indications of genocide,
but the fast change in the material culture of the settlements may tell
us a story of the intensive “push-out” of the Meshchera towards east and
west. All Meshchera men were armed and the possibility of local conflicts
was high that time. On the other hand, the Meshchera had a long history
of peaceful coexistance with a number of Slavic and Baltic tribes
and possibly paid tribute to the Kievan Rus. A number of newcomers
could live peacefully side by side with the Meshchera assimilating them.
In the Northern part of their territory the Meshchera were baptized and stayed at their territory as long as the agricultural Slavic colonists had little interest in the poor marshy lands. The Meshchera noblemen were baptized by the 12th-13the centuries, but the common hunters and fishers kept the elements of their language and traditional beliefs for a longer period.
Till what time the Meshcherian language was able to be preserved in the most remote and isolated tribal settlements? In the middle of the 19the century, M.Baranovich, a Russian writer, reported from Ryazan province: “The Meshchera lived mainly along the Pra and the Yalma rivers, big and small lakes nearby the Vladimir province border… As to the Mescheryaks”… (Russian speaking locals most probably of Meshchera decent)… “the local people’s personalities make me sad… the people are petite, weak and not developed.” The archaeological sites had not been discovered by that time and we believe that in giving all these details Baranovich relied upon some local legends.
Not far from there, in Radovitsky the Orthodox St.Nicholas monastery was founded in the 16th century with the primary task to convert the locals into Christianity. This also can point out indirectly to the relatively late disappearance of local traditional beliefs and culture in this area.
Considering all these data, we may suppose that the last people had stopped speaking the Meshcherian language in about the 16th century
The
ethnographers consider the present-day Meshchera as local groups
inside of the Russian ethnos. This ethnographical Russian-speaking Meshchera
live mainly in the heartland of the massive forestland on the borders of
Moscow, Ryazan and Vladimir regions of the Russian Federation. Some Meshchera
settlements are also situated in Tambov, Penza and Saratov regions. There
is little doubt that these people are of Volgo-Finnish (some say
partly Ugrian) decent, heavily influenced by the Slavs, Turks and
maybe Mongols.
These Russian-speaking Meshchera still have a number of specific anthropological features. The people are generally not tall and have dark hair. There is a specific dialect and some countryside housing details. The rural Meshchera are smart fishers, bee-keepers and hunters.
***
One of the hypotheses says that the most of Meshchera, being pushed
out, moved eastward and was converted into Islam. Mixing with the Tatars,
they took their language and gave a start to a new sub-ethnos known as
the Tatar-Mishers or Misherler. Part of the eastern Meshchera also could
be assimilated by the Russians and the closely related Mordvins.
A number of Russian-speaking groups identified by the ethnographers as
Meshchera and living to the east of the ancient Meshcherian area, shows
that it is highly possible.
***
The origin of the word “meshchera” is still unknown. We believe this
word could be a self-name of the ancient Volgo-Finns of the Oka river and
was closely related to the following existing Volgo-Finnish words:
“Mesh” (Moksha-Mordvin) – a bee; *)
“Erzya” (Erzya-Mordvin) – a self-name of the Erzyas;
“Eritsia” (Erzya-Mordvin) – an inhabitant, a local.
Thus the Meshchera were just the Bee People, or the Beekeepers. This self-name could be easily taken by the neighboring groups seeking honey for trade, plunder or tribute. The middle Oka area, a historical cradle of the Meshchera, has always been known for its productive apiculture.
There
are still a number of mysteries about the history of the Meshchera. But
what we know for sure is: they were skilled fishers, hunters and bronze
craftsmen. They were not keen on cultivating their land though they knew
how to do it. They definitely deified the nature around them with a number
of its creatures and especially the water fowl. They kept their sustainable
primary economy for hundreds of years. They were happy with their
own life-style and were not fast to give it up. They gave their name to
the vast area in the center of the Eastern Europe and their extinct language
still exists in the names of some creeks, rivers and villages. Many
living people are of their descent and we’d like them to remember of their
ancestry.
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*) compare with modern Finnish: 'mehiläinen' = a bee, 'mesi' = nectar, honey; note also 'metsä' = forest, woods. (comment by Andrei Kokov)Note: The images represent Finno-Ugrian objects from V-VIII AD. These are used as illustration only. The author doesn't supply, arrange or intermediate any ancient pieces.