A long time ago there lived a man, Veliney, in the Nanay village of Buriken. Many years later this village gave birth to the city of Khabarovsk. Veliney was a bold and successful hunter from the tribe of Oninka. A lot of girls wanted to marry him, but he married Sedekey, the most beautiful girl from all over the neighbourhood. The largest bride price paid Veliney! Having become a wife, Sedekey used to keep their house: all day long she was fetching water and cooking food, sewing and mending clothes, chopping firewood and stoking a fire. Some time passed, and they got a son, Surgii. When the son was growing, Veliney loved to play with him, and then little by little he began to teach him how to find tracks of wild animals in the forest, how to recognize birds by their voices, how to find the way home by the sun or the stars. Surgii was a good boy and easily adopted all the skills from his father.
Then Veliney got a younger son, Pugey. The son was growing slowly and was often sick while a child. His mother was very sorry for the kid, who had been with her all the time. She did not want him to be a hunter. When Pugey grew up a little, he was sent to a parish school where he learned the Russian language and got a good understanding of reading, writing and counting.
When Surgii, the elder son, grew up, he became a hotshot like his father. He hunted for wild boars, red deers, roe deers in the taiga. From time to time he met a bear or a tiger and none of them were able to avoid his bullets. His fishing rods also were not lying in vain. Surgii was the best hunter and fisherman, and their home became the richest in the village. He married a nice girl. The wife of Surgii then gave birth to a lovely daughter.
Thus they lived. A long time elapsed, and Veliney became old and sick. Sedekey attended her sick husband for a long time. Eventually, Veliney became very ill and died. After that Sedekey lived with her children, but she did not like the daughter-in-law, she often scolded her and finally decided to find a husband for herself.
It happened one day that Sedekey befriended a Chinese. She once walked noisily with the Chinese, so that all the people learnt that they became the husband and the wife. The name of the Chinese was Dyfenty. Dyfenty had the rank of a big banana - gasanda. At that time he ruled the area from Khabarovsk to Bikin.
They began to live together. The elder brother, Surgii, was hunting and fishing. The younger brother, Pugey, grew up and his stepfather Dyfenty used to take him on trips to the edge of the Amur country. On these trips, they often had to deal with merchants. With the lapse of time Dyfenty started a trading business together with his stepson. At the mother's instigation Pugey gradually took all the trade in his own hands.
Then Pugey bought a big boat and began to trade in fish and furs, sailing from one village to another, from one river to the next. In ten years Pugey turned into a "big man", thick and important; the whole neighbourhood knew him, calling "Pugey the trader".
One day Pugey was going up a river in his boat. In a secluded spot he saw a woman, one man's wife. He began talking to her, lured her into his boat and stole the woman. Then he sold her to an Udegey that lived in the village of Chora and who was his friend.
Pugey came back home, hoping that no one would know what happened, but his stepfather learned about his trick from a distant relative and decided to abandon Pugey and his mother. However, the woman showed her husband a magical thing that she got some time ago from a local shaman. According to his words, this thing was made from a bird and could cause a black disease and death. When Dyfenty learnt about this, he was frightened and did not dare to leave the woman. And his wife became so brave that she laughed at him. They began living together again.
Time was creeping on and one day Surgii's wife delivered a baby boy.
Meanwhile Pugey became "too big for his boots" that he could afford such tricks as follows. He gathered furs of all hunters and went to a Manchurian city. There he exchanged the furs for all that he needed. Having returned home from there, he took half of the proceeds for himself and the rest he distributed among the people. In such a way, he would cheat the illiterate Nanay hunters. Pugey became the biggest liar among the Nanay merchants!
Once when Pugey went by boat to trade, he took three women with him. On that day he earned a very large income. On the way back, he was drunk and began to stick to one of the women.
"I saw in a dream that you are my wife," - said Pugey.
"I do not want to be your wife - you are greedy," - replied the woman. "Well, let's just sleep together - I'll give you new beads!" "Don't want your beads!"
When she refused him, Pugey got angry, attacked her treacherously and raped her. The next morning he got sober and realized what he had done! He was afraid of retaliation - he thought that relatives of the woman would kill him. Then he decided not to wait for revenge and stabbed all three women with a long dagger - he killed them all. When he returned home, he told everyone that the women stayed with their relatives in a remote village.
One day, on the return from a trip, Pugey got drunk and went wandering around the village, having the heebie-jeebies. From time to time, he stopped in the middle of the road, telling someone that he was a smart and rich trader, but no one wanted to listen to him. In the evening he returned home when all the people had gone to bed. Pugey sat alone drunk, crying and showing off. As he was sitting there, a boy, son of the elder brother, woke up and started to weep. The man yelled:
"What are you crying for? I just got tired, I have no children and don't want to have!"
Cursing like this, he rushed to the boy. The boy began to cry in fear even harder. The man took the boy's cradle and threw it on the floor. The cradle, falling to the floor, knocked down the boy. Pugey went to sleep then as if nothing had happened. The next morning the boy was found dead. Thus Pugey killed the kid of his elder brother.
People do not want to believe what happened. After a while they caught Pugey. He was not able to cheat his brother and told him everything. The folks were talking that the evil spirit Orkii had possessed his soul. The old men gathered in Pugey's house and put him on trial. In the old days, the Nanay folks conducted the trial in such a manner: many people clustered together and discussed what to do with an offender. At that meeting they decided to execute Pugey - Surgii should kill his brother with his own hands.
The folks pointed to a small lake, which was like a swamp. It was the worst of the lakes, a lonely lake, which lived for its own sake. Having got to that little lake, Surgii bound his younger brother, then killed him, and drowned him in the lake. The lake became hectic. There was blood everywhere instead of water. Surgii burst out crying - he lost his brother!
![Pugey the Trader [Славянский Владимир Владимирович]](/img/s/slawjanskij_wladimir_wladimirowich/pugeythetrader/pugeythetrader-1.jpg)