The Solon people () are a subgroup of the Ewenki (Evenk) people of northeastern Asia. They live in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province, and constitute the majority of China's Ewenki.
Terminology and classification
The Ewenki (also spelled Evenki) people are spread throughout the taiga forests of much of northeastern Asia, including most of Eastern Siberia and parts of Northeastern China. According to Juha Janhunen's classification, the Ewenki people found in China can be classified into three subethnic groups: The Solon (, "Solon Ewenki") The Oroqen The "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus" - a small group which are known to the Chinese as the "Yakut" (, "Yakut Ewenki"). They are the only group in China engaged in reindeer herding.
Another subethnic group in China's Inner Mongolia, the Khamnigan are bilingual, speaking the Ewenki language along with a Mongolian dialect. Janhunen believes that their primary ethnic affiliation is Mongolian rather than Ewenki, and does not include them into his classification of China's Ewenki.
The above classification is different from the PRC's official classification, according to which the Oroqen are considered a separate ethnic group, while the official Ewenki ethnic group of China includes not only the Solons and the "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus", but also the Khamnigan (or, officially, the "Tungus Ewenki", ).
As both the "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus" and the Khamnigans are quite small groups (perhaps around 200 persons in the former, and under 2,000 in the latter, as of the 1990s), the majority of the people classified as "Ewenki" in China are Solons. The Solon population was estimated as 7,200 in 1957, 18,000 in 1982, and 25,000 in 1990.
According to Janhunen's analysis, the Oroqen are in fact much closer to the "Ewenki proper" (i.e., the Evenks of Siberia) than the Solon are. The Solon are characterized by their close association with the Daur people. The Solons reside in the same areas where Daur do, in particular, in Evenk Autonomous Banner of Inner Mongolia, and elsewhere throughout the prefecture-level city of Hulunbuir. While the Solon language itself is a dialect of the Evenki language, most of the Solons are also bilingual in the Mongolic Daur language.
History
Aiman was the word Manchus used for the north Tungusic tribes of the Ewenki and Orochen which the Manchus incorporated into the Manchu banner system. The Kiler Ewenki had allied with the Cossack Russians unlike other Ewenki such as the Solon Ewenki under Qing rule. The Cossacks had hunted Aiman women as concubines and had children with them at Yaksa. The mixed children numbered 13 girls and 3 boys out of a total of 19 girls and 20 boys. There were 16 women and 155 men. In 1685 the Qing captured the mixed Cossack-Aiman children as well as the Cossacks, their Kiler Ewenki allies and some Orochen and incorporated them into the Ewenki and Oroqen banners.
The Albazinians were told to marry Solon Evenki widows by the Board of Rites.
The Solons were ordered by the Qianlong emperor to stop using rifles and instead practice traditional archery issuing an edict for silver taels to be issued for guns to be turned over to the government.
During 1900-1931 many Han Chinese merchants came to Heilongjiang where Solon lived. Solon women were raped by Han merchants and Solon men were enslaved by the Han Chinese merchant creditors after Solons went into debt to them while trading furs on credit for guns, liquor and tobacco from the Han Chinese merchants from Zhili and Shanxi.
In Xinjiang
In 1763, a number of Solon bannermen, along with their Daur and Xibe comrades-in-arms were resettled from Manchuria (Northeastern China) to the frontier regions of the recently conquered Xinjiang (see Dzungar–Qing Wars). These Solon became also known as the "Ongkor Solon". The presence of the Solons in the region is attested in numerous Russian accounts, in particular from the time of the Muslim minorities' war and its aftermath.
Unlike Xinjiang's Xibe, who preserve their ethnic identity into the 21st century, the less numerous Solon settlers gradually assimilated to the Dagur and Xibe. While over 100 Solons still lived in Xinjiang in 1905–1908, less than 20 people identified as Solon in the region in 1991. In 1990, only one Solon speaker remained in Xinjiang; he was 79 years old.