Of the population about 5o% are Russians, partly descendants of the Old Believers who took refuge here from religious per secution from 1761 onwards. Colonization began in the 19th century, the settlers being mainly peasants from the crown lands, but no attempt was made to organize Russian colonization until 1874-1879. The colonists have occupied the areas suitable for cultivation, especially the Uimonsk region. Disputes between the Russian tillers of the soil and the nomad herdsmen of the hills were frequent and sharp before the creation of the autonomous area. The etymology of the word Oirat or Uirad is uncertain. Remusat and Pallas considered the term Durben Uirad, by which name Chinese writers speak of the Kalmucks, to mean The Four Allies, referring to the confederacy of four Kalmuck tribes which existed in the middle ages. Schmidt states that the Volga Kal mucks call themselves Uirad or Mongol Uirad, and the term Uirad Buriat also occurs in the records. Howorth after at first inclining to the view of Pallas and Remusat and considering that the term had no racial significance, later decided that Uirad was an indige nous term among the Kalmucks. Marco Polo says that Jenghiz Khan allowed the Horiads, out of gratitude for a victory they had won for him, to share the milk of his private herd of white mares, and Yule identifies the Horiads with the Uirads. According to Vambery the term means grey mare.
The Uirads are recorded as living in the region of the "eight rivers," i.e., the sources of the Kem or Upper Yenisei, at the accession of Jenghiz Khan. Apparently they were Mongols with a Turkish admixture. They submitted to Jenghiz Khan without any struggle and their chieftain Kara Kiragho was one of the nine famous generals or orloks who commanded divisions of Jenghiz Khan's army. A long struggle afterwards ensued between
the Uirads and the Mongols, and in the 15th century the greater part of the western Mongols were under Uirad overlordship. Towards the end of the 16th century the Uirad power decayed and the Mongols recovered their supremacy. The Dzungarians later overran the Uirad territory, but were themselves conquered by the Chinese in the 18th century, when many took refuge with the Kirghiz in Russian territory. The non-Russian population of the Oirat autonomous area is thus composed of the descendants of these various Turkish, Kalmuck and Mongol tribes and includes also some Kirghiz shepherds. These Altai hill tribes are all nomad herdsmen, supplementing their income by hunting and by under taking transport along the road from Kobdo to Biisk which passes through the Oirat area. It should be noted that the Telengets of the district north of Kusnetsk, lying outside the Oirat area, call themselves Oirat and that their language and poetry is similar to that of the Altaians, Howorth suggests that they may have been closely allied. Another division of the Uirads in 1296 deserted the Khan of Persia and went to Damascus. Among Altai moun tain peoples are the Mountain or Black Forest Tatars, living in the cedar forest region between the Katun and Lake Teletskoye and supplementing their semi-nomad herding by collecting cedar nuts and roots and hoeing the soil in a primitive way for wheat and barley cultivation. The Kumandins live on both banks of the Biya from the mouth of the Lebed downwards, and are taking to settled agriculture. Another Tatar group lives along the Lebed shores and is mainly occupied in hunting.
See Henry Howorth, The History of the Mongols (1876) , and in Russian Atlas of the U.S.S.R. (1928) .