Kott people
The Kott people were a nomadic Yeniseian-speaking people in Siberia, living along the Kan and Biryusa rivers. They were closely related to the Asan people. They spoke the Kott language, which went extinct in the 1850s.
Culture
The Kotts were primarily hunter-gatherer-fishers, with some cattle and horse breeding in the 19th century. They were known for their iron tools, and had developed blacksmithing.History
In the early 17th century, the Kotts lived along the Kan, Biryusa, and upper reaches of the Abakan, Mrassu and Kondoma rivers, and the latter is assumed to have been originally Kott. They previously settled from the Uda and Chuna basins in the east to the Tom basin in the west. By the 1850s, the Kotts had assimilated into the neighbouring population of southern Samoyeds, Turkic peoples, Buryats and Russians. They were tributaries of the Russian tsar, as well as the Tuba and Kyrgyz princes, who also collected tribute for the Altan Khan and the Dzungar Khan. Furs, tools and other valuable things were taken from them.They numbered around 860 people in the mid-17th century, according to. Other sources, however, report around a thousand Kotts. They were almost entirely assimilated into the Russians and Buryats by the time of Matthias Castrén's visits in the 1840s. By then, there were only 76 Kotts, and just 4 of them spoke the language. The remaining Kotts founded a village along the banks of the river, as Indigenous peoples of Siberia had to pay less tribute than Russians.