Old Prussians

Old Prussians, Baltic Prussians or simply Prussians were a Baltic people that inhabited the region of Prussia, on the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula Lagoon to the west and the Curonian Lagoon to the east. As Balts, they spoke an Indo-European language of the Baltic branch now known as Old Prussian and worshipped pre-Christian deities. Their ethnonym was later adopted by predominantly Low German-speaking inhabitants of the region.
The duchy of the Polans under Mieszko I, which was the predecessor of the Kingdom of Poland, first attempted to conquer and baptize the Baltic tribes during the 10th century, but repeatedly encountered strong resistance. Not until the 13th century were the Old Prussians subjugated and their lands conquered by the Teutonic Order. The remaining Old Prussians were assimilated during the following two centuries. The Old Prussian language, documented only in a limited way, was effectively extinct by the 18th century.
The original territory of the Old Prussians prior to the first clashes with the Polans consisted of central and southern West and East Prussia, equivalent to parts of the modern areas of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland, the Kaliningrad Oblast in Russia and the southern Klaipėda Region in Lithuania. The territory was also inhabited by Scalovians, a tribe related to the Prussians, Curonians and Eastern Balts.

Etymology

"Prussians" is an exonym for these peoples, i.e., they did not refer to themselves with this word.
The words "Prussians/Prussia" may originate from toponymy, as the word Prūsas can be derived from the term for a body of water, an understandable convention in a coastal region dotted with thousands of lakes, streams, and swamps. To the south, the terrain runs into the vast wetlands of the Pripet Marshes at the headwaters of the Dnieper River, which has been an effective natural barrier throughout the millennia.
Writing in AD 98, Roman historian Tacitus described the pagan Aesti who lived somewhere by the Baltic Sea coast and east of the Vistula estuary. It has been suggested that the name Aesti could be etymologically related to the modern toponym Estonia. On the other hand, the Old Prussian and modern Lithuanian names for localities, such as the Vistula Lagoon, Aīstinmari and Aistmarės, respectively, also appear to derive from Aesti and mari, which suggests that the area around the lagoon had links with the Aesti.
The original settlers tended to name their assets after surrounding localities. The clan or tribal entity into which their descendants later were organized continued to use the names. This source is perhaps the one used in the very name of Prusa, for which an earlier Latin-language word is found in the Bavarian Geographer. In Tacitus' Germania, the Lugii Buri are mentioned living within the eastern range of the Germans. Lugi may descend from Pokorny's *leug-, while Buri is perhaps the root on which the toponym is based.
The name of Pameddi, the tribe, is derived from the words pa and median, which can be traced to the Proto-Indo-European adjective *médʰyos 'middle'. Nadruvia may be a compound of the words na and drawē. The name of the Bartians, a Prussian tribe, and the name of the Bārta river in Latvia are possibly cognates.
In the second century AD, the geographer Claudius Ptolemy listed some Borusci living in European Sarmatia, which was separated from Germania by the Vistula Flumen. His map is very confusing in that region, but the Borusci seem further east than the Prussians, which would have been under the Gythones at the mouth of the Vistula. The Aesti recorded by Tacitus, were 450 years later recorded by Jordanes as part of the Gothic Empire.

Organisation

The original Old Prussian settlement area in the western Baltics, as well as that of the eastern Balts, was much larger than in historical times. The archaeological documentation and associated finds confirm uninterrupted presence from the Iron Age to the successive conquest by Slavic tribes, beginning in the Migration Period.
Permanent recorded Baltic history begins in the 10th century with the failed Christianisation by Adalbert of Prague, the first conquest attempts at the expense of the Old Prussians by the duchy of the Polans under Mieszko I and the Duchy of Greater Poland under his son Bolesław, as a number of border areas were eventually lost.
Around the year 1000 AD, the Kashubians and Pomeranians lived to the west of the Old Prussians, the Poles to the south, the Sudovians to the east and south-east, the Skalvians to the north, and the Lithuanians to the northeast.
The smallest social unit in Baltic lands was the laūks, a word attested in Old Prussian as "field", which were small family oriented settlements, households and the surrounding fields, only separated from one another by uninhabited areas of forest, swamp and marsh. The word appears as a segment in Baltic settlement names, especially in Curonian, and is found in Old Prussian placenames such as in Stablack, from stabs + laūks. The plural is not attested in Old Prussian, but the Lithuanian plural of laukas is laukai.
A laūks was also formed by a group of farms, that shared economic interests and a desire for safety, ruled by a male head of the family and centred on strongholds or hill forts. The supreme power resided in general gatherings of all adult males, who discussed important matters concerning the community and elected the leader and chief; the leader was responsible for the supervision of the everyday matters, while the chief was in charge of the road and watchtower building, and border defense, undertaken by Vidivarii.
The head of a household was the buttataws. Larger political and territorial organisations, called terrula in Latin, existed in the early 13th century in the territories which later comprised Prussia, Latvia and Lithuania and centred on strongholds or hill forts. Such a political territorial unit covered up to and could have up to 2,000 inhabitants. They were known as pulka, comprising a dozen or so laukses.
Because the Baltic tribes inhabiting Prussia never formed a common political and territorial organisation, they had no reason to adopt a common ethnic or national name. Instead they used the name of the region from which they came – Galindians, Sambians, Bartians, Nadruvians, Natangians, Scalovians, Sudovians, etc. It is not known when and how the first general names came into being. This lack of unity weakened them severely, similar to the condition of Germany during the Middle Ages.
According to Jan Długosz, the Prussians, Samogitians, and Lithuanians were the same tribe.
The Prussian tribal structure is well attested in the Chronicon terrae Prussiae of contemporary author Peter of Dusburg, a chronicler of the Teutonic Order. The work is dated to 1326. He lists eleven lands and ten tribes, which were named on a geographical basis. These were:

	Latin	German	Polish	modern Lithuanian	reconstructed Prussian	see also
1	Pomesania	Pomesanien	Pomezania	Pamedė	Pameddi	Pomesanians
2	Varmia	Ermland, Warmien	Warmia	Varmė	Wārmi	Warmians
3	Pogesania	Pogesanien	Pogezania	Pagudė	Paguddi	Pogesanians
4	Natangia	Natangen	Natangia	Notanga	Notangi	Natangians
5	Sambia	Samland	Sambia	Semba	Semba	Sambians
6	Nadrovia	Nadrauen	Nadrowia	Nadruva	Nadrāuwa	Nadruvians
7	Bartia	Barten	Barcja	Barta	Barta	Bartians
8	Scalovia	Schalauen	Skalowia	Skalva	Skallawa	Skalvians
9	Sudovia	Sudauen	Sudawia	Sūduva	Sūdawa	Sudovians or Yotvingians
10	Galindia	Galindien	Galindia	Galinda	Galinda	Galindians
11	Culm	Kulmerland	Chełmno	Kulmas	Kulma, Kulms

Culture, religion and customs

"The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan" describes a ninth century voyage by traveller and trader Wulfstan of Hedeby to the land of the Old Prussians. He observed their funeral customs.

Customs

Characterized as a humble people, who dressed plainly, the Old Prussians were "distinguished for their valor and great bodily strength". They generally rejected luxury, yet were very hospitable, and enjoyed celebrating and drinking excessively, usually mead. Wulfstan of Hedeby, who visited the trading town of Truso at the Vistula Lagoon, observed that wealthy people drank fermented mare's milk kumis instead of mead. According to Adam of Bremen, the Sambians are said to have consumed horse blood as well as horse milk. He also mentions that horse meat was eaten.
Women held no powerful positions among the Old Prussians and, according to Peter von Dusburg, were treated like servants, forbidden to share the husband's table. Commercial marriage was widespread and after the husband's death, the widow fell to the son, like other inheritance. Polygyny, up to three wives, was widespread. Adultery was a serious crime, punishable with death. After the submission to the Teutonic Order, commercial marriage and polygyny were forbidden.