Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1907-01-20
fATARS and ARMENIANS
Basis Of Race Troubles in the Oil
Fields Of Baku.
FoRHM VISIT TO A TA1AR MAeNArE
Aohannedan Reasons for Massacre-
ing Armenians-The Real Tartar
Different from the Popular
Notion.

TAKU, Dec 1O-Cspecial Correspondence
-"scratch Russian end you hnd a Ia
tar" Catch a Tahr" and you find
something very unpleasant.
Proverbal philosophy must be respected
as the concentrated wisdom OF mans gen
erations, or as an assistance in avoiding
thought And these two proverbs fairly
represent the popular idea OF Tatars
They are the labels for the species just as
an entomolosist puts a ticket under a beetle
and settles it's place and significance in the
universe
We think of Tatars as yellow little saw
nges with high cheek bones, ragged and
hungry. swinging curved swords, moving
in hordes Of devastation. true followers Of
Tanierlane, who heaped the monument Of
skulls. The portrait has become 30 fixed
and definite that 1t seems a pity to destroy
it, for human knowledge hates to be dis
turbed
Bus, like most things fixed and definite,
II Is already ceasing to be true. The Tatar
no longer corresponds with popular con-
ception and the change is now going on
with great rapidity.
Yesterday was Sunday THE rain had
fallen. the poet arose" says Tennyson in
one Of his domestic pieces. But II the poet
had lived in Baku he would have sat in his
study and kept his feet dry.
Mud and work at Baku.
For two days and three nights the rain
had indeed fallen. and all day long was
wading about in a pitch black slime Of
water and mud thickened with oil till II
was Just about as SLAB az the witches
cruel or the surface of the bottomless pit.
1t was out at Balakhani, the largest OF
the oil fields, few miles from the town
the scene. you remember. of the savage en-
counter between Tatar and Aremnian
workmen last year, in which 5000 chiefly
Armenians, are said to have been killed.
There I saw the perpetual work that
takes no count of Sunday. but goes on con-
tinually drawing up oil in long thin buckets
that drop down innumerable narrow holes
into the depths of mingled sand and oil
and water below. From every derrick
the greenish amber fluid poured down open
channels and pipes into reservoirs.
The whole country was splashed with
oil. In the great refuse pools women
went studying about. covered only with
slime below the waist, but keeping their
mouths decently concealed in a fold of
their head dress. With ragged cloths they
skinned the surface of the ponds, and,
squeezing the oil into buckets, they carried
IL nome 10 COOK the ulnnoFt warm lhe
children and light themselves 10 bed.
Degrees of MohRmmedans.
There we're the young barbarians all at
the works--those Tatars OF evil reputation.
Many Mussulman races are roughly olassi-
fed as Tatars. but the Persian workmen
are quite distinct and are usually mentioned
separately.
The Mohammedans OF the Caucasus num-
Der double all the other inhabitants,
GeOrgians, Russians and Americans put
together. but they are far from being all
Tatars The savage and skllful Lesghlans
of Daghestan, for Instance, come OF a much
more ancient stock, without the smallest
relation to Tatars of any kind. ~
The real Tatars, the descendants of
Tanerlanes hordes, come now from the
desert villages of the Baku province, and
a few from the deserts across the Caspian.
and even from far away Kaisan upon the
middle Volga. But though all the tribes
and races are as far as possible kept apart
in separate barracks and dormitories on
the oil fields they are united as Mussul-
mans by a common faith and a con . N
hatred
They worship the Prophet and they hate
the Armenian. No bond of blood could be
stronger.
Why this hatred should burst out with
more virulence at one time than another
l have not exactly discovered. 1t IL IN
calculable as the OIL which now and again
spouts up in a fountain filings tons OF
machinery, derricks workmen and ali high
in the air to destruction.
Causes for the Hatred.
Some put down last years abomination,
to poverty during strikes, some TO the
Tatar belief that the government hated
the Armenlans, some to the belief that the
government loved the Armenians some to
the wave OF Pan-Islamlsm which ls thought
to have stirred the Mohammedan world
All these things may have combined
and the shameful fiasco of the japanese
war revealing the corruption and inca
pacity OF the Russian government, gave tho
opportunity.
But the real cause lies deep in the an