Although outnumbered, the Russians pressured the various family-based tribes into changing their loyalties and establishing distant forts from which they conducted raids.

[1][better source needed] The Russian conquest of Siberia began in July 1581 when some 540 Cossacks under Yermak Timofeyevich invaded the territory of the Voguls, subjects to Kuchum Khan, ruler of the Sibir Khanate.

Following a series of Tatar raids in retaliation against the Russian advance, Yermak's forces prepared for a campaign to take Qashliq, the Siberian capital.

After a three-day battle on the banks of the Irtysh River, Yermak was victorious against a combined force of Kuchum Khan and six allied Tatar princes.

In 1586, the Russians returned, and after subduing the Khanty and Mansi people through the use of their artillery they established a fortress at Tyumen close to the ruins of Qashliq.

Despite his personal escape, the capture of his family ended the political and military activities of Kuchum Khan and he retreated to the territories of the Nogai Horde in southern Siberia.

[citation needed] In order to subjugate the natives and collect yasak (fur tribute), a series of winter outposts (zimovie) and forts (ostrogs) were built at the confluences of major rivers and streams and important portages.

[3] To the north Beryozovo (1593) and Mangazeya (1600–1601) were built to bring the Nenets under tribute, while to the east Surgut (1594) and Tara (1594) were established to protect Tobolsk and subdue the ruler of the Narym Ostiaks.

By 1610, men from Turukhansk had reached the mouth of the Yenisei and ascended it as far as the Sym, where they met rival tribute collectors from Ketsk.

[4] Following the khan's death and the dissolution of any organised Siberian resistance, the Russians advanced first towards Lake Baikal and then the Sea of Okhotsk and the Amur River.

In a sense, the khanate lived on in the subsidiary title "Tsar of Siberia" which became part of the full imperial style of the Russian autocrats.

Historian John F. Richards wrote: "... it is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons.

Under the leadership of Vasilii Poyarkov in 1645 and Yerofei Khabarov in 1650 many people, including members of the Daur tribe, were killed by the Cossacks.

[14] Cleansing of the Chukchis and Koryaks was ordered by Empress Elizabeth in 1742 to totally expel them from their native lands and erase their culture through war.

The command was that the natives be "totally extirpated" with Pavlutskiy leading again in this war from 1744 to 1747 in which he led the Cossacks "with the help of Almighty God and to the good fortune of Her Imperial Highness", to slaughter the Chukchi men and enslave their women and children as booty.

[17] Kamchatka today is European in demographics and culture with only 5% of it being native, around 10,000 from a previous number of 150,000, due to the mass slaughters by the Cossacks after its annexation in 1697 of the Itelmens and Koryaks throughout the first decades of Russian rule.

[20] The oblastniki in the 19th century among the Russians in Siberia acknowledged that the natives were subjected to immense violent exploitation, and claimed that they would rectify the situation with their proposed regionalist policies.

The Buryats make up only 33.5% of their own Republic, the Altai 37% and the Chukchi only 28%; the Evenk, Khanty, Mansi, and Nenets are outnumbered by non-natives by 90% of the population.

The actual boundaries of Siberia thus became very vaguely defined and open to interpretation; effectively, Russian dominion over the land ended only whenever Russia's claims to land conflicted with those of centralised states capable of opposing Russian expansion and consistently asserting their own sovereignty over a given territory, such as China and Mongolia.