[4] At the beginning the first millennium AD, Turkic speaking cattle and horse breeders migrated from the Inner Asian steppes and would go on to significantly influence the Samoyedic, Ket, and Tungus populations of the Eastern Sayan Mountains.

[4] Despite adopting their language, these groups resisted full Turkification by retreating into the inaccessible mountains and traded with the new steppe peoples by providing them with furs throughout the Middle Ages.

[4] Around 350-400 years ago, the Soyots moved from the Lake Khövsgöl area to modern day Buryatia, where the Dukha and Uyghur-Uryankhay (Tuha) people were still living.

[citation needed] In 1920, the Polish scientist and writer Dr. Ferdinand Ossendowski, narrowly escaped being arrested by the Red Army and fled into the Siberia with his companions where he traveled through the traditional lands of the Soyot.

This wonderful land, rich in most diverse forms of natural wealth, is inhabited by a branch of the Mongols, which is now only sixty thousand and which is gradually dying off, speaking a language quite different from any of the other dialects of this folk and holding as their life ideal the tenet of "Eternal Peace."

[6] They told Ossendowski's party that they were fleeing Bolsheviks from the Irkutsk district who had crossed the Mongolian border and captured the Russian colony at Khathyl and were continuing to advance.

[6] The inhabitants of Urianhai, the Soyots, are proud of being the genuine Buddhists and of retaining the pure doctrine of holy Rama and the deep wisdom of Sakkia-Mouni.

Away back in the thirteenth century they preferred to move out from their native land and take refuge in the north rather than fight or become a part of the empire of the bloody conqueror Jenghiz Khan, who wanted to add to his forces these wonderful horsemen and skilled archers.

They avoided persistently meetings and encounters with the Red troops and Partisans, trekking off with their families and cattle southward into the distant principalities of Kemchik and Soldjak.

"[7][8] After the civil war, Petri was involved in planning changes in the economic lives of the minorities of the greater Altai-Sayan and Buryatia regions, including the Evenk, Soyot, and Tofalar.

[4] In 1940, the Okinsky Region was designated as an aimag and recognized its entire population as Buryat, causing the Soyot to lose their official identity as a Russian ethnic group.

It enabled them to travel through vast territories of mountainous taiga and were indispensable for hunting; it also provided them with clothing, shelter, milk, meat, and various other household items.

[14] Daniel Plumely suggested that the Soyot, Tofalar, Tozhu Tuvans, and Dukha, may have all "traded, inter-married and related across the breadth and width of the Sayans.

As the breadth of this region of the Sayans and into Hovsgol of Mongolia covers a distance of less than 800 kilometers – and the annual range territory of reindeer herds can be as much as several hundred kilometers in and of themselves – it is very possible that these people have traded, inter-married and related across the breadth and width of the Sayans – and that their languages and ancestry are all closely related to the old Tuvan language and possibly original heritage.Part of the efforts to revive Soyot culture involve reintroducing reindeer-herding.

[4] Unfortunately, foreign support eventually dried up, and wolf predation and lack of experience from the Soyot herders led to the decline of the herd.