The indigenous chiefs, especially Khanty, Mansi, and Selkup ones, were customarily called princes, Ru knjazec, a practice dating to the pre-Russian colonial era. The Nenets chiefs were called knjazec or staršina ʻchief’. In the Russian colonial administrative system, the princes or chiefs acted as intermediaries between the Tsarist administration and the indigenous population, and their main task was taking care of the collection of tax, yasak. Additionally, they had a right to hand down decisions in local disputes. Lately, Perevalova has argued that the chiefs also had religious power inside the indigenous communities. The position was customarily handed down in a family, which is why some families, such as the Tajšins and Artanzeevs, could be called aristocratic. (Castrén 1852: 299–300; Forsyth 1992: 28–47; Lëzova 2000; Alekseev (ed.) 2010: 31, 117–136; Perevalova 2019)

This most probably refers to the Jendyrskie jurty, the place where the Khanty Endyrev and Jermakov families lived. They were part of what was known as Kanasʹ jex ‘princely community’, which also included the Tajšin family, among others. Some Khanty families living near the mouth of the River Obʹ are described as “Nenetsified” by several travellers. This refers to communities that spoke Khanty or were bilingual Khanty and Tundra Nenets speakers and who were nomadic large-scale reindeer herders – not like other Khanty who lived on fishing, hunting, and small-scale reindeer herding. According to Perevalova, the princely community was also called Пульнавыт ëх ‘Community of the mouth of the River Poluj’; in Tundra Nenets Саляндер ʻinhabitants of the cape’. (Perevalova 2004: 192–194; Perevalova 2021; Alekseev (ed.) 2010: 243; Castrén 1852: 312–314)