Abraham Ortelius — Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus (1570)
The first atlas map of Tartary; shows California across the imaginary Strait of Anián.
Abraham Ortelius · Web pageOpen source ↗
Tartaria in North America, 1500s–1800s: What the Primary Sources Show
History Researcher brief, October 2026 · HTML
The "Tartarian Empire" theory holds that a vast, advanced civilization once spanned the globe, including North America, and was erased in the 1800s: its people killed or put in institutions, its grand buildings taken over, and its wealth seized. The idea grew out of Anatoly Fomenko and Gleb Nosovsky's Russian "New Chronology," which claims the American Revolution was really a war over the "American lands of the Moscow Tartary." Since about 2016 it has spread widely online through videos about old buildings, world's fairs and "mud floods."
Key points
- Maps placed Tartary in Asia; its closeness to America on old maps reflects the imaginary Strait of Anián, not a real empire.
- Writers who called Native Americans "Tartars" were debating ancient Asian migration, not describing a living Tartarian nation.
- Fairs, asylums and civic buildings have documented builders, contracts and planned demolitions; no seizure is recorded.
- Documented 1800s killings, land seizures and gold-field exclusion name Native, Mexican, Chilean and Chinese Californians, never "Tartarians."
Tartaria and North America, 1500–1900: Claims and the Records That Survive
Prepared for: Interesting History research archive Compiled: October 9, 2026 (PT) Method: Wherever possible, quotes below come straight from the OCR text of digitized original editions, mostly Internet Archive scans, which I downloaded and searched for this brief. Old spelling is kept, and OCR errors are fixed only where the reading is obvious. Anything I could not open and quote myself is marked [not verified]. Facts drawn from modern scholarship or reference works rather than from a scan I read are marked [secondary].
Bottom line, stated up front. Across every archive searched, I found no primary document from 1500–1900 that describes a "Tartarian" nation, army, government, building program, gold reserve or population living in North America. I also found none recording such people being killed, put in asylums or orphanages, or stripped of property. What the records do contain is: (1) a long-running and once-mainstream European theory that Native Americans were descended from "Tartars" or "Scythians" who crossed from Asia; (2) maps that put Asian "Tartary" close to northwest America because the Pacific was poorly charted; (3) ordinary 19th-century American use of "Tartar" for China's Manchu (Qing) dynasty; and (4) heavily documented 1800s violence, land seizure and gold-field exclusion against Native Californians, Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese and others. None of those records calls the victims "Tartarians."
1. Origins of the modern theory
1a. Fomenko and Nosovsky's "New Chronology"
- Claim (verified quote via a scholarly letter). Nosovsky and Fomenko, Reconstruction of World History (New Chronology), Moscow: Business Express, 2001, p. 451, quoted in translation in a 2013 letter to the Notices of the American Mathematical Society: "Apparently, the 'Independence war' in North America was a war with the weakening American Russian Horde. The Romanovs attacked the Horde from the East, and Americans 'struggling for independence' attacked it from the West… In reality this was a war for the partition of enormous American lands of the Moscow Tartary." Source: (also at ).
- Their own English site lists chapter titles including "Conquest of America by Russia-Horde and the Ottoman Empire-Atamania in the XV century," "The conquest of Central America by Ataman Yermak = Conquistador Cortes," and "The division of the remains of Russia-Horde between the Romanovs and the USA… immediately after the Romanovs' victory over 'Pugachev.'" Source:
- What they cite. The 1771 Encyclopaedia Britannica (see §2d), old maps, and the matching dates of the Pugachev revolt (1773–75) and the American Revolution (1775–83). The idea depends on a coincidence of dates. The documentary record for the American Revolution (Continental Congress journals, British War Office papers, muster rolls) never mentions a Horde or a Tartary in America.
- Reception [secondary]. Mainstream scholars reject New Chronology. See and the AMS letter above.
1b. Levashov and the 2016+ internet version
- [secondary] Wikipedia's article traces the "Great Tartaria" idea from Fomenko (1970s–80s) to Nikolai Levashov's racial-occult writings, and then to an English-language internet movement from about 2016 (Reddit, YouTube, "mud flood" videos) that dropped the original Russian-nationalist framing.
- A typical modern statement of the theory (quoted by a fact-checker). The back cover of James W. Lee, The One World Tartarians (2020), quoted by Lead Stories: "They have been swept from modern his-story books and were likely destroyed in the 19th-20th centuries along with many of their amazing buildings… while Black Moors were the Native American people not the Indians… They were flooded, fire bombed, earthquaked and likely had directed energy weapons (DEW) used against them."
- The same fact-check quotes a social-media post: "Babies were grown in incubators and sent out West to repopulate abandoned Tartarian cities. The 'Cabbage Patch Kids' were sent on orphan trains…"
1c. Bloomberg, 2021
- Zach Mortice, "Inside the 'Tartarian Empire,' the QAnon of Architecture," Bloomberg CityLab, April 27, 2021. (author's mirror: ). Mortice notes that "Tartaria, or Tartary, though never a coherent empire, was indeed a general term for north-central Asia." His photo caption says believers treat the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition fairgrounds as "the ancient capital cities of a fictional empire."
2. Maps and texts that put "Tartary" in or near North America
2a. What "Tartary" meant
- Library of Congress, Worlds Revealed blog, "Tracking 'Tartary' on Western Maps" (June 2025): the extra "r" came from blending "Tatar" with the classical underworld Tartarus. On Visscher's 1657 map, "the lack of colored regions or borders… reflects the reality that 'Tartaria' was not a political designation." By 1885 the label had given way to "Turkestan," "Mongolia" and "Manchuria."
- The 1771 Britannica (vol. II, "Geography" table of divisions) lists Tartary under ASIA, split into "1. Chinese, 2. Independent, 3. Muscovite" (OCR: "7. Tartary 1. Chineſe 2, Independent 2. Mufcovite"). It does not appear under America.
2b. Ortelius, 1570: the key "Tartary next to California" map
- Abraham Ortelius, Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus, in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1570). LoC scan:
- Map cartouche (Latin, from the Univ. of Michigan EEBO transcription of the English edition): "Continet haec tabula omnem Tartariam, cum reliqua Asiae Orientalioris usque Oceanum Eoum parte, Magno Chamo obediente" ("This map contains all Tartaria, with the rest of eastern Asia to the Eastern Ocean, obedient to the Great Khan").
- Accompanying English text (1606 Theatre of the Whole World, same source): "TARTARIA, OR THE EMPIRE OF THE MIGHTIE CHAM… it comprehendeth that country which the old Historiographers called Sarmatia of Asia, both the Scythiaes…"
- What it shows. Ortelius's "Tartaria" is the Great Khan's Asian realm. The map also draws the American northwest coast and "California" just across the Strait of Anián, which does not exist. LoC: "North America (including California!) is placed only a stone's throw from Asia across the non-existent Strait of Anian." Dealers note it is "the earliest obtainable map to name California" ().
2c. Other maps to look at (archive links)
Conclusion for maps. Every "Tartary" label I could check is placed in Asia. The nearness to America comes from the uncharted North Pacific, the imaginary Strait and Kingdom of Anián, and invented voyages (de Fonte). No map I saw labels any part of North America as "Tartaria." If a proponent shows one that does, ask for the catalog record (title, date, institution, call number) and check whether the label sits on the Asian side.
2d. The 1771 Britannica entry
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st ed., vol. III (Edinburgh, 1771), "TARTARY." OCR: "TARTARY, a vaſt country in the northern parts of Aſia, bounded by Siberia on the north and weſt: this is called Great Tartary. The Tartars who lie ſouth of Moſcovy… are thoſe of Aſtracan, Circaſſia, and Dagiſtan… the Calmuc Tartars… the Uſbec Tartars and Moguls… and, laſtly, thoſe of Tibet."
- It says nothing about America. The "capital Tobolsk / Moscow Tartary" claim used by Fomenko comes from the Geography table in vol. II. That table's OCR is too garbled for me to read the capitals column. [not verified]
2e. Russian America: the real part
- Evert Ysbrants Ides, Three Years Travels from Moscow Over-land to China (London, 1706), on reports he heard: "ſome are of Opinion that this part of Aſia is joined to the firm Continent of America."
- William Coxe, Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and America (London, 1780): . This is the standard English account of Bering, Chirikov and the fur-trade voyages. [not quoted]
- [secondary] Documented facts: Bering's voyages (1728, 1741); the Russian-American Company chartered 1799; Fort Ross, California, 1812–1841 (sold to John Sutter); Alaska sold to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million. These were Russian imperial ventures run from St. Petersburg. None of their records calls the settlements "Tartary."
- Bancroft also records, and rejects, a claim that Russians at Bodega knew of gold on the Yuba River: "Count Scala claims for the Russians of Bodega knowledge of gold on Yuba River as early as 1815, but he fails to support the assertion." H. H. Bancroft, History of California, vol. VI (1888), p. 36.
3. "Battles," "figures," and the real Tartar-origin theory
3a. Specific claimed battles and leaders
- Searched for: named Tartarian battles, wars or leaders in North America, including links to the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, "Moors," Washitaw, Mound Builders and giants.
- Found. (1) Fomenko/Nosovsky's claim that the Revolutionary War was a war against an "American Russian Horde" (§1a). (2) Their identification of Cortés with the Cossack Yermak (chronologia.org). (3) Blog and video claims that 1840s–1850s California was a "grand Tartarian city" taken over by Freemasons and Mormons (§12a). (4) The "Black Moors were the Native American people" claim (§9c). I found no source that names a Tartarian commander, battle site, date and casualty list that can be checked against records.
- Mound Builders and giants: an 1827 root. John Ranking, Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez, and Talomeco, in the Thirteenth Century, by the Mongols, Accompanied with Elephants (London: Longman, 1827).
- Introduction: "he now ventures confidently to affirm that Peru, Mexico, and other countries in America, were conquered by the Mongols, accompanied with elephants, in the thirteenth century."
- "The Bogotans, the Natchez, and the people of Talomeco on the Ohio, all bear the strongest proofs of the same origin. All the ancient entrenchments and inscriptions discovered in America, as far as Narraganset Bay near Boston, are, there is every probability, of Mongol origin… Most of the places peopled by these Mongols have traditions regarding conflicts with giants, (elephants)." (Introduction, pp. ~21–23.)
- Ranking calls the Mongols "called also Tartars." This is the closest 19th-century printed source to "Tartars built North American earthworks and fought giants." It was speculation from a single author, built on resemblances, and archaeology has since dated and attributed the mounds to Native American cultures (Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian) [secondary].
3b. The real, once-mainstream theory: Native Americans as descendants of Tartars or Scythians (with quotes)
This is the strongest primary-source thread in the whole topic. From 1590 to about 1800, many European and American authors argued that the first Americans came from "Tartary" across a northern land link. They meant ancestry and migration in the distant past. None of them described a living Tartarian empire in America.
What this shows. "Tartars in America" is a real phrase in old books. It meant the Asian ancestors of Native Americans, centuries or millennia earlier. Modern genetics and archaeology broadly agree that the first Americans came from northeast Asia (Siberia/Beringia), though more than 15,000 years ago, not in historical times [secondary]. Pulled out of context, these quotes are probably a key raw ingredient of the modern myth.
4. Old-World people claimed to be involved
5. Buildings
5a. World's fairs (the "destruction of Tartarian cities" claim)
- 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago ("White City"). H. H. Bancroft, The Book of the Fair (Chicago, 1893), vol. 1: "in the construction of the main buildings there were used nearly 20,000 tons of iron and steel and 30,000 tons of staff, many thousand tons of glass, and about 70,000,000 feet of lumber." . "Staff" was a plaster-and-fiber facing over wood and iron frames, made to be temporary [secondary]. Chief of construction Daniel H. Burnham; landscape by Frederick Law Olmsted; most buildings were destroyed by fire in 1894 or demolished; the Palace of Fine Arts survives as the Museum of Science and Industry [secondary]. Construction photographs exist: C. D. Arnold's official photographs (Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Public Library) [not opened].
- 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), San Francisco. Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition (official history, 5 vols., New York: Putnam, 1921). Vol. 5 has a chapter "Wreckage and Salvage" and Part VI "Rules for Wrecking and Removal." On the Palace of Fine Arts, after a petition "nearly three inches thick": "it was decided not to wreck the building, but to keep it open until May 1, 1916, under the management of the Chief of Fine Arts" (vol. 5, ~p. 149). (vol. 4: ). The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck and rebuilt in permanent materials in the 1960s [secondary].
- Reading. The demolitions proponents cite were planned in the official histories before the fairs opened, with contracts, bonds ("a cash bond of $500") and salvage rules. These records document the wrecking of temporary structures. None describes a takeover of older buildings.
5b. Asylums (Kirkbride) and "mud-flood" basements
- Thomas S. Kirkbride, On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane (1854; 2nd ed. 1880).
- p. 60: "The basement or first story of the building should be raised three steps, or about twenty-four inches above the surface of the ground around it… the cellar should always be excavated under the entire building."
- "A building having a basement entirely above ground, and two stories above this, is not objectionable, and will generally be adopted on account of its being less expensive."
- Relevance. The leading 19th-century asylum design manual specifies raised basements and partly sunken cellars. That is a design choice published in advance, which is the opposite of buildings later buried by mud.
- Stockton State Insane Asylum: the 1854 trustees' report the user already has documents the $80,000 appropriation, the brick main building, and an engraving ordered "with wings attached" to show the planned expansion.
5c. Other claimed buildings: documented builders
See §11 for the table (SF City Hall, Brooklyn Bridge, capitols, star forts).
6. "Killed and institutionalized": asylums and orphan trains
- Claim. Lead Stories quotes the post: "Babies were grown in incubators and sent out West to repopulate abandoned Tartarian cities… sent on orphan trains." Proponents read the rapid growth of asylums and orphanages as a way of hiding surviving Tartarians.
- Orphan trains, primary record. Charles Loring Brace (founder of the Children's Aid Society), The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them (New York, 1872): "These important results were obtained in 1859, with but four or five thousand children settled in the West. We have now in various portions of our country between twenty and twenty-four thousand who have been placed in homes or provided with work." The chapter heading lists the "Best Remedy Emigration to the West." . Children's Aid Society annual reports from 1854: . These reports name the children's origins: New York tenements, immigrant (largely Irish and German) poverty, and orphanhood. I found no "Tartar" in Brace's book (full-text search: zero hits).
- Asylums. The 1854 Stockton report's nativity table, which the user has, lists birthplaces including Russia 2, China 1 and Hindostan 1, and no "Tartary." I did not search every asylum register in the country. In the records I did check, I found no asylum register, case note or annual report using "Tartar" or "Tartarian" as a patient's nationality or ethnicity. [limited search: treat as "not found," not as "proven absent"]
7. Interesting things proponents point to, and the best explanation for each
8. Were 1800s Chinese laborers "former Tartarians or friends of them"?
8a. What proponents claim
- I searched for a specific, citable Tartaria source that makes this claim. I found none: no book, article or video transcript I could trace says that Chinese railroad workers or miners were Tartarians. The idea seems to circulate informally. The closest documented threads are the "repopulation" posts (§6) and the general theory that 1800s laborers were "inheritors" or a workforce sent in after a "reset." If the user has a specific video or post, it should be traced on its own terms. [claim source not found]
8b. Where the "Tartar" link with China really comes from
In the 1800s, Americans and Europeans routinely called China's ruling Manchu (Qing) dynasty "Tartar," and the queue hairstyle a "Tartar" custom. That is a real overlap of words, but it describes China's government, not a lost empire.
- Rev. Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati, 1877), pp. ~117–118: the queue is "a badge or token of citizenship or loyalty to the reigning Chinese dynasty. Shun Chi, the first Emperor of the present Tartar dynasty, who came to the throne in A.D. 1644, issued a proclamation throughout the land requiring all the people to adopt this Tartar custom of shaving the front part of the head and braiding the rest of the hair into a cue."
- Gibson (p. ~211) quotes a San Francisco newspaper mocking Chinese women freed in court: "The sweet Tartarian maids were given over to the lovers they had braved the seas to meet." This is a direct 1870s instance of Chinese immigrants being called "Tartarian," used as a sarcastic ethnic label.
- U.S. Congress, Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration (Senate Rep. 689, 1877). . Testimony includes:
- "there is a class of coolies which come here… They are a sort of wild race of Tartars. To bring them is like introducing savages here. But still… there is a class of merchants who come from Hong-Kong and Canton…" (a hostile witness using "Tartars" as an insult)
- On the queue: "when it was first imposed upon them by the Tartar dynasty, it was a badge of subjection and disgrace."
- A witness corrects a questioner: "Tartary is only one country of Asia. Tartary is the extreme eastern confine of China."
- "The population of the province of Kwangtung… is about twenty millions, and I should reckon the population of this particular region [which] furnishes the emigrants at not less than five millions."
- (Page numbers not captured. Search the full text for the quoted phrases.)
- California newspapers (Chronicling America, Library of Congress):
- Weekly Placer Herald (Auburn), Aug. 27, 1853, p. 2, on the Taiping rebellion: "it seems that the Tartar dynasty must fall."
- Nevada Journal (Nevada City), Aug. 26, 1853, p. 1: same item.
- Weekly Union Record (Oroville), Feb. 17, 1866, p. 3: "The Ta-tsing or Tartar dynasty, founded in 1644, is yet in power."
8c. Where the laborers actually came from
- Memorial of the Six Chinese Companies (San Francisco, 1877), with testimony: "I think they come from the district adjacent to Canton."
- The 1877 Joint Committee testimony above names Kwangtung (Guangdong) as the source region.
- [secondary] Stanford's Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project documents that most Central Pacific Chinese workers came from the Siyi (Four Districts, including Taishan) area of the Pearl River Delta, Guangdong. Central Pacific employed about 11,000 Chinese at its 1868 peak. Payroll records (California State Railroad Museum) list crews by headman, often without individual names. ; Polk, Merritt & Cannon study PDF: ; NPS, "The Archeology of Chinese Laborers…":
- Records to consult [not opened by me]: NARA Chinese Exclusion Act case files (RG 85, San Francisco district, 1882–1943), which record birth villages in Guangdong; 1860–1880 federal census entries (birthplace "China"); ship passenger lists at San Francisco (incomplete before 1882). I know of no record where a Chinese immigrant's birthplace is given as "Tartary."
- Verdict. The documents show the laborers came from Guangdong. "Tartar" appears in English writing about them only as a name for the Qing dynasty or as an insult. Nothing ties them to a "Tartarian" civilization.
9. Black people in North America before and during slavery, and the "Moors" and "made-up numbers" claims
9a. Documented early African presence (with primary sources)
These are real and well documented, and they show African presence in North America decades before 1619. Spanish expeditions brought Africans as early as 1513. None of these records describes Africans as "Moors of a Tartarian empire." Estevanico is described as an enslaved man from Azemmour, Morocco.
9b. Pre-Columbian African contact claims
- Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (Random House, 1976), argued for Nubian/Egyptian contact with the Olmecs about 700 BC and a Malian voyage under Abu Bakr II about 1311–1312.
- Critique: Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano and Warren Barbour, "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs," Current Anthropology 38:3 (1997), doi:10.1086/204626. . Abstract (verified): "no genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World… The colossal Olmec heads… were carved hundreds of years before the arrival of the presumed models."
- Abu Bakr II: the only source is al-Umari's 14th-century account of Mansa Musa's statement in Cairo that his predecessor sailed into the Atlantic and did not return. That is a real document, but it says nothing about where he went [secondary].
9c. "Moors" claims
- Modern movements [secondary]. Noble Drew Ali founded the Canaanite Temple (later the Moorish Science Temple of America) in Newark around 1913. Its teaching that Black Americans are "Moorish" and indigenous is a 20th-century religious doctrine. The "Washitaw Nation" (Verdiacee Goston "Empress" Washitaw-Turner) arose in the 1990s. Lead Stories on the claim that Black Americans are indigenous: . The Tartaria version, "Black Moors were the Native American people not the Indians," is on the back cover of James W. Lee's 2020 book (§1b).
- What really happened (primary).
- The 1790 "Free Moors" petition, South Carolina House of Representatives. Free men who identified as subjects of the Emperor of Morocco asked not to be tried under the "Negro Act." The House committee found that "persons who were Subjects of the Emperor of Morocco being Free in this State are not triable by the Law for the better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and other Slaves." Transcription of the Journal of the House, Jan. 1790 (pp. 363–364): (verified via transcription)
- Omar ibn Said, an enslaved Fula Muslim scholar in North Carolina, wrote his autobiography in Arabic in 1831. Original at the Library of Congress: (translation: )
- Ayuba Suleiman Diallo ("Job ben Solomon"): Thomas Bluett, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon (London, 1734), on his time enslaved in Maryland: "he wrote a Line or two before us, and when he read it, pronounced the Words Allah and Mahommed; by which, and his refusing a Glass of Wine we offered him, we perceived he was a Mahometan."
- Abdul Rahman Ibrahima (enslaved in Mississippi, freed 1828) [secondary: T. Alford, Prince Among Slaves, 1977].
- Verdict. Muslim West Africans, some of whom Europeans would have called "Moors," really were among enslaved people in North America. These records show them arriving as captives through the Atlantic slave trade or as captured North Africans. They do not show them as pre-existing inhabitants or as remnants of a Tartarian empire.
9d. "The US made up slave numbers"
- Who claims it. I found no specific author or document making this claim in a citable form. The nearest published version is the "Black Moors were the Native Americans" line (Lee 2020) and Moorish/Washitaw teachings (§9c). [claim source not found]
- How the numbers are actually known.
- SlaveVoyages (Emory University and partners): records of more than 36,000 trans-Atlantic voyages, 1514–1866, compiled from port registers, customs and naval-office records, insurance and merchant papers, and ship logs. Estimates: about 12.52 million embarked and 10.7 million disembarked; about 388,776 landed in mainland North America (~3.6%). ; method: (verified on site pages)
- Earlier independent estimate: Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1969), about 9.5 million landed [secondary]. Eltis and Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale, 2010) [secondary].
- U.S. federal census slave schedules of 1850 and 1860 list each enslaved person by owner, age, sex and color (names usually omitted). Scans are at NARA (microfilm M432/M653) and on FamilySearch and Ancestry [not opened].
- Also: plantation account books, probate inventories, bills of sale, runaway advertisements (e.g., Cornell's "Freedom on the Move" database), and the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves (in effect Jan. 1, 1808).
- Why the US numbers grew without imports. Fewer than 400,000 people landed, but the 1860 census counted about 3.95 million enslaved people. The growth came from births under hereditary slavery. That is the opposite pattern from a cover-up: the import figure is small and the census figure large, and each comes from different, independently kept records.
- Verdict. No evidence I found supports fabrication. The figures come from many independent record systems (European ports, African-coast forts, Caribbean and US customs, insurance, censuses) kept by competing nations and private firms, and they broadly agree with one another.
10. Claimed extermination vs. documented killings and removals
10a. What proponents claim
Mass death of a "Tartarian" population in the 1800s, through "mud flood," fire, earthquake, "DEW," war, epidemics, then asylums and orphan trains to absorb survivors (Lee 2020 via Lead Stories; repopulation posts; Hadley's "human reset"). Their evidence is mostly photographs (empty streets, grand buildings, fairs) and the existence of institutions. They name no victims, places or dates that can be checked.
10b. Documented killings and removals, 1800s (primary)
- California Legislature, 1850, "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" (Statutes of California 1850, ch. 133, passed April 22, 1850, pp. 408–410). The user already found its signing in the 1849–50 journal. Scanned statute book: (PDF pp. 418–420); LoC image: . My OCR of the scan:
- §3: a person obtaining "a minor Indian" may, before a Justice of the Peace, receive "a certificate, authorizing him or her to have the care, custody, control, and earnings of such minor, until he or she obtain the age of majority."
- §20: any Indian "found loitering and strolling about… begging, or leading an immoral or profligate course of life" may be declared a vagrant and the officer must "hire out such vagrant within twenty-four hours to the best bidder… for the highest price that can be had, for any term not exceeding four months."
- Governor Peter Burnett, annual message, January 7, 1851: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected." California State Library:
- Scholarship [secondary]. Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (Yale University Press, 2016). It documents state-funded militia campaigns and estimates that 9,492 to 16,094 California Indians were killed, while the overall Native population of California fell from about 150,000 to about 30,000.
- Indian Removal Act, May 28, 1830 (4 Stat. 411), and the Cherokee "Trail of Tears" (1838–39) [secondary; statute not opened].
- Does any of it mention "Tartarians"? No. The 1850 statute, Burnett's message and the 1849–50 journal name the victims as "Indians." In the material I searched, no 19th-century record of these killings or removals calls the victims Tartars or Tartarians.
11. "Seizure" of grand buildings: documented builders vs. claims
Property that really was seized in the 1800s.
- Mexican land grants after 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) promised to protect them. The federal California Land Act of March 3, 1851 (9 Stat. 631) required every Mexican-era grant holder to prove title before a Board of Land Commissioners, often through years of costly litigation. Many Californios lost land to legal fees, squatters and lawyers [secondary; statute not opened].
- Mission property. Mexico secularized the missions in the 1830s, and many were sold or abandoned. The 1849–50 journal shows the Senate passed a bill to investigate the missions, and the Assembly killed it (journal p. 1229, user's earlier finding).
- Native land. The 18 treaties negotiated with California tribes in 1851–52 were rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1852 and kept secret, so no reservations were secured [secondary].
- Any "Tartarian" prior owner in a deed, land case or appropriation? None found. Land Commission cases list Mexican grantees (e.g., Vallejo, Castro, Sutter) and Spanish or Mexican titles.
12. Gold: the claimed seizure vs. the documented flow
12a. The claim
- Noel Joshua Hadley, "I Do Not Believe in the 1849 California Gold Rush," The Unexpected Cosmology (blog, c. 2020): "San Francisco, as a grand Tartarian city, existed long before 1849… The American people were simply inheritors. Along the way, Manifest Destiny, and the California gold it procured, were alchemical exercises intended to transform the collective consciousness. Also propaganda." His cited sources are The Northern Light (Sept. 1984, a Masonic magazine), a Masonic lodge review, and Wikipedia entries on Brannan, Marshall and Sutter.
- A related video, "Inheritors of a Nation" (stolenhistory.org / YouTube), has a similar premise [not viewed]:
- Key point. Neither cites a record of a pre-1848 gold hoard, vault, treasury or mine operated by anyone other than known Californio and Native miners.
12b. Gold before 1848: the real basis for "it was known earlier"
- H. H. Bancroft, History of California, vol. VI (1888), pp. 36–37: "The mine at San Fernando, near Los Angeles, where work was begun in 1842, is about the only satisfactory instance on record of a knowledge of the existence of gold in Alta California prior to the discovery of Marshall."
- Francisco López, March 1842 (Placerita/San Feliciano Canyon). Abel Stearns's later letter: "November 22d, 1842, I sent by Alfred Robinson… twenty ounces California weight (18⅓ ounces mint weight) of placer gold… to the United States mint at Philadelphia." Mint memorandum: "Memorandum of gold bullion deposited the 8th day of July, 1843, at the mint of the United States at Philadelphia, by Grant & Stone… Before melting, 18 34-100 oz.; after melting, 19 1-100 oz.; fineness, 926-1000; value, $344.75." Transcriptions: ; (verified via transcription; the Mint voucher is reported found in the First Comptroller's office in 1891 [original not opened]).
- New-York Observer, Oct. 1, 1842 (quoted by SCV History): "They have at last discovered gold, not far from San Fernando… Gold to the amount of some thousands of dollars has already been collected." (verified via transcription)
- Reading. Gold was known and worked in Mexican California six years before Marshall. It was a small southern placer operation, reported openly in the press and assayed at the US Mint. That is the opposite of a hidden hoard.
12c. The documented path of the gold (primary)
- Miners → merchants and private coiners (1849–54). The 1849–50 Legislature journal (user's file, pp. 549, 563–564): private San Francisco firms were coining gold, some coins fake. Dust sold locally at about $16/oz against about $17.24 at the US Mint. The Legislature created the office of "State Assayer, Melter, and Refiner of Gold" (signed about April 20, 1850; journal p. 382). Private coiners included Moffat & Co., Kellogg & Humbert, Wass Molitor & Co., the Pacific Company, and Mormon "Deseret" gold in Utah [secondary]. The 1860 Mint report still calls private issues "a reprehensible and illegal practice, countenanced by previous similar emissions in California."
- US Assay Office (1851–53) → San Francisco Branch Mint (opened 1854) (branch mint authorized by Act of July 3, 1852) [secondary].
- Mint deposits, as recorded. Report of the Director of the Mint (1858), Table 7, "Summary exhibit of the entire deposits of domestic gold at the United States Mint and branches to June 30, 1858," with columns by state including "California" and rows for Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans and others. . The OCR of the table is garbled. Readable figures in the California column appear to be $228,212,027.69 at Philadelphia and $92,543,133.59 at San Francisco, but check them against the page image before publishing [OCR uncertain].
- Annual Report of the Director of the Mint (FY 1860): "the supply from the mines of California to the mints has been, for years past, declining. In 1858, the mints received from California gold deposits to the value of nearly fifty-six millions of dollars; during the last year the amount was somewhat above twenty millions."
- Shipments east by steamer via Panama. In Sept. 1857 the SS Central America sank with commercial gold transferred from the SS Sonora. Commonly cited figures are about $1.2–1.6 million in commercial gold (1857 dollars) plus passenger gold [secondary: PCGS ; AP 2014 inventory ]. Pacific Mail treasure manifests were printed in San Francisco papers as "treasure shipments" [not opened].
- The federal Treasury. Under the Independent Treasury Act (Aug. 6, 1846), customs duties at San Francisco were collected in specie and held by federal officers [secondary]. The 1849–50 journal shows California claiming more than $1 million in pre-statehood customs duties as "rightfully" its own (pp. 813, 821–824). Much of the gold left the country as exports to Britain and Europe; total California output 1848–1860 is commonly estimated at roughly $550 million or more [secondary estimate; not verified in a primary table].
12d. Documented seizure of gold-field wealth (primary)
- Foreign Miners' Tax, 1850. Statutes of California 1850, ch. 97, "An Act for the better regulation of the Mines, and the government of Foreign Miners," passed April 18, 1850, pp. 221–222. My OCR of the scan: a foreign miner "shall apply to the Collector of Licenses to foreign miners, and take out a license to mine, for which he shall pay the sum of twenty dollars per month." (PDF pp. 231–232). This fills the gap in the user's journal, which never gave the $20 amount. The journal itself (p. 496) projected about $200,000 a month in revenue.
- The 1850 tax was repealed in 1851. A $3/month tax in 1852 fell mainly on Chinese miners. Mexican, Chilean and Peruvian ("Sonoran") miners were driven from the southern mines in 1849–50 [secondary].
- Native miners and land: see §10. Many Native Californians worked as miners, sometimes under coercion, in 1848–49 [secondary].
- Who profited, in documented terms: merchants (e.g., Samuel Brannan's store at Sutter's Fort), express and banking houses (Adams & Co., Page Bacon & Co., both of which failed in 1855; Wells Fargo, founded 1852), land speculators and steamship lines [secondary].
12e. What the records support
- Supported: gold was known in 1842; the state and federal governments, banks and merchants captured much of the gold wealth; foreign, Native and Mexican Californian miners were taxed, expelled or dispossessed; Mexican-era land titles were stripped through the 1851 Land Act process.
- Not supported: that the gold or the cities existed as a "Tartarian" reserve or city before 1848, or that the Gold Rush was a cover for transferring an older treasury. The deposit records start with small amounts (1842–43 Philadelphia, 1848 onward) and grow year by year as mining output grew. A pre-existing hoard would show up as a sudden large transfer, and the records show nothing like that.
Timeline (1500–1900): real events and claimed events
Strongest claims vs. evidence
Website-ready summary (about 650 words)
Tartaria and North America: What the Records Say
The "Tartarian Empire" theory holds that a vast, advanced civilization once spanned the globe, including North America, and was erased in the 1800s: its people killed or put in institutions, its grand buildings taken over, and its wealth seized. The idea grew out of Anatoly Fomenko and Gleb Nosovsky's Russian "New Chronology," which claims the American Revolution was really a war over the "American lands of the Moscow Tartary." Since about 2016 it has spread widely online through videos about old buildings, world's fairs and "mud floods."
This section collects the primary documents most often linked to these claims, from 16th-century maps to 19th-century statutes, so readers can see exactly what they say.
The word is real. "Tartary" appears on hundreds of European maps. Abraham Ortelius's 1570 map Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus shows "Tartaria, or the kingdom of the Great Khan" across Asia and draws California just across a strait. That strait, the "Strait of Anián," did not exist. The 1771 Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Tartary as "a vast country in the northern parts of Asia" and lists it under Asia.
The Tartar-ancestry theory is real. For over two centuries, European and American writers argued that Native Americans descended from Tartars or Scythians who crossed from Asia. In 1674 John Josselyn wrote that New England's peoples "are judged to be of the Tartars called Samonids." In 1702 Cotton Mather called the Scythians "doubtless, the ancestors of the Indians." Jonathan Carver (1778) said America was peopled "from Tartary, China, Japon, or Kamschatka." Thomas Jefferson (1787) suggested descent from "the Eastern inhabitants of Asia." Others, like Hugo Grotius and James Adair, rejected the idea. These authors were debating ancient migration. None describes a living Tartarian nation in America.
In 1800s America, "Tartar" usually meant China's Manchu Qing dynasty. California newspapers reported that "the Tartar dynasty must fall" (1853), and the queue hairstyle was described as a "Tartar custom." Congressional testimony in 1877 placed the origin of most Chinese immigrants in Guangdong province.
The buildings have paper trails. The 1893 Chicago fair's official history records "30,000 tons of staff," a temporary plaster facing. The 1915 San Francisco exposition's official history includes "Rules for Wrecking and Removal" and records the public petition that saved the Palace of Fine Arts. Thomas Kirkbride's 1854 asylum manual specifies basements "raised three steps, or about twenty-four inches above the surface of the ground."
The killing and dispossession were real, but the records name the victims. California's 1850 "Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" let officials hire out Native "vagrants" "to the best bidder." In 1851 Governor Peter Burnett told the Legislature that "a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct." The 1850 Foreign Miners' Tax charged non-citizen miners "twenty dollars per month." Mexican land titles were challenged under the 1851 Land Act. These documents name Native Californians, Mexicans, Chileans and Chinese, never "Tartarians."
Gold was known before 1848. Francisco López found placer gold near San Fernando in March 1842, and a sample was assayed at the Philadelphia Mint on July 8, 1843 ("fineness, 926-1000; value, $344.75"). The Mint's annual reports then track California deposits rising year by year after 1848. That pattern fits new mining output, not the transfer of an existing treasure.
What we did not find. We found no primary record, in maps, books, newspapers, censuses, asylum reports, land cases or mint ledgers, that names a Tartarian person, army, building or gold reserve in North America, or records Tartarians being killed or institutionalized. If such a document exists, we want to see it. Send us the archive link and we will add it here.
Source cards: 14 primary sources for individual archive entries
- Abraham Ortelius, Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus, 1570. LoC: . Summary: the first atlas map of Tartary; shows California across the imaginary Strait of Anián. Quote (cartouche): "Continet haec tabula omnem Tartariam… Magno Chamo obediente."
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st ed., vol. III, "Tartary," 1771. . Summary: the much-cited entry; a short geographic definition. Quote: "TARTARY, a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west."
- Gregorio García, Origen de los Indios, 1607. . Summary: the major Spanish survey of origin theories, including Tartar migration via Anián. Quote: "Chinos, y Tartaros fueron los primeros pobladores de las Indias."
- Hugo Grotius, De Origine Gentium Americanarum, 1642. . Summary: reports the Tartar theory and rejects it. Quote: "ante Hispanorum aduentum equos fuisse nullos."
- John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New-England, 1674. . Summary: an early New England account calling Native peoples Tartar-descended. Quote: "judged to be of the Tartars called Samonids that border upon Moscovia."
- Jonathan Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North-America, 1778. . Summary: a popular travel book arguing a Tartar/Chinese origin. Quote: "some of the manners and customs of the American Indians resemble those of the Tartars."
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787. . Summary: Query XI on Native origins via the Bering region. Quote: "the former are the descendants of the latter, or the latter of the former."
- John Ranking, Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico… by the Mongols, 1827. . Summary: the earliest printed "Mongol/Tartar conquest of America" book, linking mounds and "giants." Quote: "All the ancient entrenchments and inscriptions discovered in America… are… of Mongol origin."
- Thomas S. Kirkbride, On the Construction… of Hospitals for the Insane, 1854/1880. . Summary: the design manual behind Kirkbride asylums; specifies raised basements. Quote: "raised three steps, or about twenty-four inches above the surface of the ground."
- Statutes of California, 1850, ch. 97 (Foreign Miners) and ch. 133 (Indians). . Summary: the first Legislature's mining tax and Indian indenture law. Quotes: "twenty dollars per month"; "hire out such vagrant… to the best bidder."
- Bancroft, History of California vol. VI, 1888, with the López/Mint record. . Summary: documents pre-Marshall gold at San Fernando (1842). Quote: "about the only satisfactory instance on record of a knowledge of the existence of gold in Alta California prior to the discovery of Marshall."
- Report of the Director of the Mint, 1858 and FY 1860. ; . Summary: official deposit tables for California gold. Quote (1860): "In 1858, the mints received from California gold deposits to the value of nearly fifty-six millions of dollars."
- Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America, 1877. . Summary: a missionary's account; explains "Tartar" as the Qing dynasty. Quote: "this Tartar custom of shaving the front part of the head."
- Cabeza de Vaca, Relación (Hodge ed., 1907). . Summary: the first narrative crossing of the Southwest, featuring the African Estevanico. Quote: "The fourth, called Estevanico, is an Arabian black, native of Azamor." (Alternates: Brace 1872, ; Omar ibn Said 1831, ; Burnett 1851, .)
Primary sources archive list, by theme
Native American Tartar-origin theory
- Acosta 1590/1604 (Hakluyt 1880): . Verified.
- García 1607: . Verified (OCR Spanish).
- Brerewood 1614 (1674 ed.): . Verified.
- Grotius 1642: . Verified. De Laet's reply 1643: [not quoted]
- Horn 1652: . Verified.
- Josselyn 1674: . Verified.
- Mather 1702 (1820 ed.): . Verified.
- Adair 1775: . Verified.
- Carver 1778: . Verified.
- Jefferson 1787: . Verified.
- Barton 1797: . Verified.
- Ranking 1827: . Verified.
- Roger Williams, Key into the Language of America 1643: . Searched: no "Tartar."
- Hakluyt, Purchas, Witsen: not verified (not searched within the time available).
Maps and geography
- Ortelius 1570 (LoC), Mercator 1595, Hondius, Visscher 1657, Buache 1752, De L'Isle 1757, Zatta 1776, Wilkes 1796: links in §2c.
- Britannica 1771 vols. II–III: links in §2a and §2d.
- LoC blog "Tracking Tartary":
Russian America
- Ides 1706: . Verified.
- Coxe 1780: [not quoted]
- Bancroft vol. VI (Bodega gold claim): . Verified.
Claimed battles and figures
- Nosovsky & Fomenko 2001 via AMS Notices 2013:
- chronologia.org:
- Ranking 1827 (above).
Buildings and expositions
- Bancroft, Book of the Fair 1893: . Verified.
- Todd, Story of the Exposition 1921, vols. 4–5: ; . Verified.
- Kirkbride 1880: . Verified.
Asylums and orphan trains
- Brace 1872: . Verified.
- Children's Aid Society Annual Reports: [not quoted]
- Stockton Insane Asylum report 1854 (user's file).
Chinese laborers
- Gibson 1877: . Verified.
- Joint Special Committee 1877: . Verified.
- Six Companies Memorial 1877: . Verified.
- Chronicling America pages (1853, 1866): §8b. Verified.
- Stanford CRRW Project:
Early African presence, Moors, slave-trade data
- Cabeza de Vaca 1555 / Hodge 1907: ; . Verified.
- Rolfe 1619/20 (transcription): . Verified via transcription.
- Bluett 1734 (Ayuba Diallo): . Verified.
- Omar ibn Said 1831:
- Free Moors petition 1790 (transcription): . Verified via transcription.
- SlaveVoyages:
- Haslip-Viera et al. 1997:
Extermination, land and gold
- Statutes of California 1850: . Verified by OCR.
- Burnett 1851: . Verified (library transcription).
- Mint reports 1858, 1860: links in §12c. Verified (1858 table OCR uncertain).
- López/Stearns/Mint memo (transcriptions):
- Proponent sources: Lead Stories (Lee 2020): ; Hadley blog: ; Bloomberg 2021 (§1c).
Caveats
- The quotes come from machine OCR of old scans. I fixed obvious OCR errors (ſ→s, f→s); the original spelling is otherwise kept. Page numbers marked "~" are estimated from running heads. Check the page image before printing any quote as exact.
- Items marked [secondary], [not opened] or [not verified] still need someone to open the original before they are cited as primary.
- "Not found" means not found in the archives and searches I ran. It does not prove a document doesn't exist. I did not search Hakluyt, Purchas or Witsen, NARA Chinese Exclusion files, census slave schedules, or asylum registers beyond Stockton.
- The 1858 Mint table figures are uncertain from OCR.
Found on https://truth-quest-bot.lovable.app/category/tartaria-north-america
Related documents
Encyclopaedia Britannica — "Tartary," 1st ed., vol. III (1771)
The much-cited entry; a short geographic definition.
Web pageOpen source ↗
Gregorio García — Origen de los Indios (1607)
The major Spanish survey of origin theories, including Tartar migration via Anián.
Gregorio García · Web pageOpen source ↗
Hugo Grotius — De Origine Gentium Americanarum (1642)
Reports the Tartar theory and rejects it.
Hugo Grotius · Web pageOpen source ↗
John Josselyn — An Account of Two Voyages to New-England (1674)
An early New England account calling Native peoples Tartar-descended.
John Josselyn · Web pageOpen source ↗
Jonathan Carver — Travels through the Interior Parts of North-America (1778)
A popular travel book arguing a Tartar/Chinese origin.
Jonathan Carver · Web pageOpen source ↗