Only later they began to settle and work on the land. At first the main occupation of these small armed detachments was hunting and fishing-as well as the constant struggle against the Turks and the Tatars who attacked them. In the course of time they turned into a united community and were called "the Cossacks". On their border since the 14th century the vast steppe of the Don region was populated by those people who were not satisfied with the existing social order, by those who did not recognize the power of the land-owners, by runaway serfs, by those who longed for freedom. After the Golden Horde fell in 1480, the area around the Don River was divided between the Crimean west side and the Nogai east side. 15th–17th centuries Ĭossacks of Ryazan are mentioned in 1444 as defenders of Pereslavl-Zalessky against the units of Golden Horde and in a letter of Ivan III of Russia from 1502.
Until the end of the 16th century, the Don Cossacks inhabited independent free territories. After the fall of the Golden Horde in 1480, more Russian colonists started to expand onto this land from the Novgorod Republic after the Battle of Shelon (1471), and from the neighboring Principality of Ryazan. The first Christians to settle on the territories around the Don were the Jassi and Kosogi tribes of the Khazar Kaghanate of the 7th to 10th centuries. In the late Middle Ages the area was under the general control of the Golden Horde, and numerous Tatar (especially Crimean Tatar) armed groups roamed there, attacking and enslaving Russian and foreign merchants and settlers. From the 16th to the 18th centuries the steppes of the Don River were part of "the Wild Field" ( Russian: Дикое Поле). Subsequently, the area was inhabited by the Khazars and the Polovtsians. Many Scythian tombs have been found in this area. More than two thousand years ago the Scythians lived on the banks of the river Don. Gotho- Alans could also have played a role in forming Don Cossack culture, which originated in the western part of the North Caucasus. In the modern view, Don Cossacks descend from Slavic people connected with Russian lands like the Povolzhye, the Dnieper, the Novgorod Republic, and the Principality of Ryazan. The exact origins of Cossacks remain unclear. The name "cossack" was also applied to migrants, free-booters and bandits.
The name Cossack ( Russian: казак, romanized: kazak Ukrainian: козак, romanized: kozak) was widely used to characterise "free people" (compare Turkic qazaq, which means "free men") as opposed to others with different standing in feudal society (i.e., peasants, nobles, clergy, etc.). Dialect of Russian: Don Balachka, Don Gutar