Perhaps no people has given occasion to more discussions than the Tatars and Mongols, nor is the problem of their origin completely solved in our day, notwithstanding the most learned investigations. Some admit that the Tatars and Mongols formed but one nation, others allege that they are two essentially different races. According to Lesveque d'Herbelot and Lesur[50] the Tatars are but Turks. Klaproth,[51] while he asserts that the Tatars and Mongols spring from the same stock, nevertheless regards the white Tatars, whom Genghis Khan conquered, as Turks. Lastly, D'Ohson in his remarkable history of the Mongols, treats the Mongols and Tatars as distinct races, but does not admit the theory of the Turkish origin. The same uncertainty that hangs over the Mongol and Tatar hordes of the fourteenth century, prevails with regard to the people who, under the name of Tatars, now dwell in the southern part of the Russian empire; and they have been considered sometimes as descendants of the Turkish tribes that occupied those regions previously to the twelfth century, sometimes as remnants of the conquering Mongol Tatars. Let us try to unravel this tangled web of opinions, and see what may be the least problematical origin of these various nations.
The Chinese writers for the first time make mention of the Tatar people in the eighth century of our era, under the name of Tata, and consider them as a branch of the Mongols. The general and historian, Meng Koung,[52] who died in 1246, and who commanded a Chinese force sent to aid the Mongols against the Kin, informs us in his memoirs that a part of the Tatar horde, formerly dispersed or subdued by the Khitans,[53] quitted the In Chan mountains,[54] where they had taken refuge, and joined their countrymen, who dwelt north-east of the Khitans. The white Tatars and the savage or black Tatars then formed the most important tribes of those regions.
According to D'Ohson, the Chinese comprehended under the name of Tatars all the nomade hordes that occupied the regions north of the desert of Sha No, either because the Tatars were the nearest, or because they were the most powerful of all those tribes. The intercourse of the Chinese with the west of Asia, would have afterwards served to give currency to the general denomination by which they designated their nomade vassals; and thus from the commencement of the power of the Genghis Khan, those tribes would have been already known by the name of Tatars,[55] which was propagated from nation to nation until it reached Europe, although it was repudiated with contempt by the conquerors themselves, as that of a nation they had exterminated. It is a fact established by the statements of many writers, and by D'Ohson himself, that Genghis Khan annihilated the white Tatars, and thus it has come to pass by a most curious freak of accident, that this extinguished people became celebrated all over the East by the conquests of its very destroyers.
Jean du Plan de Carpin expresses himself still more positively: "The country of the Tatars," he says, "bears the name of Mongal,[56] and is inhabited by four different peoples, the Jeka Mongals, that is to say, the Great Mongals; the Sou Mongals, or the Fluviatile Mongals, who call themselves Tatars from the name of the river that flows through their territory; the Merkit and the Mecrit. All these peoples have the same personal characteristics and the same language, though belonging to different provinces, and ruled by divers princes."[57] He then goes on to speak of the birth of Genghis Khan among the Jeka Mongals, and of his conflicts with the Sou Mongals and the other Tatar tribes.
On comparing this author with the Chinese writers mentioned and commented on in the works of de Guignes, Abel Remusat and D'Ohson, it will appear beyond all question that the Jeka Mongals are none other than the black Tatars, and that the Sou Mongals are the representatives of the white Tatars. As for the Merkit and the Mecrit, we confess, with M. d'Avezac, that our knowledge of them amounts only to conjecture; but, whatever was their origin, they are of but little importance with regard to the question we are now discussing.