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Kamchadal original inhabitants of the Kamchatka peninsula. Theirs was a substantial hunter-gatherer and fishing society with up to fifty thousand natives inhabiting the peninsula before they were decimated by the Cossacks in the eighteenth century.
So much "intermarriage" took place between the natives and the Cossacks that 'Kamchadal' now refers to the majority mixed population and the term "Itelmen" is reserved for persisting speakers of the original Kamchadal language (about a thousand).
The Kamchadal language (ethnonym: Itelmen) is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, and together they form the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. A. P. Volodin has published a grammar of the language.
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