The present paper deals with the microhistorical, anthropological and linguistic analysis of one archival document dated 1637. Through its careful reading, we reveal the story of the Kanin Samoyed (“Samoyedin”) Yakushko Pirchikov who had to flee Arkhangelsk along with two reindeer to England by ship in 1631. Later he found himself again in Arkhangelsk where he was caught by official authorities and eventually imprisoned. The documented interrogations preserved in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) allowed us to reconstruct the wider context of the Nenets-Russian-English contacts in the Arkhangelsk area in the early modern times. The appendix to the article contains the full-text archival documents (photocopy) supplemented by the cursive transcript, their translation into Modern Russian and the detailed commentary
