The American Kalmyks
“They seem to have succeeded in not becoming assimilated by settling themselves apart in certain ways some of the time, while at other times they have flexibly, enterprisingly, and receptively kept open their channels of communication with the non-Kalmyk world.”
Photographs by: Carleton S. Coon
The Kalmyks are a Mongolian Buddhist people with one of history's most remarkable migration stories — spanning three centuries, multiple continents, and some of the 20th century's most devastating political upheavals. Descended from the Western Mongol "Four Oirat" confederation, they gradually settled the Russian steppes before being split by imperial pressures, scattered by revolution, erased from Soviet records through mass deportation in 1943, and ultimately resettled in Philadelphia and New Jersey by the early 1950s. Through all of it, they carried their language, their faith, and their sense of community intact.
What makes this 1959 article so compelling is its portrait of a tiny group — roughly 700 people — quietly holding their world together in suburban America. While working factory jobs and sending their kids to public school, they also gathered in the New Jersey countryside for ancient Buddhist ceremonies partly recited in Tibetan, maintained sprawling kinship networks built on mutual obligation, and kept alive a language, cuisine, and oral tradition that stretched back to the steppes of Inner Asia. The Kalmyks are a testament to how identity survives not through isolation, but through a constant, deliberate weaving together of old and new.
Source: "The American Kalmyks." Expedition Magazine 3, no. 4 (July, 1961): -. Accessed March 01, 2026. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-american-kalmyks/