Young Koryaks dancers at the Avacha Bay. Koryaks are the biggest group of the indegene people in Kamchatka. They occupy the North of the peninsula, their lifestyle base on reindeer herding. Koryaks cloths, dances and ceremonies have many similarities to the North American Indians. The close relationship to the natives of the Northwest Coast America's is even more apparent by the Itelmen. This tribe is unique, because it settled already in North America and later come back to Asia. Similar to their American relatives the Itelmen live in the stout, roomy, wooden long houses, erected totem poles and specialized in wood carving. The Itelmen lived in the forested South of Kamchatka and therefore they ware not nomadic like other reindeer herding tribes from the peninsula. Russian settlement virtually wiped out the Itelmen people: only about 1,500, who consider themselves Itelmen are left. The Kuril Islands south of Kamchatka were the home of the Ainu people. Ainu were the first inhabitants of the Japanese islands too. Physically, the Ainu differed from Japanese and other nearby Asian peoples in language and especially in appearance; they have lighter skin, their eyes were deep-set, their bodies muscular and hairy. This was the reason, that some people claimed that the Ainu are really Caucasian or proto-Caucasian - in other words, "white." Newest studies denies this interpretation.