In 1864 in the valley of Khodz, near Maikop the Ubykh population resisted Russian troops. During the battle the men were joined by the women, who disposed of their jewellery into the river and took up arms into a fight to the end and to have an honourable death. Russians troops with heavy artillery and other modern weaponry killed all the men, women and children, in a scene that a Circassian chronicler who had witnessed the events described as "a sea of blood".