The Wild Fields ( Dikye Polye, , Dikoye Polye, , , , also translated as "the Wilderness") is a historical term used in the Polish–Lithuanian documents of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries to refer to the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea and Azov Sea. The somewhat ambiguous location has been usually defined as lying between the Don River on the east, Kiev on the north, and the left tributaries of the Dniester on the west. Until the 17th and 18th centuries, the region was only sparsely populated with nomadic Nogais and consisted mostly of unpopulated steppes, so the name of "wilderness" came to be applied to it.