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.