 Apocryphal accounts concerning the Lost Tribes, based to varying degrees on biblical accounts, have been produced by both Jews and Christians since at least the 17th century.An Ashkenazi Jewish tradition speaks of these tribes as "Die Roite Yiddelech", "the little red Jews", who were cut off from the rest of Jewry by the legendary river Sambation, "whose foaming waters raise high up into the sky a wall of fire and smoke that is impossible to pass through.