The Hmong tribes (RPA: Hmoob, Nyiakeng Puachue: 𞄀𞄩𞄰, Pahawh Hmong: 𖬌𖬣𖬵, IPA: [m̥ɔ̃́]) are an indigenous group in East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwest China (Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangxi) and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a very large diasporic community in the United States, comprising more than 300,000 Hmong. The Hmong diaspora has smaller communities in Australia and South America (specifically Argentina and French Guiana, the latter being an overseas region of France). In Southeast Asia, Hmong people are referred to by other names, including: Vietnamese Mèo, Mông or H’Mông; Lao Maew (ແມ້ວ) or Mong (ມົ້ງ); Thai Maew (แม้ว) or Mong (ม้ง); and Burmese mun lu-myo (မုံလူမျိုး). The term Maew and Meo derived from the term Miao.
Hmong, ethnic group living chiefly in China and Southeast Asia and speaking Hmong, one of the Hmong-Mien languages (also known as Miao-Yao languages). Since the late 18th century, the Hmong alone among the Miao groups have slowly migrated out of the southern provinces of China, where about 2.7 million still remain. See also China: People. Some 1.2 million have moved into the rugged uplands of northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and the eastern parts of Myanmar (Burma). More than 170,000 live in the United States and nearly 20,000 more in France (15,000), Australia (2,000), French Guiana (1,500), Canada (600), and Argentina (600). The original home of the Hmong is thought to have been in the Huang He (Yellow River) basin of central China. They were slowly driven southward and marginalized by the expanding population of the Han Chinese. Traditionally, the Hmong practiced the shifting cultivation of unirrigated upland crops; buckwheat, barley, and millet were grown at the highest altitudes, and rice and corn (maize) at lower elevations. Virgin forest was cleared and burnt off for the planting of new fields; when soil fertility declined (usually after several decades), the entire village would relocate. New villages could be a considerable distance away from a group’s previous locale. In the late 19th century the opium poppy was introduced into the highlands by outside traders, and the Hmong began to cultivate it in an integrated cycle together with corn and dry rice. They sold opium to itinerant traders, usually Chinese, in return for silver. The silver was used in bridewealth payments, and the trading system often involved a loan against a future opium harvest.
The Hmong people are an ethnic group currently native to several countries, believed to have come from the Yangtze river basin area in southern China. The Hmong are known in China as the Miao, which encompasses not only Hmong, but also other related groups such as Hmu, Qo Xiong and A-Hmao. There is debate about usage of this term, especially amongst Hmong living in the West, as it is believed by some to be derogatory, although Hmong living in China still call themselves by this name. Throughout recorded history, the Hmong have remained identifiable as Hmong because they have maintained the Hmong language, customs, and ways of life while adopting the ways of the country in which they live. In the 1960s and 1970s, many Hmong were secretly recruited by the AmericanCIA to fight against communism during the Vietnam War. After American armed forces pulled out of Vietnam, a communist regime took over in Laos and ordered the prosecution and re-education of all those who had fought against its cause during the war. While many Hmong are still left in Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and China (which houses one of the biggest Hmong populations in the world, 5 million), since 1975 many Hmong have fled Laos in fear of persecution. Housed in Thai refugee camps during the 1980s, many have resettled in countries such as the United States, French Guiana, Australia, France, Germany, as well as some who have chosen to stay in Thailand in hope of returning to their own land. In the United States, new generations of Hmong are gradually assimilating into American society while being taught Hmong culture and history by their elders. Many fear that as the older generations pass on, the knowledge of the Hmong among Hmong Americans will die as well.
The terms Hmong (IPA:[m̥ɔ̃ŋ]) and Mong ([mɔ̃ŋ]) both refer to an Asian ethnic group in the mountainous regions of southern China. There, they remain one of the largest sub-groups in the Miao (Chinese:苗族) minzu (nationality) along with other related ethnic minorities. Beginning in the eighteenth century, conflict with Han Chinese settlers migrating to the south caused Hmong groups began a gradual mass migration to Southeast Asia. As a result, Hmong currently live in several countries in Southeast Asia, including northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. Traditionally, the Hmong practice subsistence agriculture and the harvesting of timber. During the last century, the Hmong have been caught up in the political instability which affected Southeast Asian nations. Many Hmong people in Laos fought against the communist-nationalist Pathet Lao during the Secret War. When the Pathet Lao took over the government in 1975, Hmong people were singled out for retribution, and a large number fled to Thailand. Many were resettled in Western countries, including the United States, Australia, France, French Guiana, and Canada. Others were returned to Laos under United Nations-sponsored repatriation programs. Around 8,000 Hmong refugees remain in Thailand.
The Hmong are members of an ethnic group that have not had a country of their own. For thousands of years, the Hmong lived in southwestern China. But when the Chinese began limiting their freedom in the mid-1600s, many migrated to Laos, Thailand and other neighboring countries. There are 18 clans in the Hmong culture, each with a different name. Children are members of their father’s clan. Women, upon marriage, become members of their husband’s clan, but typically retain their original clan — or, rather, maiden name. Members of the same clan consider themselves family.
The 18 clans (and surnames) are:
- Chang/Cha
- Cheng
- Chue
- Fang
- Her
- Hang
- Khang
- Kong
- Kue
- Lee/Ly
- Lor
- Moua
- Pha
- Thao
- Vang
- Vue
- Xiong
- Yang
Hmong people come from the mountainous areas just south of China. Due to political unrest and in search of farmland, they migrated southwards. Historyplex gives you a brief overview of the history, culture, and beliefs followed by this Asian ethnic group. The Hmong people date back to 3000 BCE. Before moving to the south of China, they resided in China for 2,000 years. Post the Vietnam war, they set foot in the United States where they were recruited as spies by the CIA. When the US pulled out of the war, the Hmong people had no choice but to flee and find shelter in Thailand refugee camps because the new rulers oppressed them for anti-communist movement. By the late 1970s, some of them went back to the US to settle down. Some of them also occupied parts of Australia, Canada, France, etc.
The Hmong migrated from southern China in the nineteenth century to the mountainous areas of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. During the Vietnam War the Hmong worked with the American CIA in the “secret war” in Laos, and therefore were forced to flee their homeland after the victory of the communists. After spending time in refugee camps in Thailand, many Hmong settled in a third country including Australia, France, Canada, Germany and the United States. Have you ever wondered what life was like for a typical Hmong family in Laos? The Hmong people were farmers, most living in small villages high in the mountains. After helping the American CIA during the Vietnam War, the Hmong people were forced to flee for their lives. The old way of life was very different from their new way of life. There are only two seasons in Laos, the rainy season and the dry season. It is warm year around. Homes and other buildings are made of bamboo and wood. There is no electricity for the mountain people, no machinery, and no roads. The Hmong walk to their farms and carry home the produce. All work is done by hand. They grow and make everything needed to sustain the family. They were independent self-sufficient people.
Hmong or Mong (/ˈmʌŋ/; RPA: Hmoob, Nyiakeng Puachue: 𞄀𞄩𞄰, Pahawh: 𖬌𖬣𖬵, [m̥ɔ̃́]) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hainan, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. There are some 2.7 million speakers of varieties that are largely mutually intelligible, including over 280,000 Hmong Americans as of 2013. Over half of all Hmong speakers speak the various dialects in China, where the Dananshan (大南山) dialect forms the basis of the standard language. However, Hmong Daw and Mong Leng are widely known only in Laos and the United States; Dananshan is more widely known in the native region of Hmong. Mong Leng (Moob Leeg) and Hmong Daw (Hmoob Dawb) are part of a dialect cluster known in China as Chuanqiandian Miao (Chinese: 川黔滇苗; lit. ‘Sichuan–Guizhou–Yunnan Miao’), called the “Chuanqiandian cluster” in English (or “Miao cluster” in other languages) since West Hmongic is also called Chuanqiandian Miao. The variety spoken from Sichuan in China to Thailand and Laos is referred to in China as the “First Local Variety” (第一土语) of the cluster. Mong Leng and Hmong Daw are just those varieties of the cluster that migrated to Laos. The names Mong Leng, Hmong Dleu/Der, and Hmong Daw are also used in China for various dialects of the cluster.
There are approximately one million Hmong people in Vietnam today, living primarily in the mountain regions along the northern borders. Here is the history of this distinct ethnic group and how they’ve adapted to rapid economic, political and cultural change. It’s believed that the Hmong people were first settled in the area around the Yellow River in China. The communities survived on shifting cultivation, where the types of crops rotated until the land became infertile. They grew wheat and barley at the higher elevations, while alternating between corn and rice in the lowland hills. Every few decades, they would uproot their homes and move to a new area to start over again. This mobility gave them many advantages, but it also made them easy targets for ruling authorities. Starting in the late 18th century, as the population of the Han Chinese grew, the Hmong people were forced southward into the mountains along the borders with Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Vietnam. Those who didn’t flee were subjugated, shamed and killed by the Qing Dynasty government in China. Though the Hmong people have no political structure, they were often in open conflict with the Chinese authorities and the other colonial powers during this time, which led to widespread marginalization and persecution.
The Hmong Hill Tribe originally comes from Southern China. During the 18th-century, the conflict between the Hmong and newly arrived Han settlers increased. The Qing dynasty imposed repressive economic and cultural reforms on the Hmong people, which led to the Hmong rebellion (1795-1806). This led to large-scale migrations of Hmong people from their homeland to the south and, eventually, to Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. By the end of the 19th century, the first Hmong villages were established in Northern Thailand. The Geneva Accords of 1954 established Laos as an independent country. In 1960 though, civil war broke out in Laos. The Royal Lao Army, supported by the United States, fought against the Pathet Lao. These were insurgents, supported by the North Vietnamese communists. In 1962 another peace conference took place in Geneva. It produced a Declaration on Laos’ Neutrality and a Lao coalition government of pro-American, pro-Communist, and neutral factions. The US, China, Soviet Union, North and South Vietnam, and the Royal Government of Laos were all signatories and other countries. The United States, the Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam, and the Pathet Lao broke the agreement almost immediately. This set the tone for a “secret war” or ‘”covert war.” The CIA funded the Hmong people to fight the war against the Pathet Lao on behalf of the United States. After the Pathet Lao won the war and took over in 1975, they persecuted the Hmong people. Many Hmong fled from Laos to Thailand and were eventually resettled in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hmong history is complex. They are reported to originate from Siberia and their emergence dates back thousands of years. The Hmong have had a long and distinctive history in China. Over the centuries they migrated south so that today they are dispersed throughout the highlands of southern China and northern Southeast Asia, including in Laos and Vietnam. There they live primarily as self-sufficient farmers and gatherers. In 1961, the U.S. government began recruiting Hmong people in Laos to fight in a secret part of the larger Vietnam War. At the end of the war, in 1975, the U.S. retreated, leaving Laos under Communist control, and the Hmong population was targeted for genocide. Many of them fled to neighboring countries, and a significant number sought asylum in the United States. The situation for the Hmong in Vietnam is worrisome. For example, the population is steadily increasing due to high birthrates, but education levels are relatively low. The highland regions where they farm have almost reached the maximum extent of available land. Crystal described their villages as “pressed against cloud forests” high on the hilltops. Currently many find sustenance by foraging in the forests and some have developed rice terrace agriculture, but this will not be adequate to support a rapidly growing population. To earn a small amount of cash income, Hmong people in Vietnam also gather horse manure and firewood to sell, but this has little potential for the next generation. “Where and how will they live, because they can’t all be farmers? Something needs to change to avoid having Hmong beggars on the streets of Hanoi,” Dr. Crystal stressed.
According to the 2009 national census, the majority of the Hmong population in Laos is situated in the mountainous northern area of Laos. As for the Hmong ChaoFa – namely those who are not Buddhist nor Christian but who believe in the Mother of Writing, Shonglue, who revealed the written scripts and Shonglueism to the Hmong in 1959 –, the provinces they inhabit include: Houaphanh, Xieng Khouang, Sayaboury and the city of Luang Prebang along the Mekong River. Some mountain peaks such as Phou Bia reach above 2,800 metres in the region. Dense forests also cover the Northern and Eastern areas. This Hmong territory borders Viet Nam in the East, China in the North, Myanmar in the Northwest and Thailand in the West. The Hmong are an indigenous group originally from the mountainous regions of southern China, Viet Nam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. They distinguish themselves from the Laotian population because of their ethnicity, written and spoken language, culture and religion. According to government sources, the Hmong constitute the third largest ethnic group in the Lao’s People Democratic Republic (LPDR).
The Hmong, which means free, is a very independent ethnic group around Asia; the Hmong have a vibrant and exciting history. Their history and culture have now become intertwined with the country and places where they are presently living. The Hmong originally came from China, but during the late 18th Century, the Qing Dynasty started to push them out of China into many Chinese border areas. Today many Hmong live in the countries along the southern Chinese border. There are many ethnic groups of Hmong. Most of the Hmong are farmers though many have recently started to be involved in the tourism industry. Learning Hmong history has also been difficult as the Hmong handed down their history orally; Hmong was never a written language, though there is a written one today. Even today, many Hmong can only speak and not read or write the Hmong language. The Hmong history is entirely oral, so history has been left up to the older people’s memories and what they remember or do not remember. This means having an exact Hmong history has been difficult to find or discover.
The Hmong people are members of an Asian minority ethnic group that traces its ancestry to the mountainous regions of southern China. Today, the Hmong people live in several different countries in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Laos, Myanmar-Burma, and northern Vietnam. In the United States, however, the greatest number of Hmong people can be found in California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Language is a key identifier of the Hmong culture. Over four million people around the world speak the Hmong language, but there are many different dialects that are used to identify smaller groups within the culture. For example, Hmong people in the United States generally speak one of two major dialects: White Hmong (Hmong Der or Hmong Daw) and Green Mong (Mong Leng or Mong Njua).
The Hmong sometimes called the ‘Meo’ are the second largest hill tribe group in Thailand making up approximately 17% of the total hilltribe population. There are an estimated 125,000 Hmong living in Thailand, which make it the second largest minority group (after the Karen). The Hmong are spread out throughout Southeast Asia, and can be found in Southern China, Northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
Hmong in Thailand
There are 3 types of Hmong in Thailand
– The Blue Hmong (also known as the Black Meo, Flowery Meo or Striped Meo)
– The White Hmong (Hmong Daw)
– The Gua M’ba Hmong (which literally means Armband Hmong, and who are subgroup of the White Hmong mostly living in refugee camps now)
The Hmong tend to locate in higher altitudes (1,000m above sea level). Of all the tribes the Hmong were the most heavily engaged in opium growing, but since this was outlawed in 1958 they mainly grow rice, corn and other crops now.
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