Long ago the Han Chinese considered the tribal peoples of their southwest provinces not only barbaric but subhuman, even bestial. Early Chinese historical accounts describe these hill peoples, notably the Mien (Yao) and Hmong (Miao), as sprouting small flightless wings or having clearly discernible tails. They were to be feared, exterminated if possible. Tradition holds that the early Hmong kingdoms were forcibly divided by the Chinese, and the Hmong language outlawed, punishable even by death. To preserve it, Hmong women cunningly hid their alphabet in the intricate designs of pa ndau (flower cloth) - embroidered textiles used for jackets, skirts, pants, sashes, hats, baby carriers, and burial shrouds.
The original alphabet has long been forgotten. From that mythological time, the sounds were written only in pictorial form, handed down in design motifs from one generation to the next. The Hmong remained preliterate until the 1950s, when Christian missionaries transliterated the sounds of the Hmong language into the Western alphabet.
Flower cloth reinforced the ethnic identity of the Hmong for centuries. Indeed, one of the names Hmong tribes called themselves was M'peo (embroidery people), according to a 1970 U.S. Army ethnographic study. Each subgroup of the Hmong developed predominant color preferences for textiles and costume designs, all styled with geometric motifs worked in one or more of the four Hmong textile techniques - embroidery, appliqué, reverse appliqué, and batik. Even the present names of their tribes - Blue or Green, White, and Striped (sometimes called Flowery) - reflect their textile art. Elaborate costumes and a rich oral tradition embellish every occasion from birth to death.
The Hmong (meaning "free people") are distinct in yet another way: They are a mountain people who have lived in a self-contained subsistence culture based on seasonal and ritual cycles. Slash-and-burn, or swidden, agriculture necessitates periodic migrations of these hill farmers. For centuries the Hmong maintained geographical, ethnic, and cultural remoteness from the dominant Han, or lowland, people of China, with their irrigated rice paddies, advanced communications systems, economy, and sociopolitical administration.
In the nineteenth century, more than half a million Hmong were driven into northern Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and Thailand by wars, epidemics, and soil depletion. Even after these mass migrations, they resisted assimilation with lowlanders - Han, Thai, and Lao alike - and lived by their own mores, customs, and oral traditions. French colonial rule and twentieth-century political turmoil increased the frequency and necessity of Hmong migrations.
Yet the Hmong worldview, folk crafts, kinship, and ritual traditions remained consistent throughout the widely dispersed Hmong tribes. Mary H. Fong writes that the Hmong inevitably "absorbed new ideas from the cultures through which they migrated, but these new ideas were always grafted onto their own characteristic art forms." Distinctions among Hmong tribes occur primarily in clothing design and coloration. Remarkably, the Hmong language continued to be understood among all Hmong tribes throughout the vast territory.
Hmong cultural integrity is nothing short of amazing. In his highly acclaimed book Migrants of the Mountains, William Geddes states,
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