A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States

by Holt S. Hallett

The Siamese frontier post consists of five buildings, enclosed by a bamboo stockade. The officer in charge of the Laos or Shan police did not inquire for our passports, and allowed Mr Bryce’s large treasure-guard to march by unquestioned. He had no hope of squeezing anything out of the party, and therefore paid no attention to it.

Our intention had been to proceed from the guard-station down the Thoungyeen to its junction with the Meh Nium, and up the latter river to Maing Loongyee; but on inquiry we learnt that such a route was utterly impracticable. The numerous rapids in both rivers rendered them impassable for boats, and even for canoes. Neither elephants nor men could follow the banks, as the rivers passed through great gorges—the cliffs from both sides rising from their beds. We had therefore to turn eastwards, and following branch valleys and spurs, cross the Karroway Toung, or Parrot’s Hill, into the valley of the Meh Ngor, which enters the Meh Nium above the defiles, through which it escapes from the hills.

A large amount of teak timber has for many years been taken from the forests in the Thoungyeen valley. The Siamese had lately raised the tax from five to six rupees a log: their revenue in 1884 from this source amounted to upwards of two lakhs of rupees. Two hundred and sixty elephants were at work in the forests, which, like other forests in Siam, Karenni, and the Shan States, are worked by our Maulmain Burmese foresters. There is a large sale amongst the foresters of tinned milk, salmon, sardines, butter, and biscuits—all coming from Maulmain.

The Kamooks and Kamaits, who attend to the elephants and fell the timber, belong to the dwarf races of Indo-China, and are brought by their masters from their homes in the neighbourhood of Luang Prabang, and hired to our foresters at from sixty to a hundred rupees a year; each master keeping twenty-five rupees or more out of each year’s salary, and the foresters find the men with food.

The Khas, who include the Kamooks and Kamaits, are doubtless the aborigines of the country lying between the Meh Kong or Cambodia river, and the Annam and Tonquin seaboard. They are supposed to have been ousted from the plains and driven into the hills by hordes of Laos, an eastern branch of the Shans, migrating from Tonquin when it was conquered by the Chinese about B.C. 110.

According to the American missionaries who have visited Luang Prabang, the Khas are harmless and honest but ignorant, and despised by their Laos masters. Their villages are erected within stockades, on the summits of the mountains. The majority, however, live in isolated houses, which with their clearings stand out in bold relief against the sky. They cultivate rice, cotton, tobacco, vegetables, fruit, and betel-nut trees; collect stick-lac from the pouk and zi trees, and gold from the torrent-beds; and prepare cutch for chewing with the leaf of the seri vine, betel-nut, and lime. They are likewise great cattle-breeders, and many of the fine buffaloes met with in Burmah have been brought from Luang Prabang.

The Kha villages form the wealth of the Laos, who reside in the valley of the Meh Kong, to the east of the river. The Khas are known to the Siamese as Kha Chays, or slaves, and are treated as such. According to the Laos chief of Luang Prabang, the seven tribes of Khas in his territory are four times as numerous as his Laos subjects. Dr Neis, who has traversed a great part of his State, believes this opinion to be within the mark. Each Kha has to pay a tribute to his Laos or Siamese master. Without the Khas, their lazy, pleasure-loving, opium-smoking masters would have to work, or die of hunger. The extortion practised upon these kindly-dispositioned people has frequently driven them into revolt. In 1879 they joined the Chinese marauders in their attack upon the Laos; and also in 1887, when they sacked and destroyed Luang Prabang, the chief town and capital of the Shan State of that name.

The Khas, like all the hill tribes in Indo-China, offer sacrifices to evil spirits, who, according to them, are the cause of all the ills that man is heir to. In a single case of sickness as many as ten or twelve buffaloes, or other animals, are at times offered up.

They do honour to their guests and distinguished visitors by calling together the young men of the neighbourhood to drink their health in rice-spirit. Those whom I met were happy, cheery, hard-working men with pleasant faces, which, although flat, were not Mongolian, but, I think, Dravidian in type. Their expression betokened freedom from care, frankness, and good-nature. Those measured by me averaged four feet and nine inches in height, and, like the Negritos of the Andaman Isles, few exceed five feet. Their limbs were symmetrically formed, and altogether the Khas looked vigorous, pliant, and active little men. The Kamooks whom I saw, dressed in jackets and trousers dyed blue similar to those worn by the Burmese Shans, and wore their long hair drawn back from their forehead and fastened in a knot at the back of the head.

As long as the King of Siam allows the harmless hill tribes to the east of the Meh Kong to be hunted down, and held and sold as slaves by his subjects, so long should he be abhorred and placed in the same category as the ferocious monsters who have been and are the ruling curses of Africa. The sooner missionaries, American and English, are sent to Luang Prabang, and other places in the valley of the Meh Kong, the sooner will the King of Siam be shamed into putting a stop to the proceedings of the slave-dealers, who, according to French travellers up the Meh Kong, are fast depopulating the hills. There can be little doubt that the Khas, being spirit-worshippers like the Karens, and not Buddhists, would flock into the Christian fold in the same manner that the Karens have done.