Karen Hill Tribe in Thailand
Hill Tribes of the Golden Triangle
The Karen Hill Tribe in Thailand
http://www.thaipro.com
By far the largest hill tribe of all the hill tribes in Thailand are the Karen, called Kariang or Yang in Thai language. The Karen hill tribe began migrating into the Golden Triangle in Thailand around the 18th century and number anywhere from 285,000 a 300,000, accounting for more than half of all the Thai hill tribe people.
The Karen hilltribe villages are mainly concentrated in the mountains of Mae Hong Son province and the western areas of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Phayao in Thailand’s Golden Triangle along the Burmese border.
The Karen people like to settle in the foothills, living in bamboo houses raised on stilts, beneath which they keep their live domestic animals: pigs, chickens, and buffaloes.
Like other hilltribes in Thailand, the Karen are skilled farmers who practice crop rotation, using elephants to clear the land. The people from the Karen hill tribes in Thailand are famous to be the best elephant trainers or mahouts in Thailand and even in the whole of South East Asia.
There are four sub groups of Karen hill tribes in Thailand of which the “Sgaw Karen” and the “Dam Karen” (black) are the most numerous ones. Although the language of all the different Karen hill tribes is of the same Sino-Tibetan family, Sgaw and Pwo are not mutually intelligible.
Karen are famous as Mahouts
Originally practicing ancestor worship and animist, over 30% of the Karen hill tribe people in Thailand have now been converted to Christianity by visiting western missionaries.
The Karen practice monogamy and look down on pre-marital sex with strict social community laws against immorality. Two married women cannot live in the same house. In the past, in some villages, punishment for adultery was death.
The village chief of the Karen hill tribes has great power over his local community, and is regarded as the spiritual as well as the administrative leader.