ak languages of the Miao-Yao subdivision of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Prior to the Communist take-over of Laos in 1975, the mountains of northern Laos were dominated by these two tribal groups, with the Hmong outnumbering the Mien. Many of the men fought on the side of the anti-Communist forces and so had to flee into Thailand with their families (Lewis and Lewis, 1984, 9).
While these six ethnic groups or tribes have experienced essentially the same natural environment, they show striking differences in the way they have responded to that environment. Each has developed a culture unlike that of the others and so have become distinct ethnic groups. The different tribes have dominant themes that characterize them and differentiate them from the others. The Hmong show a strong desire for independence that dominates the lives of the people, and they seek such independence as they can manage in a variety of spheres. They seek economic independence through their industriousness, and they take up arms when threatened in order to assure the liberty to follow their own life style:
In Thailand this desire for independence has led a few Hmong to join Communist factions promising them freedom, while in Laos the Hmong were bitter anti-Communist fighters seeing in Communism a direct threat to their independence. Most of the Hmong living in Thailand in the early 1980s, however, have found that real economic, social, and religious freedom is only to be found within a stable political environment (Lewis and Lewis, 1984, 10).
Each of the groups has a distinctive mode of dress. In each tribe (again except for the Karen), the young people of marriageable age wear the most elaborate clothing, and teen-age girls devote much of their time to weaving, sewing, and doing fancywork in order to produce the prettiest costume in the village. Mothers take special care in making the clothing for their bachelor sons, hoping that this w...