2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 123 »■ 



The Miao call themselves Hmong, and the Ch'uan Miao call themselves "^ 

 Hmong Bo or old Miao, because they believe that they are descended from a very ** 

 ancient race. They are also called Hmong Gleh or White Miao because in some '!^ 

 localities they wear or have worn white clothing. i^ 



x 



HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 



References to the Miao are found in the earliest Chinese literature. It is statec 

 that the San Miao, who could not be pacified, were exiled to the province oj 

 Kansu, where they apparently disappeared. 



Some of the Miao were absorbed, but others migrated southward or westward 

 as the Chinese advanced, and their descendants are found on the Island of Hainan, 

 in Indo-China, and in the southern and southwestern provinces of China. There 

 are historic recoids of forced migrations of the Miao people from Kwangtung 

 and Kwangsi Provinces westward into Szechwan, Kweichow, and Yunnan, one 

 of which occurred in 1733 under the Emperor Yung Cheng ^JE* The Ch'uani 

 Miao have a legend that years ago, after a war with the Chinese in which they 

 were defeated, they were forced to migrate, with their hands tied behind their 

 backs, to the place where they now live. 



None of the histories of Kweichow or of its principal cities or prefectures men- 

 tions the Ch'uan Miao, and the Yunnan histories never mention them as Ch'uan 

 Miao, and generally not at all. The Chao T'ung Hsien Chih mentions them as 

 White Miao and merely states that they are there and that they are called Whitee 

 Miao because they wear white clothing. In descriptions of Miao customs those off 

 the White Miao are not distinguished from those of the Hua Miao. In the 

 gazetteers of southern Szechwan, such as the Hsii Chou Fu Chih, they are men- 

 tioned only when they engaged in wars with the Chinese and had to be pacified, 

 and there is no description of their customs. The fact is that aside from the 

 articles of Dr. W. R. Morse, Dr. Gordon Agnew, Prof. William G. Sewell, and the 

 writer, most of which were published in the Journal of the West China Border 

 Research Society, these people have practically never been mentioned in historic or 

 scientific literature. 



ECONOMIC LIFE 



Agriculture is the principal occupation. These people are truly "sons of the: 

 soil" and get their living from the land. Even those who are blacksmiths, car- 

 penters, masons, hunters, priests, shamans, or in recent years teachers, generally ' 

 depend primarily on farms or gardens for a livelihood. A few own their farms, 

 but most of them rent from the Chinese. One Chinese farmer asserted that a 

 Miao family had rented the same farm from the same family for at least 200 years. 



The homes of the Ch'uan Miao are much the same as those of the Chinese, 

 especially the Chinese of the poorer classes. The floors and walls are generally 

 of pounded clay, but sometimes the walls are of wood or bamboo and plaster, 

 or even of cornstalks. The roofs are generally of straw or grass, but some Ch'uan 

 Miao have tile-roofed houses. There are rarely any pictures or decorations on the 

 walls, and the main pieces of furniture are square or round tables, long stools. 



