Gyalrong

The Gyalrong, who call themselves Keru, are a Qiangic people of the steep gorges of Sichuan around Barkam. Their Tibetan exonym, rGyalmo Rong, means valley of the queen and preserves a memory of rule by women, and their Gyalrongic tongues coexist with Tibetan and Sichuan Chinese.

Bon was once their dominant religion, until Gelug missionaries arrived in the early fifteenth century and founded monasteries. Under the Ming and early Qing tusi chieftains governed them.

When Yongzheng's bureaucratization of native offices reached them after 1726, the chiefdoms resisted: in 1747 Slob Dpon of Greater Jinchuan attacked the chiefdom of Chakla and held out until 1749, and a second rising under Sonom in 1771 brought 80,000 Qing troops at a cost of seventy million silver taels before his stronghold fell in 1776. These wars, among Qianlong's Ten Great Campaigns, ended the chiefdoms' independence.