Jingpo

The Jingpo, who call themselves Jinghpaw and are the largest of the Kachin peoples, are a Tibeto-Burman people of the Kachin Hills around Putao and the upper Nmai on the Myanmar-Yunnan border. Their ancestors came south from the Tibetan plateau and were recorded in Yunnan as the Xunchuanman; Chinese sources from the Yuan dynasty long called them Yeren, wild people.

In the 1400s and 1500s they moved into the upper Irrawaddy hills, and the Ming recognized their polity as a tusi chiefdom; the Ming Veritable Records call it Cha-shan, stretching from the Nmai to Lushui in Yunnan. In the 1600s chiefs profited from Ahom-China trade in ivory, copper and silver.

Under clan chiefs they lived in two-story bamboo longhouses and farmed gardens where tea grew from at least the 1100s. Their animist religion of spirits was headed by Madai, priests officiating at sowing, harvest and war.