Khmu

The Khmu, whose endonym means people, speak a Khmuic language of the Austroasiatic family and are considered the aboriginal inhabitants of northern Laos and the surrounding upper Mekong lands, where Khmuic villagers had lived for millennia before the arrival of Tai speakers.

Tai migrations south gathered pace after the Mongol conquest of Yunnan in 1253, and as Lao principalities took the fertile river valleys the Khmu were pushed onto wooded slopes, where they became known as Lao Theung and practised swidden farming. In 1337 their scattered villages still reached west across the Khorat Plateau.

When Fa Ngum founded the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang in 1353, the Khmu entered it as its largest upland people, governed through their own village headmen and remembered in Lao origin legend as the elder brothers of the lowland Lao.