Kuy

The Kuy, whose name means person in their own Katuic Mon-Khmer tongue, are regarded as an indigenous people of the southern Khorat Plateau, the Dangrek Mountains and the middle Mekong, across present-day Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. In 1337 their villages already dotted the Khmer-influenced plateau around Phimai and Buriram.

Kuy tradition and the inscriptions of Preah Vihear associate them especially with elephants: the Kuy Ajiang of the Surin forests caught and trained wild elephants along the Dangrek range as early as the Chenla kingdoms of the 600s and 700s, and later supplied the courts of Angkor and Siam.

The Siamese of Ayutthaya, founded in 1351, called these upland tribute-paying villagers Suay, an administrative label rather than a tribal name. Most Kuy combined swidden farming with animist spirit cults, while those absorbed into Thai and Lao kingdoms gradually took up Theravada Buddhism.