Lawa

The Lawa are an Austroasiatic people of the Palaungic branch, whose language is close to the Wa and Blang, and they are regarded as the autochthonous inhabitants of the Chao Phraya and upper Ping valleys before the southward migration of the Tai.

Between the fifth and tenth centuries Lawa communities lived in central Thailand alongside the Mon, including at Lavo, present-day Lopburi, while Chiang Mai was later built on the site of a fifth-century Lawa walled settlement. Northern Thai chronicles remember them as the founders of Haripunchai, modern Lamphun, and of the Ngoenyang chiefship.

In the thirteenth century King Mangrai of Lanna took Kengtung from the Lawa and brought their northern towns under Tai rule, and in 1388 Lavo was absorbed into the rising Ayutthaya kingdom. The Lawa who kept to the hills of Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son preserved village animism and a reputation as ironsmiths under the overlordship of Lanna and later Siam.