Sedang

The Sedang, who call themselves Hdang and were recorded as Xo Dang by the Vietnamese, are a Mon-Khmer people of the northern Central Highlands, living mainly around Kon Tum with offshoots in southern Laos and north-eastern Cambodia. They speak a North Bahnaric language.

From the 1100s their lands were squeezed in wars with the Chams, Lao and Siamese; by the 1500s Thai and Lao expansion had pushed them into the mountains above the Mekong, where they built stilted longhouses and communal halls and kept the gong-and-buffalo rituals of the highlands. Reputedly the most warlike of the plateau peoples, their warriors and war elephants fought alongside Bahnar and Jarai tribes in the Tay Son armies that rose in 1771.