Tsimihety

The Tsimihety are a Malagasy people of the mountainous north-central interior of Madagascar, around Mandritsara. Their name means those who never cut their hair, a refusal said to mark their independence from the Sakalava kingdom to their west, where hair was cut in mourning. They speak a dialect of Malagasy, a Malayo-Polynesian language rooted in the Barito tongues of Borneo.

They farm rice and herd cattle in patrilineal clans under a stateless order: they recognize no chiefs, settle matters by informal consensus and treat anyone who gives orders as suspect.

For centuries they kept outside the rival kingdoms of the island, but in 1823 the armies of Radama I, the Merina king who was unifying Madagascar, subdued the Tsimihety and brought their lands under the rule of Antananarivo.