Zo

Zo, meaning highlander, is the shared self-name of the northern Kuki-Chin peoples. They speak related Tibeto-Burman languages and trace their origin to migrations from the Tibetan marches into Burma. The Burmese term Chin first appears in eleventh-century inscriptions of King Kyansittha.

In the late 1200s they crossed into the Kale-Kabaw valley and built their capital at Khampat, until the Shan founding of Kale in 1395 drove them into the Chin Hills. The tribes spread from their first hill settlement: the Asho went south, the Laimi held Falam and Hakha, and the Zomi reached the Manipur hills by about 1554.

The northern Zo lived in autonomous villages under warrior chiefs and kept headhunting and animist ancestor cults. When the 1834 treaty assigned the Kabaw valley to Burma, the Sukte clan of Tedim was rising as the dominant hill power.