Wa

The Wa, an Austroasiatic people of the rugged hills between the Mekong and the Salween rivers, are animists. Wa tales say the first Wa were born of two female ancestors, Ya Htawm and Ya Htai, who lived as tadpoles in a lake called Nawng Hkaeo.

Rites centred on blood sacrifice: a village spirit healer met sickness with a chicken, a pig or a larger animal, and a buffalo was killed each year at a shrine's Y-shaped post. By local legend a human head made the rice fields fertile, and the Wa of the wilder hills were known as headhunters; those beside the Dai and Shan took up Theravada Buddhism and abandoned the practice.