Vietnam: Mnong Gar
The Vietnam War (1959-1975) represents many things to Americans today. To many the focus is on memories of a personal experience or the experiences of others. The principal players are usually perceived as the Americans involved in a Vietnamese ideological conflict. The Americans are viewed as aiding the anti-communist factions by creating the Republic of Vietnam and providing logistical and military assistance. Some viewed this as an extension of the Cold War and in some cases as expansion of American imperialism in the Pacific. Most American soldiers found politics and ideology unimportant in day to day survival when actually there. Also, it became clear that there were many different cultures and factions in Vietnam. Some American soldiers were able to keep more to their units, but others virtually lived with the people.
My experience started in 1968 when I was sent to Vietnam as one of the many replacements for casualties of the 1968 Tet Offensive. It so happened that I was sent to II Corps area in the Central Highlands near Ban Me Thuot. I was a medic in an A-Team (A-235) with 5th USASFG headquartered in Nha Trang. Our A-Team camp was located in the Central Highlands in a region that was the aboriginal homeland of three Montagnard people called Rhade, Koho, and Mnong Gar. Montagnard was a French designation meaning 'mountaineers' and the Vietnamese referred to the people as moi, which translates 'savage'. Montagnard people refer to themselves as Dega, which means 'first people'. The Vietnamese were originally from the Red River area in China and northern Vietnam. Around A.D. 800-1100 Vietnamese people expanded south into the Mekong basin to find Cham and Khmer peoples who had just come from Indianized kingdoms of Champa and Cambodia and had pushed indigenous Malayo-Polynesians into the highlands. The Vietnamese defeated the Cham people and pushed the Khmers out of the delta into the highlands with indigenous Malayo-Polynesian people. Together the Khmers and Malayo-Polynesians are known as 'hill tribes' or Montagnards. Americans often made the analogy that the Montagnards were like Native Americans/American Indians, who had been similarly displaced. U.S. Special Forces used these tribes as mercenaries, since most Montagnards rightly saw all Vietnamese as a threat to their sovereignty. In our A-team camps we were advisors to a mercenary force of Montagnards called Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) led by Vietnamese Special Forces (LLDB). This was a volatile situation since the Montagnards were not treated well by the Vietnamese Special Forces (LLDB) and Vietnamese (ARVN), who were supposedly allies; or the enemy Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The Montagnards rightly felt isolated and cut off; and clandestinely were fighting for their independence. Like many conflicts and civil wars, the Vietnam War was quite complex and Americans in Special Forces soon learned that it wasn't terribly clear about what side anybody was on. You could have people in your camp that had various political allegiances, or that would make decisions based on immediate economic, family, and financial interests.
A-235:
Nhon Co
The Mnong Gar were the main group of Montagnards in the area of my A-team camp (A-235 Nhon Co). The Mnong Gar had dealt with conflict and war for a long time, since they were among the aboriginal Malayo-Polynesians who had been pushed into the highlands by invading Vietnamese, Cham, and Khmer. For centuries the Chinese tried to invade and rule Vietnam but were never successful. Eventually the French invaded and colonized the area in the 1857 and combined the old kingdoms into their colony, Indo-China. The French were driven out by the Japanese in World War II, but returned after the war. After WWII many colonial nations strove for independence and broke away from their colonial allegiances but France doggedly held onto Vietnam. Apparently, Ho Chi Minh sought support for independence and a democracy from the French and United States, but was turned away by both. Ho Chi Minh finally successfully got aid from communist block nations, which initiated the Viet Minh conflict with the French from 1949-1959. The French used the Montagnards as mercenaries against the Viet Minh, thus many of the older Montagnards were veterans and spoke fluent French.
Traditionally, the Mnong Gar were farmers using a slash-burn and shifting cultivation
system (miir) in which the people cleared a plot of land by burning and then they
would plant crops, mainly dry rice, in the ash covered areas. In and around their
villages they grew eggplant and fruit trees, while raising pigs, chickens, dogs, ducks and
sometimes water buffalo. Elephants were brought in for work, but were not kept in the villages.
Considerable amounts of wild plants were gathered in the forest, in addition to hunting,
trapping and fishing. In fact the Mnong Gar were referred to as Phii Bree, "men of
the forest" by other highland tribes because of their greater use of the products of
the forest. Originally this area had abundant wildlife, including monkey, gibbons (lesser
ape), Asian elephant, tiger, gaur (wild cattle), bear and many kinds of deer. Most animals
were trapped, but the people did have spears and beautifully made crossbows for larger
game, including tiger. In the forest the people usually carried a burden basket and a bush
knife. The favorite wild food was fish and the people constructed elaborate weirs to
create shallows so they could scoop fish with special baskets. All of these
resources were processed back in their villages which consisted of huge
bamboo and thatch long
houses of up to 120 feet in length. The smoky interiors had multiple cooking hearths,
storage jar platforms and sleeping platforms supporting a matrilineal extended family of a
principal/senior woman's nuclear group with subordinate female relatives and their
families.
The men traditionally wore a loin cloth (suu troany) and sometimes a vest, while the women wore a full length skirt; both of which were hand woven of cotton. Both men and women wore numerous necklaces and bracelets. Mnong Gar men modified their front incisors by chipping and or filling them to a point, reportedly for aesthetic reasons. Throughout history these people traded for metal jewelry, gongs, and most important ceramic jars. These glazed jars were of Vietnamese or Chinese origin and were used mostly to store a rice wine (rnoom) that was sealed in the jar (yang) for ceremonial feasts.
Traditional customs were focused on an autonomous village's relationship to the forest, including the ancestral spirits of the matrilineal clans and ancestral spirits of animals and plants in the forest. Each village had headmen who derived power from buffalo sacrifices and exchanges (tam boh) in ceremonial feasts that not only redistributed wealth but appeased the various spirits that may have been offended by humans. In specific cases the offender was sick and the sacrifice would include or be preceded by a healing with a shaman (njau) who acted as an intermediary between sorcerers (caak) and spirits (yaang). During these ceremonial feasts pigs, buffalo and jars were exchanged as a symbol of reciprocity and sacrifice in the all important relationship between the village and the ancestral spirits of the forest. In a given village you might see the huge buffalo horns stacked in a wooden crib representing the level of sacrifice given by that village, rather than the prestige of the individual. The Great Earth Festival or the Blood Anointment of the Paddy (Mhaam Baa) was a ceremonial feast and sacrifice given by the village to ensure fertility of the rice crops and the people.
The Mnong Gar maintained their lifestyle with some outside modifications and pressures,
often conducting sacrifices and exchanges to offset the effect of outside intruders.
Southeast of the Mnong Gar highland area is the beautiful city, Dalat,
used by both
the French and Vietnamese as a retreat which effectively acted as a buffer from lowland
expansion. However, the Vietnam War brought unrecoverable destruction. Further, the
current regime is unsupportive of all ethnic minorities and seems determined to displace
most hill tribes.
Although the Montagnards and in particular the Mnong Gar went through many cultural changes during contact with Vietnamese, Chinese and Cham peoples; it was the Europeans that exerted the greatest pressure, beginning with the French. About 1/3 of the Mnong Gar were converted under the French Catholic Missions. However, the greatest changes came with the establishment of 'montagnard battalions' to fight against the 'non-submissive' Vietnamese during the French regime. This pattern continued during and after WWII with the autonimist movement FULRO (trans.: United Front of Liberation of the Oppressed Races), which was primarily led by Rhade and Bohnar tribesmen. FULRO continued during the Vietnam War and despite its manipulation by the French to fight the Viet Minh was ultimately used by the Montagnards to quell all oppressors. The Americans continued to use of Montagnards as mercenaries against the North Vietnamese, especially with the establishment of the border Special Forces Camps and the CIDG. The Special Forces Recon teams under the CIA/SOG and various strike forces (MIKE Force) used Montagnard mercenaries extensively. The greatest risks were with the SOG (Studies and Observations Group) that ran recon teams into Cambodia, Laos, and even North Vietnam with 2-3 Americans (mostly Special Forces, Navy Seals, Air Force Air Commandos, Marine Force Recon) and 4- 8+ Nungs (Chinese minority from Kwangsi Province) or Montagnards. The higher brass and CIA knew that they were not trying to help minority and oppressed groups like the Montagnards, but in fact they were trying to keep American casualties down by sacrificing greater numbers of these 'indigenous' mercenaries. Whether the toll of war would have been greater or less if the Montagnards had been left alone or protected in other ways will be never known. In anthropology the abuse of indigenous cultures by various government agencies, especially the CIA, or civilian missionaries was exposed in the 1970's and resulted in the formation of ethics policies. Many academic institutions and CIA 'think tanks' (like the RAND Corp) were pressured to follow some sort of ethical standards. However, this did nothing for the refugees of the Vietnam War, especially people like the Montagnards who are ignored or only aided by unscrupulous sponsors.
Montagnard
families and CIDG near Ban Don
Many of the cultural changes during the Vietnam War went unnoticed by most since there was always a continued cultural arrogance on the part of Westerners, including Americans, toward traditional cultures like the Montagnards. For example Americans thought they were doing Montagnards a great favor by replacing thatched roofing with steel sheet metal panels that basically made you roast inside your house during the hot dry season and leak like a sieve during the monsoons. However, deeper changes of making refugees with 'strategic hamlets' destroyed the traditional farming base, such that rice had to be imported in from Louisiana and California and distributed through the Vietnamese who in turn would cheat the Montagnards out of their fair share. During the war this and other abuses led to some Montagnard revolts in Special Forces Camps that were led by FULRO. Their target was the corrupt Vietnamese, not the Americans. The most important change was that the Mnong Gar were unable to maintain their traditional relationship with the forest and ancestral spirits. They had to replace traditional feasts with new ones with Americans to try to establish order and harmony in a war zone.
Those Montagnards that did not get removed to the United States and stayed in Vietnam were neglected due to economic strain and worse suffered revenge from the North Vietnamese for being so faithful to the Americans. Reports and travel to Vietnam indicates that many of the Montagnard tribes are simply gone. In some areas the Montagnards have been displaced by Vietnamese needing farmland and in other areas the Montagnards have been forced to adopt Vietnamese lifestyles. Most Special Forces veterans still feel the greatest betrayal of the war was to those Montagnard troops and their families. The Montagnards treated us well and often gave their lives to save Americans. In many cases Americans would risk their own lives for the Montagnards troops they fought with. In 1969 SFC Jerry Shriver (MIA) disappeared with his Montagnard team in Cambodia with their fate remaining a mystery to this day. Vietnamization continues today and veterans have found it difficult to visit the central highlands near Ban Me Thuot or Pleiku.
SAVE THE MONTAGNARD PEOPLE, INC.
Flag
Since 1998, my SF medic classmates have gathered for reunions in various parts of the country. Some have returned to Vietnam and have been prevented from going up into the Central Highlands. Just recently (2001-2002) it has been reported a Montagnard revolt is again brewing north of Ban Me Thuot.
Copyright © S. J. Crouthamel 2003