Dissertation, Chapter 2
Part 3
Land Tenure
Little specific information is available on land tenure in the Upper Salween. This is partly because of the changing demographic and land ownership conditions. Indigenous land ownership systems were not treated as valid by the Chinese or British colonial states. For instance, in areas with Chinese settlement Han were encouraged in their acquisition of land by Chinese officials {Rose & Brown 1911: 264}.
Lisu land tenure was based on use {Rose & Brown 1911: 264}. A household owned the land it cleared and could sell it, but uncultivated land was communal land and used for pasturage. Land was owned by the local spirits who lived there. The work of clearing gave the rights of the land to the farmer once the spirits had been propitiated {Gros 1996; Dessaint & Dessaint 1992}. This is a common pattern among northern mainland Southeast Asian upland swiddeners (see {Gillogly & Nghiem 1992}. Ideally, they practiced swiddening on a long rotation of up to thirty years’ fallow, but in modern Yunnan the rotation was much shorter, only three to twelve years {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}. Land use in northern Thailand will be discussed in a later chapter, but the ideal rotational pattern was not followed in the twentieth century there, either.
In later decades and to the southern territory in Yunnan, it was common for each family in a village to have its own preserve, a large tract of mountain land that they alone had the right to cut and cultivate {Fraser 1922: vi}. Household property, owned by the father, was said to be inherited equally by the sons {Rose & Brown 1911: 265}, although I believe this to be a misstatement of trans-generational transfers. At least, the specific ways in which new households established fields was not a clear-cut matter of inheritance in modern Lisu society in northern Thailand.
Feuding
Feuding among Lisu villages up to the 1910s was frequent at times and could hinder travel and communications, especially in the region around and north of 26 30'. Most villages and ‘tribal subdivisions’ (probably clans or localized patrilineages) appeared to be at war with each other; many people had never been more than a day’s journey from their own villages; roads were not maintained; and it was almost impossible to get a guide and accurate information about routes {Forrest 1908: 261}. Forrest notes that in some regions, feuding and famine had resulted in the extermination of many adult males, his opinion being that the famine was the result of feuding taking men away from profitable enterprise. On their travels, Forrest’s group passed the “mouldering skeletons” of famine victims {Forrest 1908: 248, 257, 258}. At one point, they found themselves in the middle of a Lisu feud over rights to ferry Forrest’s group across the Salween. The people on the west side of the Salween protested when someone on the east side offered to escort them from the west side to the east; the right to escort people from the west to the east was, apparently, that of the Lisu on the west. In defense of their privilege, the west bank Lisu brought out their crossbows and “poisoned arrows” and fired, but were silenced by a show of British weaponry {Forrest 1908: 252-253}. Other causes of feuding were the theft of cattle and even maize {Forrest 1908: 254}.
In Upper Burma, although most offences could be settled by arbitration and mediation, a certain class of offenses involving marriage and sexual transgressions were called for the same term as for feuds and justified violent reprisals. The goal of a feud was not so much to kill people as to make life so unpleasant for enemies that they would agree to pay compensation {Leach 1965: 90, 92}.
Feuds among villages, as observed by Forrest, had a ceremonial quality. A corps of fifty warriors gathered in one dispute. They were decorated in silver, deers’ horns, pebbles, and cowries. Their faces were blackened. They carried crossbows five feet long, swords five feet long, and broad ox-hide shields five feet high. While the warriors made an impressive display, the warfare consisted only of display, oratory, and making a show of stringing bows. By afternoon, they had dispersed {Forrest 1908: 255}. Killings took place more by murder and sudden death by ambush {Forrest 1908: 264}. Forrest took this as evidence of Lisu cowardice {Forrest 1908: 255}.
The huge crossbow and poisoned arrows were typical of Black Lisu {Rose & Brown 1911: 255}, or at least of whichever Lisu were living north of wherever the informants lived. Bows were made of wild mulberry, the stock of wild plum, the string of plaited hemp, the trigger of bone. The largest had a span of five feet and required a pull of 35 pounds to string them. They shot arrows fifty or sixty paces {Rose & Brown 1911: 255}. Quivers and helmets were made of deerskin {Rose & Brown 1911: 258}. The arrow, of 16-18 inches, was of split bamboo hardened and pointed. The infamous poison was made from the expressed liquid from the tubers of aconitum (aconite) found in the high mountains, mixed with resin. Supposedly this poison was known only to the “prophets” or shamans {Forrest 1908: 262-263} and is as likely to have been as magical as material.
Rose & Brown called the northern Lisu “the terror of the Upper Salween,” living by robbery and murder and fighting off all Chinese penetration. The Chinese had a “superstitious” dread of the fierce Lisu, their crossbows, and their poisoned arrows {!Rose & Brown 1911: 256}. Forrest thinks that Chinese stories of Lisu fierceness were not to be believed. But at any rate, stories of Lisu poisoned arrows were quite sufficient to keep most Chinese troops out of their territory, if not intrepid British colonial explorers.
Despite feuding that may have disrupted trade, travel, and subsistence, villages often had alliances with Lisu villages not in their immediate neighborhood {Forrest 1908: 246, 249, 250, 251}. They planted cash crops and traded. This indicates that these people were not as isolated and oppressed by constant feuding as British explorers and Chinese officials claimed. Note that travelers tended to mount expeditions in the winter months after harvest (from December to May {Leach 1965: 91}), a time given to feuding. Furthermore, Chinese destruction of local polities and their inability to fill that gap likely led to an increase in feuding in the face of the lack of extra-village institutions to mediate. In short, while feuding may well have been a feature of Lisu tribal society, the levels of feuding at this time bespeak political conditions rather than an inherently warlike quality of Lisu people. In later decades, Lisu in Burma and the southern part of their distribution in Yunnan were considered docile and peaceful, mild in disposition, and suffering injustice quietly {Enriquez 1921: 70}.
Slavery
In the Upper Salween, the Independent (Black) Lisu took slaves in raids or as prisoners to be ransomed (Gros 1996). They are recorded as raiding the Nu to the north, White Lisu to the east, and Drung to the south. If not ransomed, the prisoners were enslaved. Some children of slaves were free, others kept in bondage, but in either case the status of descendants of slaves was progressively ameliorated over time. The life of these prisoners was said not to be difficult (Gros 1996, citing {Dubernard & Desgodins 1875; Dessaint & Ngwawa 1994: 61-2}). The men worked in the fields, chopped wood, and drew water. They were allowed to marry Lisu women and their children were free. There are conflicting reports as to whether women were enslaved; Rose and Brown say that if enslaved, women married other slaves but their children became free {!Rose & Brown 1911: 265}. Hostages were also taken in compensation for unpaid debt, even those concocted by Lisu chiefs (Gros 1996). The concept of debt was fundamental to political relations in the northern part of this region. Leach similarly noted that slavery was based on debt and dependency {Leach 1965: 299-303}. We can understand slavery as part of a larger system of debt, dependency, and patronage, much as it was in mainland Southeast Asia. It was likely exacerbated and distorted as these debt relationships were used by Chinese in alienating indigenous peoples’ land {Giersch 2001: 83-84}. At a later date, Fraser (working with Lisu in the southern distribution in Yunnan and in Burma) claimed that slavery was unknown among the Lisu, particularly the sale of a child to an outsider {Fraser 1922: xi}. This bespeaks a critical change in the nature of dependency relations by the 1920s. The multiple spheres of obligations, tribute, and taxes imposed upon farmers have already been discussed. A creditor made a large part of the population economically dependent and through these debt relations arose a relation of political dependency {Gros 2001a}. Later, this system that tied people together politically recombined to create conditions of indebtedness for indigenous peoples and made them susceptible to accepting usurious loans; the labor and production of the local population was alienated, and slavery became sharecropping and landlessness.
Summary
In conclusion, while little detail is available on the social structure of Lisu in Yunnan from the travelers' accounts, their descriptions do give an idea of some of the features of Lisu social life and much of their economy. Social structure will be discussed in the next chapter. Most of the information available concerns issues of interest for trade and political control. From these we can see variations in the degree of political organization from egalitarian forms labeled anarchic, to the presence of and degree of control exercised by headmen or tusi. Subsistence agriculture was based on swiddening and the planting of upland rainfed grain crops. Hunting and gathering were also very important for subsistence. Trade was an important element of their adaptation to this harsh environment; Lisu villagers eagerly sought trade with those who passed through their territory and men traveled for trade, hunting, and other economic opportunities. As a result, they were both conversant with the surrounding region and knew other languages. Both foraged forest and agricultural products were sold, apparently none in very great quantity or with very great profit. The role of Lisu in regional trade was as peripheral dependents through raiding, protection, or small-scale trade (see next section). However, opium was already a cash crop by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, as we shall see, it came to dominate commercial exchange in Northern Mainland Southeast Asia.
Feuding and slavery were both elements of Lisu society. Feuding is best understood as part of a legal and economic system of debt, obligation and reciprocity, and an element in the negotiation of compensation and settlement. The accounts of local warfare or feuding available to me sound much like tribal warfare in Melanesia – but we can never forget the profoundly different context of upland/lowland relations and state penetration in which even "isolated" Lisu lived. Lisu, as we shall see in the next section, also played a role in the state polities' foreign relations, as soldiers and inhabitants of buffer zones.
Lisu Relations to Regional States
Lisu in the Historical Record: Brigands and Mercenaries
Lisu are mentioned in local and imperial Chinese chronicles of battles and suppression of brigands and robbers. This is in keeping with the interests of the Chinese state for which such chronicles were written. However, these limited allusions hint at a significant aspect of how Lisu related to regional states.
Lisu are recorded as early as the Tang Dynasty, from 618 to 906 AD {Daniels 1994}. A later and more descriptive mention of Lisu are recorded in the chronicles of the tusi of Lijiang. The Lisu tribes of Yun-lung (to the southeast of Lijiang at about 26 , 99 30') plundered government salt in 1592 (the late Ming Dynasty). They are characterized as aboriginal peoples clustered around Yun-lung but distributed widely and noncontiguously throughout Yunnan. The tusi of Lijiang suppressed this trouble and decapitated 83 of the perpetrators {Rock 1947: 124}. Fifty-two years later, Lisu and other tribes such as the Yi (Lolo) and Sifan (nomadic Tibetans) “of the four mountains of Pi-shuo” surrendered or acknowledged the suzerainty of the Lijiang magistrate (Rock 1947: 124).
In modern times, Lisu were frequently mentioned as robbers preying on the caravan trade. North of Tengchong, where a high range separated the watersheds of the Shweli and Salween Rivers, Lisu robbers preyed on caravans where they had to traverse Ma-mien-kuan Pass {Davies 1909: 127}. Attacks on Chinese caravans were a common practice {Rose & Brown 1911: 255}. Black Lisu preyed especially on salt caravans, as salt was a highly valued commodity and difficult to get {Rose & Brown 1911: 265; Dick 1987: 8}.
Even after losing their official position in 1723, the hereditary tusi family continued to document their service to the emperor. In these documents, Lisu were again cited as robbers defeated by the tusi’s ancestors in 1739, 1742, and 1802 (Rock 1947: 296, 310n, 321). In these contexts, Lisu were categorized as dangerous, uncivilized, barbaric, given to violence, and prone to preying upon those weaker than themselves. Official documents of the time lumped together all who were ‘untamed natives,’ ‘bandits’ and ‘resistors of imperial taxes’ {Chao 1995: 140}. Lisu through both the Ming and early Qing Dynasties were largely considered barbarians to be suppressed or used in the process of imperial pacification and expansion.
But when under the control of the Naxi ruling lineage of Lijiang, the ‘barbarians’ were shown as loyal troops, powerful and effective when co-opted into the imperial endeavor under effective, civilized leadership (Rock 1947: 307n). Lisu are mentioned as part of the Lijiang forces in the Han imperial project, suppressing Wu Sangui’s rebellion. According to the chronicles of the tusi lineage of Lijiang, they were prevailed upon by imperial representatives to aid in suppressing the rebellion with the promise of rewards of rice, official seals, and letters patent. The tusi recruited upland natives, including “wild” Lisu to first deceive and lead astray and then to ambush the rebel forces. According to chroniclers, the Lijiang campaign was bloody and successful due to the ambushes by the Lisu in the “wild jungle” (Rock 1947: 139-141). Lisu troops were cited again for their contribution to a military undertaking in an 1871 chronicle {Rock 1947: 307n}.
Serving as troops for others’ enterprises may also have been part of a larger Lisu strategy. Lisu men were reported to have served as troops for groups other than the tusi ruler of Lijiang; Dubernard and Desgodins {!Dubernard & Desgodins 1875} reported that Lisu were used by “Black Lolo” (independent Yi chiefs) to fight feuds on their behalf (cited in Hutheesing 1990a: 34). Lisu in Burma were hired by Shan nobility as mercenaries {Leach 1965: 39-40} and later served in the forces of the British Empire {Enriquez 1921: 70}. As discussed in the previous section, Lisu were well known for their huge crossbows, poisoned arrows, robbery of trade caravans, and their fierceness towards those who tried to conquer them.
When Naxi chiefs invaded the upper Mekong Valley, settled in Weixi, Kangpu, Yezhi, Adunzi, and seized Qizong, Lapu, and Benzilan in the Yangzi Valley, they did so with the aid of Lisu regiments {Gros 1996}. Lisu did not serve merely as mercenary troops for powerful chiefs. Naxi tusi of the region delegated a part of their authority to subordinate chiefs who were influential Lisu (Gros 1996). In the nineteenth century they are reported as levying a tax on the Nu along with the tusi of Yezhi {Gros 1996}. The political alliance of Lisu with the Naxi tusi of Yezhi is further illustrated in the following story. In 1870-4, a sectarian conflict between Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and their patrons resulted in the monks of one monastery pillaging families dependent upon Yezhi, whose tusi was killed or assassinated. Bands of Lisu arose to avenge their chief and burned down the villages under the protection of the temple {Gros 1996}. An anti-lamasery letter published by a Chinese official further exacerbated conflict. The Lisu took slaves in this battle, who were later redeemed by the French Catholic Mission {Gros 1996}.
Upland peoples also attacked others of their own or similarly positioned non-Han people. The Lisu in Eastern Tibet and Weixi were known to attack Lutzu (Nu) villages from a position of strength in their “homeland” {Rock 1947: 330, 334-5; Gros 1996}. In the early twentieth century, Kingdon-Ward expressed surprise that the Lisu had not driven the “peaceful” Lutzu out of the fertile section of the valley between Pang-ta and Kienaton. He attributed this to the Lutzu being part-Tibetan and able to withstand incursion of the more ‘primitive’ Lisu {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 197}, but it was more likely a matter of the Lutzu being dependents of Tibetan and Naxi chiefs. Where the Lisu predated on Lutzu, the relationship was not so much of one group driving the other out as of one dominating the other.
Lisu were not always dominant; mountain people attacked lowland farmers whether Han or not. The ‘timid’ Lisu of the Mekong were constantly raided by the independent Lisu of the Salween “who [were] dangerous brigands,” taking cattle and hostages who would be enslaved if not ransomed {d’Orleans 1896: 301}. It appears as a type of parasitism by which people of the uplands where survival was riskier predated on those in better conditions. But this must all be understood in the context of political relations of dependency. In a case in the mid-nineteenth century, a Nu community organized a small revolution to lower their numerous and varied taxes to the lamaseries, Tibetan officials, and merchants (see Chapter 1, Economic and Political Conditions of Yunnan, Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries: Multiple Layers of Allegiance, p. 7, and Tibetan Influence, p. 11). Chinese and a Lisu regiment of troops assisted them in this {Gros 2001a}.
Lisu were mentioned in other records of uprisings against taxation, land alienation, and Chinese imperial control. One uprising took place in 1803. Local chiefs who had been resisting Qing administrative reforms in an area south of Tibetan Tsarong and the Yangjin salt marshes were eventually dismissed when they were suspected of supporting a Lisu uprising in 1803 {Gros 1996}. A Lisu uprising of 1821 has already been mentioned (Chapter 1, Demography: A Case of Land Alienation Among the Lisu, p. 50). It is worthy of note that they united in a multi-ethnic group with Yi and Tai. Their complaints of abuse were also directed against native officials; their tusi had been selling ancestral estates held in lieu of salary since 1745 {Daniels 1994}. Mark that these incidents of brigandage or revolt occurred at about the time of the Muslim Uprisings and other times when imperial administrative influence was weak. Whether Lisu ever arose against Tibetan control is not as well recorded. While Lisu may have been brigands or mercenaries, it is just as likely that they took advantage of conditions to assert their own place in the multiple spheres of authority, something that could work to the advantage of tribute-paying farmers if they could become dependent on fewer, fairer, masters.
Oscillations between brigand and soldier continued; in the 1920s, Rock observed or heard of both Lisu robbers at the Li-ti-p’ing divide west of Lijiang down to Wei-Hsi and Lisu guards against Lolo robbers at Yo-wa-bu pass and Yung-ning (Rock 1947: 301, 393, and plate 231).
Ethnic Characteristics and Sociopolitical Relations to Regional States
I believe that this oscillation between Lisu as brigands/Lisu as troops is part and parcel of Lisu adaptations to environmental and political conditions. They lived at high altitudes, on mountain tops and, especially on the Upper Salween, conditions did not allow either a significant surplus or reliable subsistence. Certain political and economic adaptations enabled groups like the Lisu to gain control of greater resources that allowed them to support more stable subsistence as well as status displays. In some conditions, these adaptations also supported chiefs, albeit briefly.
Leach summarizes some of the ways in which uplanders supported more complex sociopolitical systems. One was to establish a political and economic alliance with more prosperous plains or valley peoples. They could establish themselves as overlords to whom valley peoples paid rent, as occurred with the Kachin and Shan in the HuKawng Valley, Burma, prior to 1926. Another way, according to Leach, was for uplanders to extort lowlanders who would pay lowlanders to prevent them raiding their crops {Leach 1965: 21-22}. The difference between these is one of legitimacy and the perceptions of the two groups involved. The difference between ideological and military power is that between tribute and extortion; gifts and raids are two sides of the same coin. An example of this in the Lisu case was raids by Lisu of the Upper Salween on the “peaceful” Lutzu and White Lisu on the Mekong. These were generally considered illegitimate in the context of a centralizing state and so condemned as raiding, but clearly the Lutzu at times asked for Lisu help in overthrowing greedy lords – perhaps a sort of debt consolidation. At other locations, Lisu were incorporated into Naxi polities. In Yezhi and Weixi, Lisu chiefs were allied with Naxi chiefs who delegated collection of tribute to them. In smaller numbers, Lisu appear to have taken a dependent relationship to the locally dominant group. In Burma, Lisu and Kachin were interspersed, Kachin predominating in the west and Lisu in the east. Kachin considered Lisu inferior and in some localities extracted tribute from them {Anderson 1871: 118}. In light of the multiple spheres of influence and dependency/patronage relationships in northern mainland Southeast Asia, exacting tribute would be in keeping with those political relations of dependency far more than a sense of inferiority with its connotation of immutable or racial characteristics that the British attributed to it.
Mountain peoples could also exploit the fact that they controlled cross-country communications through mountain passes that joined valleys and levy tolls on caravans {Leach 1965: 21-22}. This appears to have been the case for Lisu on the Upper Salween. As such, they could either be classified as robbers by the state or given legitimacy to collect tolls by being officially appointed by the state. Finally, valley chiefs sometimes engaged uplanders as mercenaries {Leach 1965: 22}, as occurred with Lisu and Shan or Naxi.
In this alternation of Lisu as robbers/Lisu as troops, it is not clear whether these are the same populations oscillating in their relations to lowland powers, or geographically different populations of Lisu moving successively into and out of the orbit of lowland control. It is just as likely that these were the same populations over time, both in the pattern of incorporating rebels into the imperial system, what Feuerwerker calls the transformation from heterodox to orthodox military leadership {!Feuerwerker 1975: 43}. For instance, at the Yunnan/Burma border at Tengchong, the Lisu headman or tusi’s ancestor had been invested as a reward for conquering the Lisu for the Chinese {Davies 1909: 36}.
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