Wolfgang H. Trost, a committed and quiet activist for Myanmar and the country’s Kachin people, died on Feb. 17 in Hong Kong. In his remembrance, The Irrawaddy revisits his 2008 article on the Southeast Asia’ only known pygmy tribe in Kachin State.
The last traces of the Tarong people of the Adung Long River Valley in northernmost Kachin State are fast disappearing from this remote corner of Myanmar.
The Tarong are a remnant of the only known pygmy tribe of Southeast Asia, and in the absence of a written history, their origin is somewhat obscure. But it is widely accepted that they are a people of Mongolian stock who, together with other regional ethnic groups, migrated south and settled in the upper reaches of the sources of the Irrawaddy River.
It was the famous British botanist Frank Kingdon-Ward who “discovered” the Tarong during one of his many expeditions in the region in 1938 and mentioned them in his book Myanmar’s Icy Mountains, published in 1949. He called them the “Duru” and described them unflatteringly as “one of nature’s unsuccessful experiments.”
In 1954, the then-chief administrator of the region, Col Saw Myint, took notice of them during a “Flag March” to the northern frontier. Based on his report, an expedition by a team from the Myanmar Medical Research Society was undertaken in 1962 in order to collect data and study all aspects of Tarong life.
Isolated by snow and ice for most of the year and accessible only by a treacherous footpath, the Tarong had little if any contact with the outside world, and this is still the case today.
According to a survey report produced in the mid-1960s, there were 69 Tarongs living at that time in the villages of Aroomdam (now called Hkrawng) and Thalahtu in the Adung Long Valley. Even then, not all were pureblooded Tarong, and in more recent years, there has been further mixing with ethnic Htalu neighbors, who also live in both villages and who comprise a sub-group of the predominant regional group, the Rawang.
They are all neighbors of the Tibetans living in the next village north, Tahawndam, but for reasons that most likely lie in their history of being enslaved by Tibetans in the past, the Tarongs seldom interact with them. Slavery continued in the area until the 1950s, when the Communist Chinese government finally outlawed the practice.
According to their oral history, the Tarong living in the Adung Long Valley are mainly descendants of three brothers and their families who migrated sometime in the late 1800s from the main base of their tribe, nowadays called Drung, in the Drung (Tarong) River Valley on the Tibetan side of the high mountains that form the border with Myanmar.
The original Tarong settlers in Myanmar came from the village of Longdammarea, and the reasons for their migration are not entirely clear, although according to local legend, they left their home in the course of violent conflict with their Tibetan neighbors.
In any case, the Tarongs (or Drungs, as they are known in Tibet) had a long tradition of crossing over the Thala L’ka Pass in the summer to hunt or search for precious medicinal roots, bulbs and herbs. Many also made the trip to find brides among the Thalanams, a subgroup of the Htalus.
After this migration, the Tarongs in Myanmar stayed in regular contact with their relatives across the mountains and even brought over brides from their former home. But all this came to an end in 1950, when one of several major regional earthquakes made further crossings of the mountain range impossible.
It was then that the Tarong of the Adung Long Valley became an isolated group, and it is in the ensuing circumstances that we can find the reasons for their probable extinction as a distinct ethnic group in Myanmar, but not in Tibet.
The Tarong’s traditional way of life remained largely unchanged until quite recently. Their main sources of sustenance are cereals such as millet, maize and another local grain known as phantha, grown using a crude form of slash and burn farming, supplemented by some gardening of pulses. They also gather food almost daily and occasionally hunt in the nearby forests, mainly for musk or barking deer, as well as mountain goats.
Animal husbandry was largely unknown until it was adopted in recent years as a result of cohabiting with the Htalu-Rawangs. Now they raise chickens, ducks and pigs. They also keep small numbers of mithun, a kind of semi-wild cattle. There is no fishing, as there are simply no fish in the ice-cold Adung Long River.
Hunting is done entirely with crossbows made of carefully selected hardwood (mulberry is used for the stave and plum for the stock), with a string of hemp and arrows poisoned with wolfsbane. They can target animals with amazing accuracy, and the poison arrows can kill large animals within minutes of hitting them.
The Tarongs are credited by other ethnic groups in the region—the Tibetans, the Rawangs and the Lisu, who are all known as much more active hunters—as the inventors and master craftsmen of this unique hunting tool.
Hunting for pelts and other precious animal parts and gathering coveted medicinal herbs and bulbs are the two main sources of the Tarong’s subsistence income. Although they also use money, they mostly engage in bartering with their neighbors.
Later, for this kind of trade, they crossed the mountains into Tibet in the summer, mostly to the nearby village of Jeethay, where they acquire important basics such as salt, tea and knives (including machetes), and occasionally ornaments and clothing.
Unlike the Tibetans, the Tarongs and Htalu-Rawang live in very basic raised huts, made mostly of split bamboo, with thatched roofs.
Their traditional clothing is simple and rather plain, consisting of short pants, stockings for the protection of the lower legs and a large blanket-like cloth made of woven hemp fiber. But these days this is increasingly supplemented and replaced by cheap clothing from China or even Lower Myanmar.
Except for cloth weaving and the making of crossbows and cane baskets, which are carried on the back with the aid of a headband over the forehead as the main means of transporting goods, there are no other cottage industries.
The Tarongs used to practice their own unique form of animism, a polytheistic belief system which finds both guardian and threatening spirits in all that surrounds them—from the mountains and trees to the sun and moon. All rites of passage are conducted by a kind of shaman called a nam’sa, who also provides guidance and intercession with the spirits.
These days, however, most Tarong, like their Rawang neighbors, practice Christianity.
With an average height of 149 cm for males and 140 cm for females, the Tarongs and their relatives the Drungs are the only pygmies of Mongolian stock. The reason for their diminutive size has never been conclusively established, but it is assumed that the answer lies in unique genetic conditions.
In this context, it is important to note that populations in the area concerned, on both sides of the border, are prone to endemic goiters—severe swellings of the thyroid glands associated with inadequate intake of iodine. Combined with widespread inbreeding, especially in the Adung Long Valley, the lack of iodine in their diet may go some way toward explaining both the short stature of the Tarong and the relatively high incidence of cretinism among them.
When this author visited the area in 2002, only around 42 to 50 villagers claimed to be of mixed Tarong-Htalu parentage, while only seven or eight were regarded as the last pureblooded Tarong of the Adung Long Valley.
At that time, the only male of fertile age among them, 55-year-old Dawi, had no hope of finding a bride among the remaining women of this group, as they were all well past childbearing age. When they pass away, the Tarong of Myanmar will vanish with them.
