Rmeet

Guido Sprenger

Lamet, Lamed, Rmet, Khamet, Kha Lamet

The Rmeet live in a region called the Southeast Asian Massif or Zomia, a mountainous zone situated between regions historically dominated by state societies in Southeast Asia, China, and India. They are settled in a fairly bounded area of northern Laos, covering parts of the provinces Luang Namtha, Oudomxay and Bokeo. A single village exists in northern Thailand, and migration for work or as refugees from the Second Indochina War has brought Rmeet to Thailand, the United States, France and other countries.

Izikowitz (1979) notes differences between the Upper and Lower Lamet (Rmeet), without specifying clearly how he distinguished the two groups or if the terms are indigenous. The Upper Lamet had more intense contacts with the lowlands. Research in the 2000s could not corroborate such a distinction.

Individuals identified as Rmeet numbered 5,795 in the mid-1930s, and 22,383 in 2015.

The Rmeet language belongs to the Palaung-Wa branch of Mon-Khmer languages, of Austroasiatic stock.

The Rmeet attribute a number of cultural features to their (usually temporary) labor migrations to northern Thailand in the past; specifically to their contact with Shan. These include prophylactic tattooing, shamanism, and ritual dances. The Rmeet also took part in royal rituals in Luang Prabang during the colonial and royal period, mythically identifying the king of Laos as being of Rmeet descent.

No history of migration as a group into Laos is known from historical sources or oral accounts. Archaeological finds of iron furnaces operating in the ninth and tenth centuries in Nalae district, Luang Nam Tha province can be linked to local legends, suggesting the possibility that Rmeet villages existed in the area since at least that period (Évrard et al. 2016).

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Rmeet were considered remote and difficult to reach, while at the same time they were travelling to Thailand for work and trading in rice and forest products. They lived in an area roughly defined by northern Thai and Lao principalities like Lanna and Luang Prabang, that includes mountain-dwelling ethnic groups from China, like the Hmong, and Chinese traders. The Rmeet share numerous features of social structure and ritual with their closest neighbors, and with the second-largest ethnic group in Laos, the Mon-Khmer-speaking Khmu. Khmu often consider Rmeet to be a Khmu subgroup (tmooy), which the Rmeet usually deny.

The Rmeet mostly live in rural villages of one- to four-hundred people. In the uplands, houses are mostly made of sawn wooden boards; in the 1930s they were made of bamboo. Since the early 2000s, a growing minority of buildings are made of concrete or brick.

Settlements are usually clearly demarcated from their forested surroundings, first by ritual gates of small trees or bamboo that are erected annually on the footpaths leading into the village during the village spirit ritual, and second by the lack of vegetation other than in house gardens. There are a few fruit trees, and virtually no weeds inside the village. Since the early 2000s, many upland villages have been enclosed by fencing, on government request.

Villages are conceived as a crossing of paths, and the ritual house for the village spirit (cuong) is situated at their intersection. In the 1930s, Izikowitz (1979:50) observed circular villages among the Lower Lamet (Rmeet), with the ritual house located at their centers. The ritual house at this time was larger than typical village houses, and it housed young unmarried men; today, it is much smaller and, in some villages, only used for the annual ritual for the village spirit.

Karl Gustav Izikowitz (1979 [1951]) introduced the old English term “swidden” into anthropology in order to describe the subsistence of the Rmeet. In mountain villages during the early twenty-first century, Rmeet cultivated glutinous rice on dry shifting fields on mountain slopes. Fields are used for one year, after which they lay fallow, usually for eight to twenty years.

On certain sections of the fields the Rmeet also grow maize, pumpkin, chili peppers and various vegetables. In addition they gather forest produce, especially bamboo shoots. Women gather more than men. Men also hunt muntjac deer, wild boars and many smaller animals, but the number of wild animals is decreasing. Chicken and pigs are raised for meat, but are mostly only killed on ritual occasions. The most important domestic animals are buffaloes and cows, major sacrificial animals that also are raised for sale. These roam outside the village in the forest, and are often cared for by men and enticed home with a salt solution.

Men weave baskets. Clothes are bought on the market, and women occasionally sew cloth into a distinct Rmeet women’s skirt. They also knit small colorful bags. Few men know metal smithing. Weaving and pottery are not practiced by Rmeet.

The Rmeet have had trade relationships with their neighbors since at least the late nineteenth century. Among the produce they delivered to the lowlands in the 1930s was beeswax, honey, animal skins, deer horn, and the gall bladders of bears. Local products like rice brandy and baskets were also sold. However, the most important export at the time was rice. At some time in the past, presumably in the late nineteenth century, the Rmeet grew cotton for sale. A few villages produced opium until government crackdowns in the early 2000s. The production of fermented tea leaves for chewing (meng) still occurs.

Seasonal forest produce remains an important trade item. Traders set dates with the village headmen for buying particular fruits or animals (including insects). These are gathered and sometimes partially processed by interested households. Also, the Rmeet sell domestic animals like cows, buffaloes, pigs and chickens.

The most important division of labor is between men and women, although few everyday tasks are considered exclusive to one gender. Men’s relatively exclusive tasks are felling trees, building the wooden frameworks of houses, weaving baskets, and hunting. A few men are smiths, which is not a ritually-distinguished occupation. Women collect wild vegetables and prepare most meals. (Men can cook and sometimes pride themselves in doing so.) Women also bind leaf bundles for house roofs (if zinc sheeting is not available).

While women mostly care for chickens and pigs, men tend the buffaloes and cows roaming in the forest. Again, these tasks are not gender exclusive.

Both men and women sow and harvest rice. Sowing is among the few tasks women and men perform together, men thrusting sowing sticks in the ground, and women filling the holes with seed.

In the early 2000s, land regimes varied locally. In some villages a system of plots inherited from father to sons is in place. In a ten-year cycle, a household revisits old plots and tills them anew. In other villages, the headman decides which households will work which plots. In yet other places, households choose a plot and ask other villagers if they object, which is the oldest of the various systems, in place since at least the 1930s.

Boundaries to village lands were probably introduced during the French colonial period (1893-1956). Izikowitz (1979:44) records that the Lower Lamet (Rmeet) have no bounded village lands while the Upper Lamet, who have been more strongly influenced by lowland cultures, do have boundaries.

Kin groups emerge from the differentiation of agnates and affines through asymmetric marriage alliance. Each household differentiates between fraternal, wife-giving and wife-taking households. Descent is patrilineal, with unnamed, exogamous lineages of about four generations’ depth; genealogies are not deeper than that. Lineages usually act as cooperative units only during major household-centered rituals, funerals in particular. They are called “children of the village square” (goon cheweal), mirroring the idea that sons should build their homes close to their parent’s house, thus creating agnatic clusters (rarely attained in reality). Membership in these groups is occasionally acquired through participation in rituals.

Each household belongs to one patrilineal totemic clan, mostly with food taboos for one species of forest animal or plant. Clans were exogamous in the early twentieth century, but this seems rare in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

Besides its agnatic relations, the most important relations a household has is with wife-giving and wife-taking households. The Rmeet value asymmetric alliances, with wife-givers being superior to wife-takers. The relationship is unconnected to class or rank, and is reckoned spanning three steps, i.e. until the wife-givers’ wife-givers’ wife-giver. Any ritual promoting the fertility of human beings and rice demands a gift exchange with wife-givers, e.g. birth, house warming, sowing, harvesting and some healing rituals.

Although continued marriage between two lines is highly valued, it rarely occurs. There are thus no permanent or exclusive relations of marriage between two lineages or clans.

Terminological equations formally suggest continued mother’s brother’s daughter marriage in a patrilineal system. A man uses the terms for his mother’s brother and mother’s brother’s wife for his parents-in-law (MB = WF, MBW = WM), and the equation is mirrored for a female speaker (FZ = HM, FZH = HF). A couple uses the same term for the husband’s sister’s son and their son-in-law. The term used by cross-cousins who can marry each other (MBD(ms) and FZS(ws)) is gender neutral, reciprocal, and denotes anybody who can possibly be wed, including a spouse’s same-sex siblings, any opposite sex-children from families in the appropriate wife-giving (for men) or wife-taking (for women) sides, and strangers. The system is expansive and even creates new terminological consanguines. For example, men who have married sisters address each other as brothers.

Consequently, parallel cousins address each other as siblings. Agnatic relationships stress relative age. Elder brother and elder sister are distinguished, but there is only one term for younger siblings. Relative age also applies to the +1 generation. Terms for parents’ same-sex siblings are composites meaning “elder father” (FeB), “younger mother” (MyZ), etc.

Skewing occurs in the affinal categories. Wife-givers in the 0 and +1 generation are equated with grandparents, while wife-takers of the -1 and 0 generations can be addressed either as grandchildren or using a separate term. Only wife-takers of the +1 generation have a separate term, thus suggesting that the hierarchy between wife-givers and wife-takers is terminologically expressed as generational seniority. Before marriage, male cross-cousins use a reciprocal term for each other.

All these terms can be used extensively for anyone to whom a relationship of wife-giving, wife-taking or consanguinity can be constructed. The term for marriageable cross-cousin can be used in flirtation between strangers.

Kinship terminology closely mirrors the asymmetric alliance rule and organizes relationships beyond the nuclear family into extensive classes. Within the range of +1, 0 and -1 generations, agnates, wife-givers and wife-takers are distinguished. This separation disappears in the +2 to +4 and -2 to -4 generations. There are no terms beyond that range.

Premarital sex is common, but ideally should be conducted within the prescribed kin categories. Therefore, while parents officially choose a spouse for their children, young people enjoy considerable freedom in partner choice, and this has increased since the late twentieth century.

Central to marriage is bridewealth, which in the early 2000s mostly consisted of French colonial silver coins and a buffalo—items used in place of modern cash. Wife-giver’s wife-givers also receive a separate bridewealth, and even their (third step) wife-givers are entitled to a small gift. In return, wife-givers may optionally give dowry in form of women’s skirts, rice and basketry from the household. Important gifts from wife-givers are containers, in particular rice wine jars that enhance the fertility of the couple. Differences in bridewealth mark the wealth of wife-takers, but there is neither excessive competition, nor does it articulate class differences.

Marriages come about in two steps. The “small wedding” introduces the son-in-law to his parents-in-law’s home, where he performs bride-service for anywhere from months up to several years. The “big wedding” at the end of this period marks the return of the couple to the husband’s parents’ house or a newly built one. The big wedding sees the transfer of the remaining bridewealth.

Ethnic intermarriage has been reported for the Rmeet since the late nineteenth century, but presumably was rare until the revolution of 1975. Intermarriage is most common with the neighboring Khmu, who share the same marriage preference, kin terminology and clan system.

Ideally, a woman should marry her father’s sister’s son, or mother’s brother’s daughter for men. While a majority of marriages occurs between families in the proper wife-giving/wife-taking relationship, marriage between first degree cross-cousins is quite rare even though highly valued. Nevertheless, any marriage of a man with a woman from a family that can even remotely be classified as wife-givers is considered proper. Marriages that violate the prescribed pattern require compensation and may produce dangerous spirits. Wife-givers are considered superior to wife-takers. This hierarchy is not pyramidal but only connects certain households. Superiority mostly plays out in demands for bridewealth, respect, and ritual obligations.

The word for domestic families, nya, is the same as for the building they inhabit. “Houses” are economic and ritual units, consisting of a married couple with children, often complemented by the husband’s parents. A couple till their own field and jointly own domestic animals. The house spirit, also called the “spirit of mother and father,” consists of a series of patrilineal ancestors along with their wives. It protects the house’s inhabitants, but also demands the observation of certain proscriptions. Any change in the composition of the household, for example when a child-in-law moves in, needs to be announced to the spirit by the sacrifice of a pig.

Family assets are distributed only after both partners in a marriage have died. Domestic animals, money, silver jewelry, rare bronze drums and gongs, and, in some villages, swidden plots are shared equally among all sons. Married daughters receive nothing, having shared in the family wealth through dowry. The largest share, including the house itself, goes to the person who has lived in the house and cared for the elderly couple until their death. Normatively, this should be the oldest son, but younger sons, married daughters, and even unmarried daughters or grandchildren may fill this role as well. If there are no sons—or they do not live with their parents—a son-in-law may inherit the position of the head of the household. In this case, he is removed from his own patriline but pays very little or no bridewealth.

Growing up as Rmeet has not yet been studied. Rmeet women bear children in the kitchen or a separate workshop building. They are assisted by other women, mainly from their own consanguineal families. Men are not strictly excluded but are usually absent. A woman and her newborn baby spend the first ten days or the first month of the newborn’s life outside the house. Afterward, they are integrated into the house by a ritual in which the wife’s consanguines (wife-givers of her house) give a name to the child and bless it, and the child is put under the protection of the house spirit. Wife-givers wish the child to become rich and powerful, qualities that are linguistically and otherwise associated with Lao lowland and state culture.

Small children are considered unclean and may consume food that adults reject, including rice balls from wrist-tying ceremonies, or rats caught in the village. Children soon help in the household, for example by carrying water or firewood and sweeping. Girls help conspicuously more than boys. Children are very rarely beaten, and if so, lightly. At around ten years of age boys and girls begin to perform gender-specific work, with some boys starting to hunt at twelve years of age. Teenage boys can independently perform certain parts of rituals, like sacrificing a chicken to a spirit that has caused illness and cooking a meal from it.

In the early twentieth century, an elite group of wealthy men called lem distinguished themselves through ownership of bronze drums and the organization of buffalo-killing feasts. This institution had entirely disappeared by the early twenty-first century.

The village is the largest Rmeet political unit. Some villages have split into sub-settlements who acknowledge their village of origin by name, but not politically. Within villages, two to four large named groups of lineages are distinguished, whose members share a section of the graveyard and certain food proscriptions (e.g. after the birth of a child). In some villages, these groups correspond to agnatic totemic clans; in others they are associated with historical links to neighboring ethnic groups. There is pronounced local variation in this regard.

In the first half of the twentieth century, village priests, who maintained relationships with the village guardian spirits, exerted control over villagers by reference to the spirits’ demands and predilections. The position of the priest is inheritable from father to son, but in the early twenty-first century at least, competence and traditional knowledge can override lineage when a new priest is chosen.

Village headmen presumably were introduced by northern Thai overlords in the late nineteenth century. They were in charge of the occasional external relations but were otherwise comparatively powerless. By the early twenty-first century village headmen had become the most powerful persons in the village and part of state administration. As elsewhere in Laos, one main headman shares obligations with two deputies. All three are elected by the villagers, although they need approval by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Headmen may keep their position for decades, and the sons of headmen occasionally step into their father’s footsteps. Village headmen preside over village meetings that decide upon some legal matters, such as field distribution and shared labor obligations (e.g. road and footpath maintenance). They communicate government demands, but occasionally also negotiate with the administration for villagers’ demands.

Much social control is exerted through reference to the spirits, especially the village spirit who punishes wrongdoing. The village headman and a somewhat informal council of elders decide upon minor misdemeanors in which the state administration does not interfere.

The Rmeet were involved in several ways in the Second Indochina War (in Laos 1964-1975). Most of Rmeet territory came under the rule of the Communist Pathet Lao in the first years of the 1970s. Rmeet were drafted as soldiers on both sides of the conflict. In the mid-1960s some villages fled the violence, moving to the town of Houayxay, which remained a stronghold of royal forces for the duration of the conflict. Afterward, some returned to their upland villages, while, others remained for good.

Conflict with neighboring villages over land sometimes occurs, and is mediated by the village headmen and the wealthy men of the village.

The Rmeet of the early twenty-first century relate memories of a time when the Burmese fought them with swords. In the 1930s, memories were still alive of villages palisaded against such attacks.

The Rmeet conceive of their surroundings as populated by various spirits, for whom the Lao loanword phi has been used—at least since early in the twenty-first century—replacing the Rmeet word mbrong. These spirits are relational beings with whom negotiations are possible and which are summoned by ritual communicative practices. Very few spirits are either entirely harmless or entirely dangerous. House and village guardian spirits are associated with the realm of human social order and are usually protective. House spirits are amalgams of the deceased father of the household head, along with his wife and his lineal forebears with their wives. The village spirit is a conglomerate of all household spirits, and therefore develops over the course of the foundation and growth of a village. In addition, there is a plethora of lesser spirits, e.g. of the kitchen or wine jars.

Other spirits are associated with the forest and the wilderness. They include individualized aspects of the spirits of the dead in the graveyard, the dangerous spirits of those who had a bad death, and spirits of nature, such as earth spirits, sky spirits, or the owner of the large forest animals called the “widow.” The rice spirit is a fairly depersonalized being that needs to be carefully summoned during the harvest.

Managing aspects of personhood is the central concern of the ritual system. Living human beings consist of an unstable balance of body, soul (klpu) and life force (pääm). Souls have qualities similar to spirits, and see the world—in dreams, for example—from the spirit’s point of view. Therefore, souls are in danger of being drawn to the spirit world and being replaced by spirits, a state causing illness and death.

The most important ritual expert of the village is the village priest (samaan or chmia), who is in charge of relations with the village spirit (phi yiing). Usually, the founder of a village becomes its first village priest and the office is inherited father to son. However, men with the appropriate knowledge and stamina may be chosen as the successor to a priest whose sons prove to be unwilling or unfit for the task. No initiation is required, and the priest is not considered to be a particular kind of person. The priest’s main task is to conduct the annual ritual for the village spirit, by calling it and feeding it with the meat of sacrificial animals in the ritual house at the center of the village.

Another religious practitioner is the shaman (moo), whose task is healing.

The Rmeet have a rich ritual life. The most common ceremony is the wrist-binding ritual performed at numerous transitional moments: marriage and birth, the beginning and end of a journey, illness, etc. Tying threads around a person’s wrists strengthens the relationship between body and soul (klpu), and the more social relationships that are activated in the ritual the firmer these aspects of personhood are integrated. This ritual is also common among the lowland Lao and numerous other ethnic groups in Laos and Thailand, and thus has a role in transcultural communication. The Rmeet do not consider it borrowed from the Lao but rather as shared with them. Wrist-binding is most often performed on the household level, but important guests may be treated to it on a village level as well. Another large ritual on the household level occurs when a wife-giver bestows an honorary title on his wife-taker.

Rice farming is connected to a cycle of household rituals for burning the fields, sowing and harvesting rice, and carrying it to the granaries. Other annual rituals are a household-focused chicken sacrifice at the end of the rainy season (the New Year), and a ritual for the village spirit when the rice is knee-high that entails one or three days of feasting (depending if a pig or a buffalo is sacrificed) and closing the village for up to ten days.

Healing rituals are very common. The largest household rituals are mortuary.

Basketry is commonly practiced by men, and skilled makers sometimes weave simple patterns into their baskets. Much of Rmeet music, played on gourd mouth organs and drums, seems to have disappeared in the second half of the twentieth century. The Rmeet perform a distinctive style of partially-improvised, sung poetry (yoong) that is often a form of mild flirtation between men and women. A sword dance, said to originate from the Shan in Thailand, is performed by single men as part of some major rituals, especially those with buffalo sacrifices.

The most conspicuous Rmeet art form is the simple, elegant wooden reliefs used on their granaries, with spirals said to resemble buffalo horns. Such reliefs became more common after the introduction of long wood saws in the late twentieth century.

Herbal medicine is not highly developed among the Rmeet. Herbal remedies are often accompanied by ritual verses; the same is true for bone setting, which demands more expertise. The most elaborate form of healing is for injuries that are traced back to attacks by spirits. Some forms of divining the spiritual causes of illness and the performance of minor chicken sacrifices are mastered by many adults, but most cases of this type are treated by shamans.

Rmeet shamans are mostly men, but not exclusively so. They are either chosen by spirit familiars that cause a health crisis, or they simply choose to learn from an established shaman. Learning ritual verses and procedures from an experienced shaman, and an initiation through animal sacrifice, are necessary for both paths to the status of shaman. During initiation, shamans establish a working relationship with spirit familiars housed in a small shrine above their beds. Further learning is highly valued, and the best shamans have learned from both Rmeet and from non-Rmeet ritual healers, sometimes while doing wage labor in Thailand. Some people who have received a calling only install a spirit shrine for their familiars but do not practice healing.

Illness is caused by a spirit and a soul changing places: the soul leaves the body to sojourn with spirits in the forest, while a spirit enters the body. These are often earth or sky spirits, but attacks also may occur by spirits residing within other villagers. House and village spirits may attack those who have mistreated them.

During a séance, shamans claim to enter a different state of consciousness in which they perceive—in individually distinctive ways—various spirits with whom they investigate the cause of illness and negotiate the conditions for returning the soul. Such séances often take the greater part of a night to perform, and might draw a considerable audience. Some shamans start speaking in the voices of the spirits, or perform unusual acts like biting into red-hot iron. A séance often leads to the sacrifice of a chicken or pig, the return of the soul, and a subsequent wrist-tying ritual for all house members.

Mortuary rituals are the most elaborate rituals performed on the household level. A full funeral covers three days and a series of sacrifices, starting with an egg, followed by a chicken, a dog, a pig, and a buffalo. After lying in state for one night, the corpse is buried in a graveyard in old-growth forest. On the third day, members of the dead person’s lineage sacrifice a buffalo and erect ”the house of the dead” (a small covered fence) on the grave. A number of stone slabs, usually quite small, are also placed on the grave. High prestige individuals are memorialized with standing stones; in the past these were engraved with images of bronze drums or silver ingots, which in the early twenty-first century have been replaced with writing. The largest such engraved standing stones, of uncertain age, are used to represent Rmeet culture in national museums. The spirit of the dead person lingers in its house for sixty days after a funeral, and receives food at every meal. A larger sacrifice—usually of a pig—concludes this period. An additional chicken sacrifice at the beginning of the following agricultural year reminds the dead that they have departed.

Lineage members are buried close to each other; therefore the graveyard mirrors the descent groups of the village. Indeed, the graveyard is thought to be the village of the dead, where they lead a life very similar to the one before their death. However, spirits of the dead are manifold entities, remaining in their “houses” in the graveyard yet also present as the house spirit of their descendants; this applies to both husbands and wives who were members of the household. Children are usually buried in a separate graveyard with much less ritual, and do not become part of the house spirit.

While house spirits are protective, spirits in graveyards may be dangerous for their descendants, occasionally luring them to their “village,” and making them ill. Therefore, graveyards are feared and avoided. However, spirits ultimately die as well; old graveyards are therefore harmless.

Victims of a bad death (i.e. through violence, accident or suicide) are buried with hardly any sacrifice outside of graveyards and turn into spirits that are dangerous for the living.

The culture summary was written by Guido Sprenger in September, 2017.

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