Hill people

, Bhutan]]

Hill people live in the hills or mountains. There are hill people around the world, many of whom live in stone houses and herd goats, sheep or camelids or have small farms. Musical instruments of the hill people, such as various forms of bagpipe and horn are notable for their ability to be heard at great distances. The hill people are often divided into tribes that have a tradition of feuding among each other while resisting control by any central government. Often the hill people are minorities in their countries, and are divided by political borders.

This article gives a survey and index of hill people, with links to articles that discuss particular peoples or tribes.

Africa

Drakensberg

, the Zulu king.]]

The Drakensberg are the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, rising up to in height. The people of these mountains are mostly Bantu-speaking people who moved into the area from the north a thousand years ago, displacing the original Khoisan people. They include the Swazi, Xhosa and Zulu. Traditionally these people lived by cattle herding and small-scale farming, growing crops such as sorghum, maize, corn, pumpkins, beans and vegetables.

At the time the Europeans reached this part of South Africa (around 1830), the Zulu were temporarily in the ascendancy after a series of wars between the people of the region. The region is divided between South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland, but the people move relatively freely between these states.

The country's population is highly diverse. Most of its people speak a Semitic or Cushitic language. The Oromo, Amhara, and Tigray make up more than three-quarters of the population, but there are more than 80 different ethnic groups within Ethiopia, including Somali, Gurage, Sidama, Wolayta, Afar, Hadiya and Gamo. Principal crops include coffee, pulses (e.g., beans), oilseeds, cereals, potatoes, sugarcane, and vegetables. Many of the people traditionally herded cattle, goat or sheep.

The Ethiopian state is ancient, dating back to at least the Aksumite Empire (which officially used the name "Ethiopia" in the 4th century) and its predecessor state, D`mt (with early 1st millennium BC roots). The Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt (roughly 743-656 BC) was actually an Ethiopian dynasty. Despite two attempts at conquest by the Italians, the country has remained independent for almost all its history. The Coptic Christian church has a long history in Ethiopia, founded in 316 AD by a Meropius, Christian philosopher from Tyre.

Atlas and Rif

The Atlas is a mountain range across a northern stretch of Africa extending about 2,400 km (1,500 miles) through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, or the Maghreb. The highest peak is Jbel Toubkal, with an elevation of in southwestern Morocco. The second highest mountain is the M'Goun of .

The population of the Atlas Mountains are mainly Berber tribes, speakers of an Afro-Asiatic language, including the Kabyle, Chaoui, Mozabite, Riffians, Chleuh, Sous, Tuareg and Zenata. Although nominally subject at times to Carthage, the Roman Empire, the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt (who originated in this area), the Ottoman Turks and more recently the French, for most of their history the tribes of the Atlas mountains have effectively been independent.

Most Berbers are farmers, living in mountains relatively close to the Mediterranean coast, but the Tuareg and Zenaga of the southern Sahara are nomadic. The Berbers are sometimes treated as minorities in their countries, which are dominated by their Arabic-speaking relatives nearer to the coast.

Europe

Pyrenees and Galicia

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The Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. Lower mountains extend to the west into Galicia. The inhabitants speak Spanish, French, Catalan (in Catalonia and Andorra), and the Basque language. A few speak the Occitan language (the Gascon and Languedocien dialects in France and the Aranese dialect in the Aran Valley), and Aragonese.

It is thought that Basque people are a remnant of the early inhabitants of Western Europe. Basque tribes were already mentioned in Roman times by Strabo and Pliny, including the Vascones, the Aquitani and others. Their language is quite distinct from the Indo-European languages spoken in most of Europe, and possibly (although there is much debate) is related to Northeast Caucasian languages. The Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA is an illegal and armed Basque nationalist, terrorist and separatist organisation. Founded in 1959, it evolved from a group advocating traditional cultural ways to a paramilitary group demanding Basque independence.

Alps

The Alps are one of the great mountain ranges of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east; through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany; to France in the west. The highest mountain is Mont Blanc, at 4,808 metres (15,774 ft), on the Italian–French border. The people of the Alps speak German, French, Italian, and Romansh. The German spoken in the German speaking part of Switzerland is a range of Swiss dialects.

Early Alpine tribes included the Helvetii and Alemanni. The Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps founded by three cantons in 1291, later expanding to form the nucleus of modern Switzerland. Disciplined Swiss mercenaries armed with pikes gained a formidable reputation during the perennial European wars of the Middle Ages.

In the Swiss peasant war of 1653 the people rose up against the nobles and authorities. Although defeated, the revolt resulted in reforms that prevented the rise of absolutism as in other parts of Europe. The Swiss to this day have an unusual form of government where almost all major decisions are voted upon by the people.

The Alpine people have at times been subject in part or whole to neighboring countries, but many in the central Alps maintained the independence of their communities until 1848, when they combined into the federal state of Switzerland.

Scottish Highlands

. The dancer is wearing kilt with sporran, jacket, and bonnet while performing the sword dance]] The Scottish Highlands include the rugged and mountainous regions of Scotland north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault. They are inhabited by people of the Scottish Gaelic culture, although most now speak English. Traditionally the people lived by crofting, or small-scale farming, growing crops such as oats, barley and kale, and supplemented their diet with fish and red deer.

On festive occasions, the people eat haggis, made from a sheep's heart, liver and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and boiled in the animal's stomach for three hours. The haggis was immortalized by the lowland poet Robert Burns in his Address to a Haggis

The Scottish clans have a tradition of feuding among each other and resisting the authority of the central government based in the lowland city of Edinburgh. They are a martial race. The Highland regiments went to war wearing tartan kilts accompanied by bagpipe players – a sight and sound calculated to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies.

Balkans

]] The Balkan Mountains run 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea. The highest peaks of the Stara planina are in central Bulgaria. The highest peak is Botev (2,376 m).

Lying between Austria, Italy, Turkey and the Ukraine, the Balkans have had a turbulent history. At different times different parts of the Balkans were controlled by the Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Austrian empires.

The Balkans are home to people speaking Slavic languages (Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Macedonians), Romanian (related to Italian), Turkish, Greek, Albanian and other languages. Through its history many other ethnic groups with their own languages lived in the area, among them Thracians, Illyrians, Romans, Pechenegs, Cumans, Avars, Celts, Germans and various Germanic tribes. In addition to language, the people are divided by religion, adhering to the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Moslem religions among others.

Asia

Caucasus

The Caucasus Mountains is a range between the Black sea and the Caspian sea. It is home to Europe's highest mountain (Mount Elbrus). Modern countries of the Caucasus are Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Adyghea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Krasnodar Krai and Stavropol Krai, all parts of the Russian Federation, and the independent countries of Georgia (including the disputed Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The people of these mountains have very diverse origins, with cultures influenced by periods of Turkic, Iranian and Russian control. Some, including the Georgians and Armenians, are mostly Christian, while others are Moslem in religion.

Hindu Kush and Balochistan

nomads of Afghanistan.]] The Hindu Kush is a mountain range located between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a sub-range of the Himalayas. Lower mountains including the Sulaiman Range extend south to the Arabian Sea.

The people of this region are generally speak Indo-Iranian languages such as Pashto, Balochi, and languages of the Dardic and Nuristani groups. The Brahui people speak a Dravidian language. There are many distinct tribes. The history of the region has been turbulent, lying in the path of invasions from the Persians, the Greeks under Alexander the Great, the Arabs, Mughals and British. Given the rugged geography, central governments have generally had limited control over the tribes, a situation that persists to this day.

Pamirs

The Pamir Mountains are in Central Asia, formed by the junction of the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, and Hindu Kush ranges. They are among the world’s highest mountains and in Victorian times they were known as the 'Roof of the World'. The people of this region are mostly Turkic people, and speak Pamir languages, Tajik (closely related to Persian), Uzbek and Kyrgyz.

Himalayas

The Himalayas lie between the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan Plateau, thrown up by the collision of two tectonic plates. They include world's highest peaks including Mount Everest and K2. The Himalayas stretch across Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

People have filtered into the mountains from the northern plateau and from the southern plains and intermingled. They mostly speak Tibeto-Burman languages such as Gurung and Nepal Bhasa or Indo-Aryan languages such as Shina, Kashmiri, Dogri, Pahari (which means "language of the mountain people"), Kumaoni, Nepali and Asamiya. The Gurkha people of Nepal are well known for their history of bravery and strength, and still serve in foreign armies such as the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas and the Indian Army's Gorkha regiments.

Fruit, vegetables and sheep flourish in the fertile valley of Kashmir. The people have evolved the unique and famous Kashmiri cuisine with Iranian, Indian and Turkic origins. While the stricter Hindus may restrict themselves to rice with vegetables, curd, milk and fresh fruit, the Muslims eat pilaff and mutton stuffed with spices, apricots stuffed with mutton, roast kid, fish and honey rice.

Further east, a typical Nepalese meal includes Dal, a spicy lentil soup, served over bhat (boiled rice) with tarkari (curried vegetables) together with achar (pickles) or chutni (spicy condiment made from fresh ingredients). In the hills of Nepal, people enjoy their own kind of music, playing sarangi (a string instrument), madal (a hand drum) and flute. They also have many popular folk songs known as lok geet and lok dohari.

South-East Asia

The mainland portion of Southeast Asia consists of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, and Assam in India. The hills of this region include tribes of Tibeto-Burman peoples including the Akha, Bodo-Kachari, Lahu, Karen, Hmong Mien, Mizo and Lisu. It is thought that they drifted down into the area from Tibet.

Many of the tribes are spread across more than one country - the Karen people live in Myanmar and Thailand, the Zou people live in Burma and India, and the Akha people live in small villages among the mountains of China, Laos, Myanmar, and northern Thailand. They often retain their traditional way of life but are under increasing pressure to do so. As minorities, they tend to be less well off than the majority of people in the countries where they live.

New Guinea Highlands

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New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the world's second-largest island. A central east-west mountain range dominates the geography of New Guinea and contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4884 m high. The island is populated by very nearly a thousand different tribal groups and a near-equivalent number of separate languages, which makes New Guinea the most linguistically diverse area in the world. They fall into one of two groups, speakers of the Papuan languages and later arrivals who speak Austronesian languages.

The gardens of the New Guinea Highlands are ancient, intensive permacultures, adapted to high population densities, very high rainfalls (as high as 10,000 mm/yr (400 in/yr)), earthquakes, hilly land, and occasional frost. The people use complex mulches, crop rotations and tillages on terraces with complex irrigation systems. Native gardeners are as or more successful than most scientific farmers in raising certain crops. Early garden crops – many of which are indigenous – included sugarcane, Pacific bananas, yams, and taro, while sago and pandanus were two commonly exploited native forest crops. Today's staples – sweet potatoes and pigs – are later arrivals.

The people of New Guinea were traditionally warlike, with constant feuds over territory, although violence has greatly reduced in recent years.

Americas

Appalachians

The Appalachian Mountains are a vast system of mountains in eastern North America. Before the Europeans reached the area around 1650, the mountains were inhabited by Algonquian people; speakers of Iroquoian languages such as the Cherokee; and Siouan people such as the Occaneechi, Tutelo and Monacan. The European invaders were ruthless in their treatment of these hill people, many of whom they killed or forced to move into unfamiliar territory to the west. Many others died of diseases such as smallpox introduced from Europe. Few of the early inhabitants remain.

Some of the people who live in the mountains today retain distinct cultural characteristics. The Hatfield-McCoy feud (1878–1891) involved two warring families of the West Virginia-Kentucky backcountry along the Tug Fork River, off the Big Sandy River. Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families. The 1972 film Deliverance depicted the hill people as backward and hostile to outsiders, and the film implies some of them are inbred – a stereotype of the "Hillbilly" culture.

Rocky Mountains

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The Rocky Mountains stretch more than 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles) from northernmost British Columbia, in Canada, to New Mexico, in the United States. The range's highest peak is Mount Elbert in Colorado at 14,440 feet (4,401 meters) above sea level.

As the Europeans continued to move west, they took most of the lands of the people who lived in the Rockies, forcing the Ute, Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Yaqui and other tribes to assimilate or move onto reservations. Some adapted to farming or sheep herding, but they are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups in the USA.

The Ancient Pueblo Peoples who lived in the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States were noted for their distinctive pottery and dwelling construction styles. The cultural group is often referred to as the Anasazi. Some of their unusual cliff dwellings still stand today.

Mexican Sierras

of Papantla, Veracruz performing the "voladores" ritual]] .]]

The American Cordillera in Mexico includes the Sierra Madre Occidental, Sierra Madre Oriental and Sierra Madre del Sur. The mountain valleys have a temperate climate and fertile soil, and were the cradles of Mesoamerican civilizations that flourished long before Europeans discovered the area, including the Olmec, Teotihuacán, Toltec, Aztec, Zapotec and Mixtec cultures. The bold patterns and deep saturated colors of the Mesoamerican artists are echoed in modern Mexican art and architecture.

After the Spanish invasion of 1519, led by Hernán Cortés, most people eventually adopted the Spanish language, but there remain many groups who retain their original languages and live traditional ways of life. These include the Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomí, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Mazahua, Mazateco, Chinantec, Purépecha, Mixe and Tlapanec.

The traditional Mexican diet is based on Maize, beans, Chili peppers, Tomatoes, Cactus and other native plants, supplemented by iguana, rattlesnake, fish and venison. Mexican cuisine today is one of the most rich and varied in the world. Before the Spanish came, the inhabitants of the land used drums, flutes, maracas, sea shells and voices to make music and dances. This ancient music is still played in some parts of Mexico.

Andes

girl and her llama in Cuzco]]

The Andes form the world's longest exposed mountain range, a continuous chain of highland along the western coast of South America. The range is over 7,000 km (4,400 miles) long, 200–700 km (300 miles) wide (widest between 18° to 20°S latitude), and of an average height of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft).

Before the Spanish invasion led by Francisco Pizarro in 1532 the Andes were primarily inhabited by Quechua peoples such as the Inca, Chancas, Huancas and Cañaris in the north, and Aymaras further south. Their economy was based on the potato crop, which originated in the area, and the llama and alpaca, used for their wool and meat. Unlike most mountain people, the inhabitants of the Andes appear to have been generally unwarlike.

References

Category:Anthropology Category:Ethnic groups in Asia Category:Tribe