Early History thru 1958
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The ethnic minority Montagnard culture is comprised of many tribes each with its own language and customs.  Most authorities group them into 26 tribes whereas others recognize 40.  The word "Montagnard" is French and means mountain dweller or highlander.  The American military also used the term "Montagnard" and often shortened it to "Yard".

They are the original inhabitants of today's southern Vietnam and are not oriental rather of Mon Khmer and Malayopolynesian language stocks.  Prior to 200 BC larger cultures invaded from the northwest and southern China, conquered them, and took over the coastal areas and lowlands.  The tribes people were banished to the southern portion of the Annamite Mountains hence the term "hill tribes".   The Annamites are the backbone of Indochina and the southern portion of these mountains comprises the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the northeastern provinces of Ratannakiri and Mondolkiri, Cambodia.

For nearly 2,000 years kingdoms and dynasties flourished and fell in the lowlands while the hill tribes remained secluded in their mountain forests.  They lived in harmony with nature through subsistence farming, forest gathering, hunting, and fishing.  Their communal land management practices and reverence for all things earthly ensured resources for subsequent generations. 


Lowland Vietnamese  however viewed them as backwards and took advantage of them in peripheral contacts.   Vietnamese also believed the mountains harbored evil spirits and the streams were poisoned which discouraged them from encroaching until later. 




The first lasting and beneficial relations Montagnards had with the outside world was in the 1800's when French missionaries began converting them to Christianity.  Soon France established protectorates in Indochina and colonized the most economically suitable areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  In the Central Highlands of southern Vietnam they employed Montagnards as plantation workers, servants, and the like. 
In 1946 with the approaching French Indochina War, as inducement for Montagnard loyalty and military recruits, French colonial authorities granted them political control over their four Central Highland provinces however as a very primitive people with no educated leaders, the highlanders were ill prepared to seize opportunity.  In 1952 Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai abolished the French decree but allowed Montagnards to retain land rights and cultural traditions. 

It wasn't until the early 1950's that the most prominent Montagnard tribes in areas of French control acquired written languages.  French missionaries developed these romanized orthographies or writing systems based on the phonetics of each tribe's spoken language.   [ Even today Bellicose tribes the French avoided and a few very small ones in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as well as the other tribes in northeast Cambodia have no written language of their own. ] 

The French Indochina War was settled by the 1954 Geneva Accords which divided Vietnam into two countries, a pro democratic South Vietnam (SVN) and communist North Vietnam (NVN) under Ho Chi Minh.   The French prevented Montagnard participation in the Geneva settlement.  Therefore the 1946 French decree of Montagnard self government wasn't considered and they remained under SVN rule. 

In 1955 Ngo Dinh Diem was elected president of SVN and declared the Montagnard hill tribes, Chams on the coast, Cambodians in the former Khmer territory of lower SVN, and the Chinese in the major cities as “ethnic minorities”.   As the largest minority and their Highlands of strategic and economic significance, he instituted very harsh policies to assimilate them into the Vietnamese cultural sphere to include the imposition of SVN officials and resettlement of nearly a million poor Vietnamese in their ancestral lands.

These actions exacerbated Montagnard distrust of the Vietnamese.  With Y Bham Enuol as leader, in 1958 the four dominate Montagnard tribes (Bahnar, Jarai, Rhade, and Koho) united to form BAJARAKA to peacefully advocate for Montagnard autonomy.  President Diem arrested and imprisoned Enuol, his executive committee, and numerous followers which spawned a Montagnard underground resistance movement.

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