Karen settlement in the Huai Thung Choa valley first began in 1953 and it is a process that has continued at different times and in varying numbers right up to the present, that is, 1981. In all cases, the settlers who now make up the community of Palokhi cite two principal reasons for moving into the valley: first, the favourable ecological conditions in the valley which offered ample opportunities for more productive swiddening for these migrant families who also report coming from villages where there was a shortage of land for swidden cultivation; second, the considerable attraction of reclaiming abandoned Hmong wet-rice fields requiring lower labour inputs to bring them under cultivation than would have been the case if new terraces were opened up along the banks of the Huai Thung Choa. In short, the reasons for Karen occupation of the Huai Thung Choa valley have been a combination of ecological and demographic factors. From a general perspective, this is consistent with prevailing conditions in the highlands of Northern Thailand now well-recognised in various studies. However, perhaps for reasons of historical accident, the Huai Thung Choa valley represents rather different conditions in microcosm which the Karen have recognised and have proceeded to take advantage of.

Unlikely though it may seem on the basis of popular stereotypes about Hmong cultivation systems, the existence of these abandoned Hmong wet-rice fields must be accepted as fact rather than the product of some fanciful speculation on the part of the Palokhi Karen. Some of the Northern Thai from Ban Mae Lao (now living in Ban Thung Choa) confirm that these fields were opened up by the Hmong who subsequently left the valley some years before the last war.^[7] Both the Karen and Northern Thai also agree that the Hmong migrated to Khun Sa in the vicinity of the Karen village of the same name mentioned earlier.^[8] I might also add that in the time that elapsed between the departure of the Hmong and the arrival of the first Karen settlers, two Northern Thai from nearby villages and a Burmese from Pai, to the northwest near the Thai-Burmese border, in fact came to the Huai Thung Choa valley primarily to cultivate these abandoned Hmong terraces. However, as I discuss the relations between the Karen and their immediate predecessors in some detail within the specific context of the acquisition of these fields and Karen entry into wet-rice cultivation in Chapter V, I shall not therefore deal with the presence of the Northern Thai and Burmese any further. They, in any case, eventually left the Huai Thung Choa valley as the Palokhi Karen established themselves there.

In Table 2.1, I have summarised the history of Karen settlement in Palokhi according to the years in which families first arrived and some salient demographic indicators, namely, household size, number of dependents, the ages of spouses, and the residential and migration histories of these households prior to settling in the Huai Thung Choa valley. The small population of Palokhi does not allow for any meaningful statistical tests of significance for trends and characteristics on the basis of the values of the variables represented by these indicators. Nevertheless, they are useful for drawing a rough socio-demographic profile of these families which migrated to the Huai Thung Choa valley as they describe the particular characteristics of individual households which nonetheless share some important features in common, as I discuss below. There is one other consideration which has been an important factor in the migration of families to the Huai Thung Choa valley, and this is the genealogical relationships between families — relationships which have been cited by some Palokhi households as a reason, though by no means the most important, for migrating to the Huai Thung Choa valley.^[9]

From Table 2.1, it can be seen that Karen settlement in the Huai Thung Choa valley has been distributed somewhat irregularly over time with the arrivals of the first families concentrated in 1953 and two families following in 1954, after which there is a more even spread of families migrating in subsequent years broken by three time gaps, the first of which was relatively long (1955–60) while the other two were comparatively short (1969–71 and 1975–78). The characteristics of the five families in 1953 and the two families in 1954 are worth noting for not only do they reveal something of the conditions which have led to their migration and those under which they have had to establish themselves, but they also foreshadow the conditions and circumstances of the families which came later in several important respects.

One important feature of these founding families and those which migrated to the Huai Thung Choa valley later is that they are relatively young (though there are a number of older families), but not immediately post-marital (except for H1⁺, H2 and H11b), as indicated by the clustering of the mean ages of spouses around 30 years. This, very generally, agrees with the number of dependent children that they have although the correspondence is not altogether regular. In some cases (H5⁺, H5⁺⁺, H4, H8 and H6) the dependents were, or included, an aged parent of one or the other of the spouses in the household. Under normal circumstances, we would expect the mean ages of spouses to show a regular correspondence with the length of time that they have been married (that is, within a given cohort) and the number of children that they have, in any given population. In Table 2.1, the duration of marriages of spouses may be determined by the total number of years they have been resident elsewhere prior to migrating to Palokhi, and simple inspection will show that when they are matched against the number of children, by households, there is a considerable degree of variation amongst these three indicators or variables. There are two main reasons for this. First, the irregularities, especially those between durations of marriages and the mean ages of spouses (which exhibit a wide range in general as a result of large discrepancies in the ages of some spouses), take on a larger significance than would otherwise be the case if the population were larger. Second, the high infant mortality rates of some households have resulted in their having less children than they would have had under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, the clustering of the mean ages of spouses around the 30-year mark is significant, at least sociologically, because it means that they had not exhausted their reproductive potential at the time they settled in Palokhi. Thus, in the course of their residence in Palokhi, most households have continued to increase in size, and this has contributed to the expansion of the settlement as I show in Table 2.2. This clustering is also significant from another point of view: it indicates that while couples were relatively young when they migrated to Palokhi, nonetheless, they were not newly married (except for H1⁺, and H2) with an even greater reproductive potential. Consequently, although the size of households and the community has increased with further births (accentuated by in-migration and off-set to some extent by out-migration), this has not occurred at an excessively high rate — with the result that there has been a net increase in the dependency ratio of the community from 42 per cent in 1953–54 to close to 55 per cent in 1980–81.^[10] In Table 2.3 may be found some relevant demographic data on the population of Palokhi in 1981.

^* The Northern Thai and Burmese who preceded the first Karen settlers in the Huai Thung Choa valley are not included in this table, hence the zero base population for 1953. The present population of Palokhi is now, however, composed entirely of Karen. There is a Khamu’ man (originally born in Laos) who came to Palokhi in 1972 and became a dependent of H2, and a Yunnanese Chinese deserter from a Kuomintang garrison in Chiang Rai who came to Palokhi in 1975 and eventually married ‘Ae’ of H11a. Both men were unequivocally regarded as members of the community although they were not Karen and for this reason I have included them here. I have, however, excluded two Northern Thai brothers and a Karen who own wet-rice fields and miang gardens in the Huai Thung Choa valley because they were permanently resident in Ban Mae Lao and Ban Pa Pae respectively. They, in fact, had houses near Palokhi in which they stayed during the planting and harvesting seasons, for wet-rice, but they were not regarded by the Palokhi Karen as being a part of Palokhi.

Although the increase in dependency ratios has not been excessively high, it is high nevertheless as are the dependency ratios themselves. These ratios represent important constraints on subsistence production as I discuss in some detail in Chapter V. However, suffice it to say that the reclamation of the abandoned Hmong wet-rice fields (which were an important reason for migrating to the Huai Thung Choa) could only be carried out gradually because of limited domestic supplies of labour. These families, on first settling in Palokhi, thus, practised swiddening in the initial years of their residence in the Huai Thung Choa valley and slowly embarked upon wet-rice agriculture as the Hmong terraces were slowly recovered for cultivation. Wet-rice cultivation, however, did not replace swiddening for most of these families have all continued with a dual system of swiddening and wet-rice cultivation up to the present time, with new terraces being opened up as the Hmong terraces have all been fully reclaimed. The exceptions to this general pattern were H6, H7 and H16 which migrated to Palokhi after working as wage labourers in the Flower Plantation (Plaeng Dauk) of the Royal Forestry Department’s Watershed Development Unit and took up wet-rice cultivation without swiddening when they first arrived.^[11]

For some families, kinship has been an important consideration in migrating to Palokhi. These households are related by primary kin relations, that is, parent-child and sibling ties or step-sibling ties which, for all practical purposes, are equivalent to true sibling ties. However, these ties also include affinal relations, specifically, parent-in-law and son-in-law or brother-in-law relationships. These ties, from the perspective of the rationale adduced by some Palokhi Karen for migrating to the Huai Thung Choa valley, that is, to be with kin for mutual aid in agricultural production, are probably as important if not more so than the primary kin relations existing between these families. The reason for this is that given the general rule on uxorilocal residence at marriage which the Palokhi Karen observe (see Chapter III), male affinal relationships tend to take on a considerable degree of importance in the management of labour by related households in the heavier tasks associated with agricultural production (see also Chapter IV). Thus, for example, H5⁺ and H1⁺ are related by the fact that the head of H5⁺, Thi Pghe, was the younger brother of Tamu’, the head of H1⁺. H5⁺⁺, on the other hand, is related to H5⁺ by virtue of the fact that Rae’, the head of H5⁺⁺, is the father-in-law of Thi Pghe. It is worth noting here that the dependent of H5⁺ was the father of Thi Pghe and Tamu’.

It is clear from this example that despite the rule on uxorilocal residence at marriage which the Palokhi Karen share with other Karen, the exigencies of household members’ life circumstances can result in modifications to the rule, usually after an initial period of such residence. Under the rule, Thi Pghe and his wife should, in fact, have been residing with Rae’ (H5⁺⁺).

But as he had an aged father, Thi Pghe set up house independently after a nominal period of uxorilocal residence in order to look after his father because his brother, Tamu’, had gone to live with his wife’s family in Huai Dua, leaving no one to support their father.^[12] In any event, both brothers decided to settle in the Huai Thung Choa valley and as they did so, one consequence was that H5⁺⁺ also migrated as well. H5⁺⁺ had, as a dependent, Rae”s aged mother-in-law, but what is significant in Rae”s decision was his relatively advanced age and that of his wife. In their case, they decided to settle in the Huai Thung Choa valley to be with their daughter, Do’ Kwi, and her husband Thi Pghe, in order that the burden of agricultural cultivation could be shared with H5⁺.

A similar reason underlies the migration of H11a and H11b, where H11a was the original parental household. The step-sibling relationships between H4 and H8, likewise, were a factor in their migration to the Huai Thung Choa valley in 1974. In the same manner, the joint migrations of H6 and H7 from the time when they were co-resident in Mae Lak until they settled in Palokhi were influenced by the fact that the two households are related by parent-child, sibling and male affinal ties where La Zi, the head of H6, is the brother-in-law of Thi’, the head of H7 and brother of La Zi’s wife, with Thi”s old mother being resident in H6.

It is clear that these kinship relations have been an important consideration in the migration of various related families to Palokhi because of the perception, at least at the actual time of migration, that mutual assistance could be rendered by kin within these limited ranges in agricultural tasks. There can be no doubt, of course, that sentimental attachments and affective considerations have also played a part. However, as I noted before, the composition of households in Palokhi has changed with time and this has been accompanied, in several cases, by a realignment of these relationships between households in the management of labour in subsistence production and, indeed, even the degree of importance placed on sentimental attachments.

These changes, clearly, are the concomitants of the developmental cycle of domestic groups in which uxorilocal residence at marriage plays a part, insofar as the Karen are concerned. A contributory factor to these changes has been the very growth of Palokhi where the range of people, kin and non-kin, with whom the members of a particular household may choose to work has increased considerably. Thus, as I discuss in the next two chapters, while kinship is important in several respects, we find that at the present time (that is, 1981) a great deal of the arrangments in co-operative labour exchanges for example are not, in fact, necessarily dependent on kinship relationships in Palokhi.

Another noteworthy feature about Karen migration to the Huai Thung Choa valley is a distinct pattern in the migration histories of families. This pattern is related to the distribution of Karen and non-Karen populations (specifically, Northern Thai) within and outside the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa river system. From Table 2.1 and Figure 1.1, it will be noticed that, generally, those families with a low incidence of migration and change in post-marital residence all came from villages within the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area, namely, the villages of Khun Sa, Huai Dua and Pong Thong. There were, of course, some exceptions to this where after a short period of post-marital residence in these villages, married couples moved on to Palokhi. Nevertheless, the households with long or short periods of residence in these villages within the area migrated to Palokhi in the space of a few years of one another. The generally stable residential histories of some of these families suggest that ecological and demographic conditions in Khun Sa, Huai Dua and Pong Thong were, by and large, stable until approximately thirty years ago at which time the only viable means of gaining access to resources for subsistence cultivation was migration to the Huai Thung Choa valley.

“Stable”, however, is a relative term. Of these three villages, Khun Sa and Huai Dua are, on the basis of present-day observations, more hard-pressed in terms of population relative to land available for swiddening purposes but Huai Dua has the advantage of lying in an alluvial plain eminently suitable for wet-rice cultivation. Pong Thong, on the other hand, lies within a very small stream valley which has just sufficient resources for both systems of cultivation and its population. The families with unstable residential histories, however, were all resident in villages situated outside the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area, with several families having been resident in the same villages at different times, or with some overlap in durations of residence. Their relatively high frequencies of migration are indicative of comparatively unstable ecological and demographic conditions in the areas where they were previously resident. Indeed, in all cases, the changes in residence are consistent with their explanations for these changes, that is, the search for new swiddening areas.^[13]

The difference in conditions obtaining within and without the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa drainage system is intriguing and requires some explanation. Although there is insufficient documentation on the areas lying outside the drainage system, some general observations and an examination of topographical maps of these areas indicate that they are far more densely populated by Northern Thai settlements than is the case in the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa valley system. In the areas outside the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa valley system where the Karen households were previously resident (southeast and south of the river system on either side of the Mae Malai-Pai road), a great many Northern Thai settlements are distributed in a linear pattern a long the road, but they are also to be found along many stream valleys on the eastern side of the road at elevations which are lower than those of the hills, ridges and stream valleys of the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area. Interspersed among these Northern Thai settlements are to be found Karen settlements.

On the basis of the distribution of Northern Thai and non-Northern Thai (that is, principally Karen) settlements within and outside the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area, it is reasonable to assume that the difference in ecological conditions existing in these areas has been the outcome of differentials in demographic pressure on available resources. That is, outside the valley system this has been caused by a larger, more mixed population (predominantly Northern Thai) per unit area of land. The presence of the Northern Thai in these areas has very likely been due to a history of upland migration (going back at least sixty years ago judging by the oral histories of some Northern Thai now resident in Ban Mae Lao and Ban Thung Choa) whilst the pressure on natural resources in these areas is probably to be explained by the natural increase in both the Northern Thai and non-Northern Thai populations, of which the Karen are the majority.

The migration of Northern Thai from plains areas to the foothills of highland areas in Northern Thailand has undoubtedly occurred as Chapman (1967) has shown and it is almost certainly true that they are continuing to move further upslope according to local circumstances (Chapman, pers. comm.) Indeed, the general northward and upslope movement of Karen into the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa valleys mentioned before may well be indicative of a much broader trend, not only of Karen but of Northern Thai communities as well, in response to population increase. The high rates of natural increase of Karen populations, on the other hand, are now well-documented by Kunstadter (1972, 1983).

Within the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa valley system, in-migration by Karen has so far not been accompanied by a similar movement of Northern Thai on the same scale. The residential histories of the Karen families from Huai Dua, Khun Sa and Pong Thong, together with existing distributions of Northern Thai communities in the watershed, (for example, at Pong Sa Nua and Pong Sa Tai) suggest that Karen resettlement has been the consequence of natural increases in mainly Karen populations over a long period of time. To the extent that other communities have affected the movement of Karen locally, only the small Northern Thai and Lisu populations inhabiting the Mae Muang Luang valley have been involved.^[14] Within the valley, especially around Khun Sa, Huai Dua and Mae Muang Luang, other factors were probably operative as well. Pressure on resources in the past (and the present) were in all likelihood compounded by the ecologically deleterious effects of opium cultivation practised by the Hmong around Khun Sa, and the Lisu around Huai Dua and Mae Muang Luang. Where Huai Dua is specifically concerned, the shortage of swidden land has also undoubtedly been due to the fact that tracts of land were, and still are, occupied by pine trees (Pinus kesiya) which the Karen quite rightly regard as being unsuitable for swiddening. Nevertheless, they protect these trees in order to use the resinous, inflammable wood as firestarters and torches.^[15] Since 1975, the area under pine trees has increased significantly as a result of reforestation by the Royal Forestry Department.

The overall consequence of these various conditions and developments has been that those Karen who have been long-term residents within the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area, as well as those approaching it from outside, have sought to take advantage of the opportunities now only to be found in small forested pockets within the Pa Pae hills, such as the Huai Thung Choa valley.