Cơ-ho
Denomination: Cơ-ho
Small local groups: Xrê, Nốp (Tu Nốp), Cơ-don, Chil, Tơ-ring, Lát (Lách)
Population: over 130,000 Hi Language: Môn-Khmer
Area of habitation: { for travel planning & tours infomration }
Mainly the highland of Lâm Đồng and several other areas of Bình Thuận, Ninh Thuận and Khánh Hoà provinces.
The Cơ-Ho settled long ago in theừ present area of habitation and they have close historical relations with other ethnic groups speaking Malayo-Polynesian languages - the Cham, Churn, Ra-glai and others. The traces of Cơ-ho habitation are found along National Road No 20, from the Bảo Lộc to Di Linh plateaux, then on the slopes leading to the Lang Biang plateaux.
Material life
The Cơ-ho house is rectangular, built on stilts and inhabited by a large family. Some are 20-30m long and 3-3.5m wide with floors 1-1.5m above
the ground. The framework is made of wood, the roof of thatch, partitions and walls of bamboo, and the floor of flattened bamboo. It is held together in an upright position thanks to bolts and ties. The Xrê have recently adopted new techniques of assembly, nailing, and bolting; they also use tenons and mortise joints. Of late, houses made of bricks, roofed with coưugated iron-sheets or with tiles and built level with the ground have come into being.
Cơ-ho women wear pagnes and have very tight, short vests on like a pullover; as jewellery, they wear earrings, earlobe rings, bracelets and copper or tin necklaces. Glass bead necklaces and ivory pieces (sometimes quite large) cut into earlobe rings are also popular.
Men wear loincloths and long vests reaching down to mid-thigh which they slip on over the head. In summer, they leave their torso naked, in winter they cover themselves with blankets.
The Cơ-ho cultivate rice on slash-and-burn land, (one harvest per year), using traditional techniques — clearing the land, burning the bushes, and putting seeds into holes. After two harvests, the land is left fallow for ten years. The cultivation of rice in submerged fields is common among the Xrê and the Lách. The latter has a system of canals and ditches to bring water to the fields which they look after carefully. They also use the method of “direct sowing”, the seeds being scattered directly onto the fields without passing by the seedbeds and without the need for transplanting. The Chil lead a nomadic life and practise swidden farming. But they have begun to gradually adopt the sedentary or semi-sedentary mode of life thanks to their cultivating submerged fields. The Cơ-ho who follow slash-and-burn farming, pick the ears of paddy with their hands while those who cultivate fields cut them with sickles and beat them on the spot.
In many localities, the Cơ-ho have succeeded in swidden farming, cultivating several successive crops. Meanwhile, the Mạ, for instance, have to prepare new cultivable land every year. 1 Iarrows have been introduced in some places instead of clearing land by burning. This shows that the Cơ-ho are accepting the method of dry-crop cultivation.
Gathered forest products constitute a good source of income, in addition to hunting and fishing as the main ways of supplementing the people’s diet. Gardening is not a strong point of the Cơ-ho.
Besides rice, com, beans, gourds and watermelons, cotton and tobacco are also grown; such fruit trees as papaya, banana, jackfruit and pineapple are becoming more common.
Cottage industry (basketry, weaving and so on) keeps the Cơ-lio busy during the intervals of the agricultural cycle. Pottery has reached a remark¬able level of technical development among the Xrê, while the Nop offer excellent blacksmiths.
Social and family relationships
The Chil often live in small groups on mountain slopes; each group is composed of families bound by matrilineal ties. Several groups form a bon (village). The Xrê and Lách are rice growers and live in fixed areas of habita¬tion in relatively stable villages on the Di Linh and the Lang Biang plateaux. Most Cơ-ho villages are neighbour communities.
A long house is shared by an extended family which includes several nuclear ones. Each of the latter has its own production equipment, land and rice granaries, but these are all under the authority of an elderly person known as the kun pang. The long house is the basic unit of organization of the traditional society.
The head of bon is a kuang bon (elected by the council of kun pang) who handles all village affairs. The colonial administration made good use of this traditional social organization: the kuang bon (renamed the khoa bon) was put in charge of tax collection of corvée.
Relations between the nuclear families living under the same roof are governed by the spirit of community. Even when the stores of grain are kept separately, any family member may always have access to any of them.
The Xrê, Nốp and Chil, maintain a direct line of communication; the right to private property is given according to considerations which helps the rise of social differentiation.
When a young Cơ-ho girl has found the man she wants to marry, she informs her parents of the fact. The latter call on a go-between without forgetting to obtain the agreement of the maternal uncle. A copper bracelet and a glass bead necklace are offered to the family of the young man at the marriage proposal ceremony. The acceptance of these offerings is synonymous with agreement. After the wedding, the bridegroom stays with his wife’s family whose name will be given to their children. If the wife dies young, the husband may take her younger sister in replacement, not necessarily waiting until the end of the mourning period.
The body of the deceased member of the family is washed and put in a coffin — a hollowed-out tree trunk. It is kept in the house for a few days with rice as offering and then is transported into the forest for burial. The defunct of the same family are often buried in a large common grave. Five or six years after the burial, the ritual of “grave abandoning” is conducted and a funeral house is built atop the mound.
Spiritual life
The Co-ho are animists who believe in the existence of Ndu, both the God Creator of the universe and the protector of human beings. Under him is the whole pantheon of yang genies, each of them representing a natural force or object (the sun, the moon, mountains, rice-wine jars and rice stores, etc.). Each Co-ho family choses a yang for worshipping as its guardian genie. The Co-ho also practise the cult of ancestors whose spirits are represented by a finely carved board, (co-nao) placed above the entrance door to the house. In colonial times, many Co-ho living in or near urban areas were converted to Catholicism or Protestantism, but they did not completely renounce their ancient beliefs.
The Catholic missionaries invented a romanised Co-ho script to facilitate their evangelization as early as the beginning of the 20th century. But their impact on the masses was insignificant. Orally transmitted from generation to generation, the folk culture of the Co-ho has been preserved to date. Particularly, the lyrical poems tarn pla, are very famous for the internal music of their verses. Moreover, the Co-ho are one of the ethnic groups in the Vietnam’s Western plateaux, whose traditional dances are an integral part of their rituals and ceremonies. Their musical instruments include copper gongs, trumpets, bamboo flutes, buffalo horns, and stringed instruments.
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Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam
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