Miao rebellions (Ming dynasty)

The Miao rebellions were a series of rebellions of the indigenous tribes of southern China against the Ming Dynasty. The Ming defeated the rebels with overwhelming force. Later, under the Qing Dynasty, another series of Miao rebellions broke out.

Rebellions
In one of the first Miao revolts, in the 1370s, several thousand Uyghur warriors from Turpan were sent by the Ming Hongwu Emperor to defeat Miao rebels in Taoyuan County of Changde, Hunan (at the time Hunan was part of Huguang province). The Uyghurs were all given titles and allowed to live in Changde, Hunan. The title of the Uyghur commander was "Grand General of South-Pacifying Post of the Nation"  The Uyghurs were led by Gen. Hala Bashi, who was awarded titles by the Ming Hongwu Emperor and the surname Jian. They live in Taoyuan County of Hunan province to this day. Chinese Muslim troops were also used by the Ming Dynasty to defeat the Miao and other indigenous rebels in the area, and were also settled in Changde, Hunan, where their descendants still live.

On May 4, 1449, the Miao revolted again. The Ming military sent General Wang Ji to destroy the rebels. The Miao rebellions spread through Huguang and Guizhou. Guizhou was ransacked in 1459 and 1460 by government forces, who looted the town and sold many of the residents into slavery. The eunuch Yuan Rangyang was appointed Grand Defender of Huguang and Guizhou.

Again multiple Miao rebellions broke out in the 1460s. The Miao and Yao rebelled in 1464, and the revolt spread throughout Guangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi and Guangdong. The Miao regrouped and had settled throughout southern China. On the Hunan Guizhou border, more rebellions broke out in 1466. The Ming rallied 1,000 Mongol cavalry archers and 30,000 soldiers in total to defeat the Miao. Ming commander Gen. Li Chen, who was an hereditary general, fought against the indigenous tribes for decades in the 15th century and used brutal tactics against them. He was determined to wage campaigns of extermination against the Miao whenever they rebelled—in 1467 and 1475, among others—and killed thousands of them.

Certain subgroups of Miao are known as Hmong. In the 16th century the Ming dynasty sent ethnic Chinese to settle in the tribal areas of the Hmong and other indigenous tribes in the southwest. The Ming sent 2000 garrison troops to defeat the Hmong rebels, and 40,000 rebels were slaughtered. Yet by 1500 the Hmong were revolting in areas around Hunan province and had fought almost every year in an effort to gain their independence from imperial rule. The fervor and tenacity of these tribes had caused much discord and unrest. The Ming Dynasty constructed the Hmong wall, which was 10 feet high and 100 miles long with military posts. The Hmong in Guizhou used armor made of buffalo skin or mail made of copper and iron, and weapons such as shields, spears, knives, crossbows and poisoned arrows. Two Chinese generals who defected and joined the Hmong gave them gunpowder weapons, such as flintlock rifles, cannons and blunderbusses, and showed the rebels how to make them.

An account of the origins of the Hmong in Sichuan says that the Ming Chinese in Guangdong defeated the ancestors of the Hmong, and forcibly relocated them to Sichuan.

The Chinese naming and classification of the southern tribes was often vague. When the Ming began colonizing the south, the classification of the natives began to grow more accurate.

The Ming commander crushed a Miao rebellion in 1460, and castrated 1,565 Miao boys, which resulted in the deaths of 329 of them. They were then turned into eunuch slaves. The Guizhou Governor who ordered the castration of the Miao was reprimanded and condemned by Emperor Yingzong of Ming for doing it once the Ming government heard of the event. Since 329 of the boys died, even more were needed to be castrated.

Han Chinese origin Hmong clans
A large number of the Han Chinese soldiers who also fought the Miao were then settled in the southwest, given land and married many of their Hmong women.

A great number of Hmong lineage clans were founded by Chinese men who married Hmong women, these distinct Chinese descended clans practice Chinese burial customs instead of Hmong style burials.

The Hmong children of Hmong women who married Chinese men was the origin of numerous China and South East Asia based Hmong lineages and clans, these were called "Chinese Hmong" ("Hmong Sua") in Sichuan, the Hmong were instructed in military tactics by fugitive Chinese rebels.

Marriages between Hmong women and Han Chinese men is the origin of a lot of Hmong lineages and clans.

Hmong women married Han Chinese men to found new Hmong lineages which use Chinese names.

Chinese men who married into Hmong clans have established more Hmong clans than the ritual twelve, Chinese "surname groups" are comparable to the Hmong clans which are patrilineal, and practice exogamy.

Hmong women married Han Chinese men who pacified Ah rebels who were fighting against the Ming dynasty, and founded the Wang clan among the Hmong in Gongxian county, of Sichuan's Yibin district.

Hmong women who married Chinese men founded a new Xem clan in a Hmong village (among Northern Thailand's Hmong), fifty years later in Chiangmai two of their Hmong boy descendants were Catholics. A Hmong woman and a Chinese man married and founded the Lauj clan in Northern Thailand.

A marriage between a Hmong woman and a Chinese man resulted in northern Thailand's Lau2 clan being founded, another Han Chinese with the family name Deng founded another Hmong clan, Han Chinese men's marriages with Hmong women has led some ethnographers to conclude that Hmong clans in the modern era have possible all or partly have been founded in this matter.

Jiangxi Han Chinese are claimed by some as the forefathers of the southeast Guizhou Miao, and Miao children were born to the many Miao women married Han Chinese soldiers in Taijiang in Guizhou before the second half of the 19th century.

Imperially commissioned Han Chinese chieftancies "gone native", with the Miao and were the ancestors of a part of the Miao population in Guizhou.

The Hmong Tian clan in Sizhou began in the seventh century as a migrant Han Chinese clan.

Non-han women such as Miao women became wives of Han Chinese male soldiers who fought against the Miao rebellions during the Qing and Ming dynasties since Han women were not available.

The Ming dynasty Hongwu Emperor sent troops to Guizhou whose descendants became the Tunbao. The origin of the Tunbao people traces back to when the Ming dynasty sent 300,000 Han Chinese male soldiers in 1381 to conquer Yunnan and the men married Yao and Miao women.

The presence of women presiding over weddings was a feature noted in "Southeast Asian" marriages, such as in 1667 when a Miao woman in Yunnan married a Chinese official. Some Sinicization occurred, in Yunnan a Miao chief's daughter married a scholar in the 1600s who wrote that she could read, write, and listen in Chinese and read Chinese classics.

The Sichuan Hmong village of Wangwu was visited by Nicholas Tapp who wrote that the "clan ancestral origin legend" of the Wang Hmong clan, had said that several times they were married to a Han Chinese and possibly one of these was their ancestor Wang Wu, there were two types of Hmong, "cooked" who sided with Chinese and "raw" who rebelled against the Chinese, the Chinese were supported by the Wang Hmong clan. A Hmong woman was married by the non-Hmong Wang Wu according to The Story of the Ha Kings in Wangwu village.