Remembering the Montagnards

Across the Fence #379

When I was asked to do the program for our next Sons of Norway meeting, I decided it was time to talk about my work with the Montagnards in Vietnam. I wanted people to know about these remarkable people. I bet most of you have never heard of them.

The term Montagnard means “Mountain People” in French and comes from the French colonial period in Vietnam. The Vietnamese called them moi, meaning “savages.” As the indigenous people of the Central Highlands, the Montagnards had a completely different culture and language than the Vietnamese. I had many misconceptions about the Montagnards when I first worked with them, based on what the Vietnamese had said about them.

All that changed after I got to know them. I loved working with the Montagnards and still hold a special respect and affection for them. They were primitive by our standards, but they were good and trustworthy people. I believe my helping them and gaining their trust and friendship helped keep me from harm and perhaps even death.

I spent many days on MEDCAP (Medical Civic Action Program) during my year in Vietnam. Volunteers were wanted to go out to remote Montagnard tribal villages and provide medical treatment, but they warned us that it would be dangerous. I decided if I was going to be killed, I’d rather go trying to help people. When we weren’t out on combat operations, we’d try to visit villages a couple days a week and spend the day providing medical treatment. We always had an interpreter along because we couldn’t speak the language. Many times, only Sgt. Ishe-the interpreter, and myself would go.

When I look back on the many times we headed out across small trails through the boonies in our jeep ambulance, I realize how lucky I am that we never hit a mine, a booby trap, or were ambushed. This was especially true when just the two of us went.

But it was all worth it. I had so many great experiences working with the Montagnards. There were also some heartbreaking times when I couldn’t help someone and they died. Many times it was because the village Shaman wouldn’t let the villagers accept our treatments. They had survived without modern medicine for centuries and it’s hard to change the old ways of providing sacrifices and bloodletting to appease the spirits and heal the people. It wasn’t until the mid 1950s, that many of the once-isolated Montagnards began experiencing contact with outsiders. A couple remote villages I visited had very little outside contact before we arrived.

I found it fascinating to learn about their beliefs and experience how they lived. There are so many stories to tell, and I’ll touch on some of them during the Sons of Norway program and show slides that I took of their way of life.

They practiced slash-and-burn farming. A village community would clear a few acres in the jungle by cutting down and burning the forests. They would farm that area for several years and then move on to another area. They hunted with crossbows and arrows and used spears. Clothing was minimal during the warm seasons. The men wore a g-string, the woman a wrap-around garment on the lower part of their body and nothing on top. Most young children wore nothing. Everyone was barefoot.

The traditional religion of the Montagnards was animism. This is a belief that spirits are active in all things in the natural world. There are both good and bad spirits. I was invited to sit in on rituals that often involved the sacrifice and blood letting of animals. Another practice I witnessed was a man making a large cut in his thigh to release any bad spirits that were inhabiting his family. It was part of a funeral celebration for a family member who had just died. He then took a red-hot stick and cauterized his own wound. All this was done without showing any sign of pain. They were a very stoic people.

There was a very sick young girl in one of my villages. Her only chance of survival was getting her to our base camp aid station where she could be fed intravenously. I wanted to start an IV and take her with us back to our camp. We wanted her parents to let me treat her, but village elders and the Shaman convinced them that she must remain in the village and let their Spirits heal her. No matter how much we tried, Sgt. Ishe couldn’t get them to change their minds. At the time I didn’t know all their beliefs, but now I understand why they wouldn’t let me remove her from the village. If she had died away from her village, her Spirit would have wandered the countryside for eternity trying to find its way home.

I remember looking into the little girls eyes as she lay on the mat in their longhouse. She was too weak to even move. It made me sick to know we could help her but weren’t allowed to. It wasn’t fair to that little girl. As I knelt beside her, I squeezed her hand before I left. The next morning she was dead.

It was just another day in Vietnam, but that little girl’s death still haunts me.

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