Overview of the distribution of Pear(Por) people in Cambodia

The following information comes from a mix of recent trips to O Som Commune, Veal Veng District, Pursat Province and from discussions with Pear people living near Pramoey (Veal Veng District town), and with Pear people at a National Forum of Indigenous People held from 9-12/9/04. Early historical information has been translated from Marie Martin who made a study of several different Pear groups in the 1960 and early 70s. This information is an overview and needs further verification. Classification of families and communities into different ethnicities also is problematic due to the confused mix of ethnic influences in the distant and recent past.

Due to their proximity to Samlaut and to the mountainous forested corridors linking to Kampong Som and Kampot, many of the areas that Pear traditionally inhabit have been the front lines of civil war lasting right up to 1998. This has caused large scale devastation of these groups. Many areas are heavily mined. Pear from communities that were formerly distributed along the western end of road 56, which runs from Pursat town to the Thai border, are by now almost completely scattered. They largely lost their land to newcomers who claimed the land before the original communities were able to claim them back when fighting stopped in the area.

Unless otherwise referenced most of the following information has been translated from Marie Martin’s book Les Khmer Daeum: Khmer de l’Origine. Société Montagnarde et Exploitation de la Forêt, de l’Écologie à l’Histoire. (1997). Marie Martin is a French linguist and botanist who traveled widely in the Cardamom mountains area in the 1960s, until she was forced to leave Cambodia due to increasing fighting in the early 1970s. She continued to study the Chong people in neighbouring Trat and Chanthaburi Provinces, Thailand for several more years. Chong are a Pear group who speak the same language as their relatives in Cambodia.

Martin reports the Pear and Samre (Por) were/are found in Koh Kong, Pursat, Kampot, and Battambang. Areas include Peam Prus, Veal Veng District, Stung Kranhung area (Battambang) and Pear groups also populated the area near Angkor (Kulen hills) in the distant past. Martin says also that Khmers informed her that Pears also lived in the chain of the Elephant mountains (Kampot?) in the 1960s. In Pursat Province they call themselves Samré; in Battambang they call themselves Samray, Chong and Chong-Samré in Trat Province, Thailand and Chong la and Chong heap, in Chanthaburi Province, Thailand.[2] Pear and Khmer oral tradition mentions a Chong empire in the period before the Angkor empire with its capital at Sebap hill, near the town of Chanthaburi in Thailand.[3] Martin also mentions a group now disappeared called the Thpong, previously inhabiting Thpong District, now known as Chumnoap Commune, Koh Kong Province.

The Chinese traveler/ambassador to Angkor, Tcheou Ta Kouan (1296), talks about the Tchouang and the Tchong, but didn’t mention the cardamom mountains. This says Martin is the first reference to these people. He says the Tchong (Pear) lived in the mountains (Kulen hills), made temporary shelters and cultivated cardamom (perhaps brought via their relations in the cardamoms), since the 13^th century. The groups near the Kulen hills were the first to collapse due to their proximity to the centre of the Khmer Empire, and no trace of any Pear vocabulary was found amongst people living in this area by Baradat in 1930.[4]

This dispersal from the Kulen Hills area explains the presence of Pear communities in Preah Vihear Province, where the Pear population was estimated to be 299 households (1,674 persons) in 2002 (Helmers and Wallgren 2002). The estimated population was considerably more than that the 316 Pear people that were identified on the basis of their "mother tongue" in the 1998 census. The Pear are described as cultivating upland rice by the swidden method and gathering NTFPs, and following traditional religions (Baradat 1941, in Helmers and Wallgren 2002). Diffloth (1992) states that the language and customs of the Pear are radically different from other social groups in Cambodia. [Top]

According to the oral tradition of the Samray of Kranhung, the Pear (Samray) of the Kulen hills survived because of an emigration dating from the Angkor kingdom. Apparently the Khmer king ordered some Samray hunters to find out whether there were any elephants in the Kranhung area. When they went there they didn't find any elephants but they brought back to the King cardamom, krakor (type of cardamom) and meliec (?). The King thought the meliec was sweet and having seen the cardamom he sent the hunters (Ta Som Puon and Ta Phen Banh) to go and live in the area where it grew. Some 30 houses were established in what is now known as Phum Ta Sanh. After 2-3 years these people moved closer to the cardamom at Kranhung. After the revolt of Samlaut in 1967 the Pear of Stung Kranhung moved to Ta Sanh.

There is no such story of the Samré of Stung Tamyong, Veal Veng District, Pursat. In Kranhung people told Martin that these Samré came perhaps from Angkor. They occupied the first crossroads of the cardamom massif - from Leach to Peam Prus (Veal Veng District) before the start of khmerisation. Cardamom does seem to be closely associated with the Pear and they were the ones who collected it to pay the ‘pol’ tax (tribute). Martin reports that cardamom was used as an important spice since the 11^th century. Khmers controlled the cardamom trade and slaves of the king (Pear and others) were sent to the cardamom mountain area to look after, collect, and in some places cultivate cardamom. Thai prisoners taken during fights between the Thais and Khmers were also used to collect cardamom, trap elephants and dig out pagodite? at Mount Thmar Keo.

The Khmers of Thailand told Martin they believed that the Chong-Samré in Trat came from Samlaut near Ta Sanh. The Sa’och (Kampong Som area who also speak a Pear language) also fled from the Khmer kingdom and went to Trat (see below).

Some people right in the interior central part of the cardamoms mountain forests may not have been under the influence of the state - i.e. no one knew who was there. Martin says these groups were able to avoid all law and may not have been subjected to paying tribute. In this way this remote area served as a refuge for several groups (prisoners etc.) fleeing authority, including apparently a royal Khmer entourage (perhaps settling in the Rusielle Chrum valley) who fled from the Thais after they sacked Long Vek and Oudong in 1593.

Martin also talks about a 'geo-cultural ensemble' in the cardamom area where Khmer Deaum (original Khmer) lived alongside Pear in Koh Kong, Pursat, Kampot and Battambang. This explains this mixing and loss of culture/language in some parts as since the Angkor period Khmers and Pears lived beside each other (especially during collection time) in areas of the cardamom mountains. Of the 3 types of Khmers (Cambodians) living in the cardamom mountain area, Martin says the ‘Khmer Deaum’ were people with a Khmer dialect distinctive from their Khmer lowland cousins living in the middle of the cardamom mountains. The other types were the Samré and the Sa’och.[5] Chong was a term apparently used by lowland Khmers to describe all 3 groups. This ethnic ‘mosaic’, or variety, according to Martin, was probably due to the crossing of several populations. [Top]

Cambodians from the cardamom mountains area generally referred to all Pear groups as Suoy. Martin explains that in vernacular language Suoy means tribute, which perhaps refers to the ancient ‘pol’ (bonded labour) tax which was payable in ivory or cardamom. The Suoy in Kampong Speu (who speak a Pear dialect) were therefore so called because they were one of the least remote groups and so particularly subjected to this form of tax collection. The word Por has also been speculated to connote coloured, therefore implying slave. Chong in Khmer also is an insulting term, meaning backward. For the Khmer rulers these people in the centre of the mountains constituted, until the abolishment of slavery in the 19^th century an easily controllable bonded labour force.

The Sa’och occupied an area from the (Veal Renh peninsula, Kampong Som?) to Kep hill between Hatien and Kampot and afterward only to Tahan or Koh Toch (small island). These represent a mystery because they are so racially different (negroid) from other Pear groups but speak the same dialect. In 1970 they were found at Lang Leh and Samrong Krom (Veal Renh Commune), also at Prey Nop (Kampong Som), Trapeang Saoy and Andaung Tmar. Martin says that Prek Kantuot, along the Stung Chai Areng (Koh Kong), was populated by negroid Khmer speaking people (Khmerised Sa’och).

The decline of the Sa’och population was due to raids for slaves by the Thais, in the 19^th century, and also due to the bad treatment by the Khmers which provoked their flight to Siam. Due to their negroid features they were sometimes referred to as ‘people with tails’ in Khmer. Reprehensible acts by one or the other forced them into the forest to find refuge where some established themselves. Of those that were able to survive in the plains, they were eventually treated with some benevolence and were exempted from paying taxes.

Martin speculates that possibly originally the Sa’och inhabited the higher areas and the Samré the lower slopes and flatter areas before the decent of the Khmers from Champassak in the 6^th century. This would have forced the Pear (including the Sa’och) groups to retreat into the higher lands. Over time Khmer fugitives would have also penetrated into the central cardamoms areas. The influence of Khmer culture and intermarriage would have impacted significantly on the original Pear groups.

Thus, Martin concludes that the original inhabitants of this region were Pear, who have adapted and been changed by various political, cultural and physiological influences over the centuries. The one thing that Martin says could not have adapted to the powerful ‘brilliante civilisation Khmére’, was the organisation of the clan. The ‘newcomers' came and imposed their control, their royal culture, their technology and perhaps their numbers.[6] Here, however, as in other highland regions, the influence of the lowland Khmers was always tempered by the terrain, the forest, the remoteness and the adaptation of local people to their surroundings.

O Som Commune is situated in the middle of the cardamom mountains and on the border between Pursat and Koh Kong Provinces. The Commune Chief (Ngieng) said that in O Som there are only 2 Pear language speakers at present. These people married into O Som from other Pear villages in the region (Toul Krua, Veal Veng District). Ngieng said that actually however all the people traditionally from O Som were of Pear decent. He said people are afraid to say who they are because they were persecuted during the Khmer Rouge period for being a minority.

He explained that the language has been lost because in his mother’s time she was already loosing her language. At over 80 Ngieng is well known as one of the oldest men in the commune. He only learnt the basics of the Pear language from his mother. This fits with Marie Martin’s description in 1970 of the O Som people being ‘Khmerised Pear’ and explains why no one speaks Pear now. Ngeing said he came to O Som from Rusielle Chrum 1 year before the war started in the Sihanouk period. He said his ancestors came from Andaung Tmar (see Section 2 above). In the past (Sihanouk period) there were 2,000 people along the Rusielle Chrum river, with 2 Pagodas.

Ngeing said he hadn’t heard of any groups in Kampong Som Province because he only knew about Pear villages to the north. He said there were Pear groups all the way to Samlaut (Battambang). Northern and southern Pear communities spoke different dialects. Ngieng said that a lot of Pear died during the long years of fighting in Pursat and Battambang.

In the past people in Srie Pang/Anlong Kroik area mainly did paddy farming (15 out of 20 families) but they also planted upland crops. People abandoned their villages because of the war and fighting. When they returned people had already claimed their former paddy areas and wanted money to give them up. Most former Pear residents did not have money and couldn’t reclaim their lands, though some managed to buy their own land back.

The village houses were all destroyed during the years of war but there are several fruit trees that remain as evidence of former possession. People have now gone to many different places – Raveine/Leach, Kavanh District, Samlaut, O Heng, Thailand, etc. Several families went to Thailand during the war and never returned.

The 6 families in Pramoey said they came back to this area because it was their former home. They have lost the use of their former paddy area however. They are now doing upland rice farming and growing produce (mainly bananas) to sell in Pramoey. They divided what land they could get between them. The leader of the group (a Khmer married to a Pear), said there is another 3 ha of paddy lands in Ptah Moie (Veal Veng District) which they would like to farm if they had cows for ploughing.

People from inland Koh Kong Province said they are relatives of the people in O Som and several families from the Rusielle Chrum valley have also settled in this area. Rusielle Chrum people (2,000 people in the 1960s) have migrated to Koh Kong (with 98 families relocated to the Wildaid resettlement area), Samlaut (Battambang), O Som Commune, etc. According to participants attending the National Indigenous Peoples’ Forum of the 151 families now in Tmar Bang, 57 families are originally from the area. There were 93 original families in Ta Tey Leu, 20 families in Rolek Cheung, 5 families in Ta Tey Kroam (all Koh Kong Province).

These resemble animist practices found in other indigenous minority areas of the country. An important ceremony for the forest spirits is held is held around 1 February, and again later in the year this involves calling the Preah Niak Ta Srok and Preah Niak Ta Krau – the local and far away spirits in the hills around. The ceremony is held around a forest shrine with a stone representing the most important spirit, the Niak Ta Srok, who protects the village and its inhabitants, assures health and prosperity, and intervenes especially in agriculture.[8] (Kh - tuong) are hung from trees to represent people. The ceremony lasts for a day, with dancing and music around the shrine. These ceremonies are accompanied by strict rules governing behaviour.[9]

O Som Commune is situated next to probably the largest cardamom forest in the country which residents have delineated at around 10,000 hectares. The large cardamom forest and the fertile red soils is what brought the people to the area (cardarmom grows on red soils). [Top]

In meetings to discuss communal land titling O Som residents said there were interested in the idea, saying that with individual titles the community could loose its land. People supported the idea of individual rights over paddy areas and fruit trees and communal management over the swidden areas. The general feeling was the community members could use the land but were not allowed to sell it. If someone sold land they would not be allowed another piece. If the land is sold without informing the authorities the sale will also not be recognised. Any land sale would have to be thumprinted by the krom, village and commune Chiefs. One NRM committee member said that the authorities have been elected to protect land, forest and water in the community. [Top]

O Som is 45 kms along a moto track from the District town, Pramoey, so despite the area being impacted by forest exploitative industries there have been no outsiders buying land in the commune. The Commune as with all areas in western Pursat does have large numbers of ex Khmer Rouge soldiers, and people displaced from other areas, who have settled there after the fighting.

In the past people only used a chamka for one year on the red soil areas, because there was plenty of land.[11] Many families also cultivated lowland rice in part of the 1000ha lowland area known as Veal Veng.

Now fields are used for 2 years with a 3-4 year fallow period when a 7 year fallow as in the past is best. Fallows are cleared after 3-4 years when the tree trunks are the size of house posts. People are afraid to cut older fallows because the Forest Administration rangers stationed in the area have stopped people from clearing these areas as most of the area is now in the Central Cardamom Protected Forest.[12] Land is generally cleared along the footslopes of hills.

One elder farming on the small red soil plateau area explained that his family is using only 2 fields, when they really need another one. Newcomers have trouble finding land to clear and this has been one of the reasons behind the clearing in the cardamom forest. The elder felt that an allocation of 5 ha per family would not be enough land. It was also necessary to keep some land in reserve for the next generation.

In the Kien Chung Rouk village (on the edge of Veal Veng, off the red soil plateau) people cut a new chamka every year on the white soils. Normally people clear around a hectare of land, clearing 1.5ha was found to be too big to handle. One family had 5 of these 1 ha sites. Each of the (4) krom in Kien Chung Rouk clear their chamkas all together and help each other with planting and harvesting.

In this community the owner/possessor of a piece of land is the family who first cleared it. If someone wants to borrow a piece of land it is usually possible to do so for 1 year without paying anything. If someone wanted to borrow it for longer it would be necessary to pay something to the owners.

The Krom Chief is the one who distributes land to the members of his krom and the krom seems to be the unit of land management. There does not appear to be any boundaries between the 3 upper villages which are all lined up along the road and the Commune Chiefs hold considerable sway in allocation of land that is not yet claimed by anyone, in allocating new paddy areas, etc. [Top]

People in Pramoey explained that work was required now if the Pear language was to be preserved. Mother tongue speakers are not yet that old but few children seem to be learning it. Some of the Pear representatives from Ptah Moie village (near Pramoey town) at the National IP Forum had lost their language.

1. Daltry J. C. (ed), (2002) ‘Social and Ecological Surveys of the Veal Veng Wetland, Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia, with Special Reference to the Conservation of the Siamese Crocodile’. Fauna & Flora International: Cambodia Programme, and Department of Forestry & Wildlife, Phnom Penh.

2. Diffloth, G. (1992?) ‘The indigenous minorities of Cambodia and the elections’; UNTAC Report, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

3. Ironside, J., Hammond, B. & Hor L. (2002) ‘Integrating Production with Conservation: Agriculture and Natural Resource Use in O’Som Commune, Veal Veng District, Pursat Province, Cambodia, 13 – 24~~/2/~~ February 2002’. Fauna & Flora International: Cambodia Programme, and Department of Forestry & Wildlife, Phnom Penh.

4. Hammond, B. & Hor L. (2002) ‘Socio-economics, natural resource use and human needs in O'S’Som commune, Veal Veng District, Pursat Province, Cambodia’. In ‘Social and Ecological Surveys of the Veal Veng Wetland, Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia, with Special Reference to the Conservation of the Siamese Crocodile’ (ed. J.C. Daltry), pp. 61-86. Fauna & Flora International: Cambodia Programme, and Department of Forestry & Wildlife, Phnom Penh.

5. Helmers K., and Wallgren P., (2002) ‘Cambodia: Rural Investment and Local Governance Project Indigenous Upland Ethnic Minorities Impact Screening Study, Final Report’, The World Bank East Asia and Pacific Region, Rural Development and Natural Resources Sector Unit.

6. Martin M. A. (1997) ‘Les Khmer Daeum: Khmer de l’Origine. Société Montagnarde et Exploitation de la Forêt, de l’Écologie à l’Histoire’. Presses de l’École Francaise d’Extrême Orient, Paris. [Top]

[1] Martin divides the Pear into 3 main groups or dialects – the Suoy from Kampong Speu, the Sa’och from Kampong Som and the Samré, Samray, and the Chong from southwestern Cambodia and into eastern Thailand.

[2] Martin gives populations figures in the 1960s at 1200 – 1500 each for the Samray (in Battambang Province) and Samré (in Pursat Province) groups in Cambodia, with perhaps 400 – 500 Suoy and 1500 Chong in Thailand (Martin 1997 pp. 61-62, 70 and 95).

[3] Ibid, p. 70

[4] Baradat, R. 1941, ‘Les Sâmré ou Peâr, population primitive de l’Ouest du Cambodge’, BEFEO, XL1: 1-101, See Martin (1997)

[5] The there hysical distinct types of Khmers in the mountains and foothills of this region in the 1960s were according to Martin (pp 60-63)

The majority have medium size, with strong shoulders, wavy hair, and the facial features of the lowland Khmers.
People with thicker facial features resembling those of the Samray arched eyebrows, projecting cheekbones, receding forehead, and projecting lips.
Others with Negroid features reminiscent of the Sa’och (dark complexion, short stature and frizzy hair)

[6] Ibid, p. 70.

[7] A description from 1964 (Lebar, F. et al. “Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia”; Human Relations Area Files Press, New Haven) suggests that the Pear might be part of a larger group that includes the Samre of Siem Reap.

[8] Martin (1997) p. 165.

[9] Ibid, p. 165.

[10] From a meeting of 18 community leaders – village and commune NRM committee members and Chiefs

[11] These are the same red soils that are found on the Ratanakiri basalt plateau and in Mondolkiri.

[12] The Central Cardamom Protected Forest is supported by Conservation International. Approximately 25% of O Som Commune is also in Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, managed by the Ministry of Environment and supported by Fauna and Flora International.