Siam
9781465622525
208 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
You have doubtless already learned in your history of England that at one time this island home of ours was peopled by wild, uncivilized tribes, who were driven away into the hills of the north and the west by invaders who came to our shores from the lands on the other side of the North Sea. At different times, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, and Angles poured their warriors upon our coasts, killed the people, burnt their homes, and stole their cattle. And one of these invading tribes, the Angles, gave its name to a part of our island, which is to this day known as England—that is, Angle-land, the land of the Angles. Now, in the same way, the people who live in Siam at the present time are the descendants of invaders who swept into the country and drove the original inhabitants into the hills. No one is quite certain where the Siamese actually came from, but it is likely that their home was upon the mountain-slopes of Tibet. Their ancestors were a wild and vigorous race who tattooed themselves. They descended from the mountains and settled in China, where they became a peaceable people, living upon their farms, rearing their crops and tending their herds, and perhaps thinking little of war and bloodshed any more. These people are known as the Shans. Then, one day, there came down upon them a great horde of invaders, who drove most of them away from their homes. Some stayed behind as slaves; other wanderers travelled to the west and settled in the country we now call Burma; and, finally, some of the exiles pushed on to the valleys and hill-sides of Northern Siam, and these are the people whose descendants we call the Siamese. The word "Siam" is really the word "Shan," the name of the earliest settlers in the land. Amongst the first of the European nations to visit this little-known country were the Portuguese; and when they came home to Europe again, and told their story of the people they had found in Further India, they both spelled and pronounced the word "Shan" as "Siam," and that is how we get the name. The Siamese never call themselves by this name. The native name for the people is "Thai," which means "free," and the country of Siam is to them always "Muang Thai"—that is, "the Land of the Free." We shall not stay here to tell the long story of how the Siamese, in the course of many hundreds of years, have fought all the people upon their borders—those who live in Cambodia, Pegu, Annam, and Burma. This history is full of curious stories of brave and cruel men, two of whom deserve just a word or two here.
