Thailand’s “Chow Pah Negritos” (Maniq) in 1897 and 1899: Smithsonian Records of W. L. Abbott’s Expeditions to the Trang-Phatthalung Border Highlands

Abstract

Adding to the very few pre-1900 accounts of the Maniq groups of Thailand, this paper presents new information from archives and ethnographic collections at the Smithsonian about two visits by William Louis Abbott at the end of the 19th century to the group now generally called the Maniq, considered a subgroup of the Semang and the northernmost Negrito group of the peninsular region of southern Thailand and Malaya. These sources indicate the position, within 19th century theories about evolutionary sequences of societies, that Thailand’s “Chow pah” came to serve, for Abbott himself and for the Smithsonian anthropologists with whom he corresponded.