Observers and scholars have ascribed an almost atavistic traditionalism to the Black Tai. Apart from differences in political history with lowland Tai, upland Tai peoples, "notably the Black Thai...are set apart...by the retention of their traditional dress, animistic beliefs, and their strong cohesion as a group" (Smith et al., 1967 : 569). Among minority or tribal Tai, the Black Tai have been singled out as archetypal. "If there is a general pattern of upland social structure. ..it is the system of the Black Tai" (McAlister, 1967 : 781). They are "more conservative than any of the other groups" (Lebar and Suddard, 1960 : 41), "'typical' in that they have preserved much of what was apparently the traditional Tai way of life prior to the expansion of Tai-speaking peoples in Indochina" (Halpern and Kunstadter, 1967 : 236). Compared with any other Tai in Southeast Asia, their language and religious beliefs are less Indianized ; among all peoples emigrant from the north, their language and political form are less Sinicized, and; in comparison with their closest cultural and regional neighbors, the White Tai, they are less Vietnamized (Hickey, 1958 ; Seidenfaden, 1963 : 74 ; Gedney, 4; Lebar et aI., 1964: 188 ; Pitiphat, 1980: 37). By virtue of their ecological adaptation, social organizational character, and cultural integrity, the Black Tai have 1 called the "original Thai", the "ancient Thai" (Senaphitak, 1978 : 7-8), and the Thai of yore" (Seidenfaden, 1963: 74 ; referring to Izikowitz, 1962). Black Tai retention of traditional culture has often been attributed to their occupation of dispersed and remote areas (Hickey, 1958 : 206, 210 ; Schrock et aI., 1972 : 50-51 ; 7 ; Pitiphat, 1980 : 36-38), just as acculturation among such upland peoples as the Red Tai and White Tai (see Hickey, 1958 ; Gedney, 1964) and such "tribal" Tai migrants in northern Thailand as the Lue (Moerman, 1965 ; 1967) has been associated with contiguity to or other enduring alignment with majority lowland societies. Citing some cultural diffusion from both lowland Tai and Vietnamese (e.g., adoption of Indianized script, probable vocabular and phonetic adulteration), others have questioned the significance of geographical barriers (Halpern and Kunstadter, 1967 : Davis, 1984 : 33-34).

Both positions have merit, describing actual features of Black Tai environment culture. On one hand, several Black Tai population centers are proximal to historically important trade routes, and the region has been a focus of intensive competition from neighboring states in every direction for centuries. On the other, no external power has ever maintained more than a temporary or tenuous presence in the uplands, nor effected complete destruction of indigenous political and social institutions. The distance of foreign political centers, and reluctance in communicating threat of encroachment on rival states by imposing direct and martial rule, encouraged either administration through local officers or only nominal limitations to autonomous rule. Such compromises perpetuated the influence of traditional leaders and the importance of patriliny in social organization, contributing to the persistence of ethnocultural identity.

In their external relations with other myang, the upland Black Tai autocracies have been characterized as semi-autonomous, recognizing only periodic alliances or administrative corporateness, usually in response to the hegemony of external powers (McAlister, 1967 : 779-780). However ephemeral or derivative, two kinds of supralocal articulation deserve mention: consolidation of myang under individual powerful chao through warfare, and "tribal" alignment.

Although long widely dispersed, the Black Tai have traditionally marked their capital at Myang Teng (var., Theng, Taeng, Thaeng ; now known as Dien Bien Phu), located in the large upland valley between the au and Ma rivers and founded probably in the eleventh century (Guillemet and O'Kelly, 1916 : 105). Legendary recognition of this "magnificent plain" (ESJ : 181) is not exclusive to Black Tai : while they claim it as original, it is also specified as the hub of Tai dispersal by the lowland Lao and other Tai in the region. Myang Teng may in fact have been an early "homeland" for both the Black Tai and lowland Lao, but its legendary stature probably owes as much to geography. Covering over one hundred square kilometers, it is the most productive of upland agricultural areas and also dominates the most direct route between the Tonkin and middle Mekhong valley. The mythic status of certain myang as points of origin for various Tai as ethnic categories may have a basis in such geopolitical circumstances. Moerman speculates: 

Propinquity to a strong and durable capital may have resulted in the focusing and coalescing of minor differences of speech and custom to make them emblems of a "tribe." Where the states were weak, as in Tonkin, distinctions of language and tribe are especially unclear... Thai tribal labels seem to record not language and culture, but historical states which no longer exist. These states were never sufficiently durable or powerful, nor were watersheds so mutually isolated. ..as to produce the centripetal interactions that make for objectively distinctive cultures (1967 : 1221).  

The situation in Tonkin does suggest regional topography and political demography as determinants of ethnic alignments (see also Hartmann, 1980 : 82, on Tai dialect groups). A relevant example of the problematic nature of tribal and culturallingual distinctions concerns that among the Black and White Tai. Excepting Diguet (1908) and Maspero (1929), ethnographers have chosen to distinguish White Tai and Black Tai, both as dialect groups (see Gedney, 1964 ; Fippinger and Fippinger, 1970) and as cultures (see Roux, 1954 ; Lebar et aI., 1964), despite that regional variations among either are as pronounced as any sociocultural difference between them (cf. Abadie. 1924 ; Fippinger, 1971). Historically, "tribal" affiliation in the Tonkin and northeastern Laos has marked conflict over territory and competition for privileged recognition by more powerful lowland neighbors. Black Tai and White Tai are distinct ethnic categories, but the fundamental nature of their opposition is or has been highly specific to political contest, and persistent only within a context of sociocultural and ecological similarity. Until the power concentrated in certain myang was legitimized by French in the late nineteenth century, what are now taken as "tribal" divisions had I less salience to dialect and culture trait distribution.