Entry Category: Ethnic Groups - Starting with H

The Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia, and their presence in Arkansas stems from the evacuation of allied groups by the U.S. government at the end of the Vietnam War. As of the 2010 federal census, there are 2,143 Hmong residents of the state, concentrated in northwestern Arkansas. Prior to the Vietnam War, little was known in the West about the thousands of tribes of hill people throughout Southeast Asia, mostly peasants with ancestry going back to China, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. During the Vietnam War, one of these groups, the Hmong, was sympathetic to the American forces, but circumstances did not allow the Hmong to obtain legal status in Thailand at war’s end. Even before the fall …