TIGERS AND TREASON
Perhaps the most extraordinary summer of my life was when I was 17 years old. It was 1960, and I spent it in the jungles of South Vietnam hunting tigers. I was by myself with a Vietnamese hunting guide named Ngo Van Chi, and I was after one tiger in particular. He was a man-eater. He had killed and eaten so many people - over 20 - that he had a name: Ong Bang Mui, “Mr. Thirty,” the number associated with death.
This was in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, inhabited by tribespeople collectively known as Montagnards (mon-tan-yards), French for mountain people. They are Malayo-Polynesian, not Mongoloid Oriental, who first populated these mountains thousands of years ago - long before the Vietnamese came, whether the Tonkinese in the north or the Annamese in the south.
The Montagnard people I was with were known as the Co Ho. They had no modern weapons, only spears and cross bows. So when Ong Bang Mui leaped into one of their villages and dragged off a villager to be eaten, they had little defense. They had little defense also from the Communist Viet Cong. The sight of a village in smoking ruins and dead babies stuck onto sharpened poles is a sight one never forgets.
The Co Ho and other Montagnard tribes were such peaceful, gentle people. It was impossible for anyone who got to know them, such as I and so many American soldiers, not to develop a deep and abiding fondness for them. They welcomed me into their huts, most always built on stilts, and were always gracious and kind - although I must admit they loved getting me way too drunk on their rice wine.
