Yabs (Petits Blancs des Hauts)

Population: A substantial component of the island's population, concentrated in the Hauts

Location: The interior highlands — Cilaos, Salazie, Plaine-des-Palmistes, Plaine-des-Cafres and the volcano's slopes

Language: Réunion Creole, with highland speech treated on the island as the most conservative variety

Language family: French-lexified creole

Traditional governance: French communal administration; historically smallholder farming outside the plantation system's structures of credit and control.

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Clothing: Working farm dress; straw hats and the embroidered work of Cilaos as the local craft signature.

Food: Cilaos lentils, chouchou in every form, boucané smoked pork, cari, and the island's charcuterie; wine from Cilaos, unusual at this latitude.

Ceremonies: Catholic parish festivals and pilgrimages; the harvest and distillation seasons; village fêtes with séga and maloya.

Marriage customs: Catholic marriage, historically endogamous within the highland communities, which produced a distinctive genealogy of a few founding families.

Initiation rites: None formal; taking on a share of the family plot marks adult standing, as in smallholder societies generally.

Every dish the Atlas publishes for Réunion, at national rather than community level — 6 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.

“Ti hach i coup gros bois.”

“A small axe fells a big tree.”

The island's shared motto of small means and persistence.

“The Hauts are cold but they are yours.”

Smallholding over wage work on the coast.

“A road reaches the cirque last and the tax collector first.”

Highland scepticism about the state.

Creation: Catholic cosmology; the volcano, the Piton de la Fournaise, occupies the imaginative place elsewhere held by origin narrative.

Beliefs: Roman Catholicism with strong parish and pilgrimage life; Saint-Expédit shrines; belief in healers and in the properties of the island's plants.

Ancestors: Family graves in village cemeteries; genealogies traceable to a handful of founding settlers, and much discussed.

Traditional settlements: Villages in the cirques and on the plateaus, houses scattered among terraced plots, reachable historically only on foot.

Building techniques: Timber case créole with lambrequin fretwork, shingle and later sheet roofing; dry-stone terracing on steep ground; copper distillation stills.

Village layout: Case with varangue veranda facing the valley, jardin créole of food and medicinal plants, outbuildings for animals and distillation.

1. 1665–1700s

   French settlement; some settlers acquire estates and others do not, producing the highland smallholder class.

2. 1800s

   Cirques settled and terraced; thermal spa at Cilaos develops; embroidery tradition begins.

3. 1900s–1960s

   Geranium oil distillation becomes the highland cash crop.

4. 1946–present

   Departmentalisation, roads and electricity reach the cirques; agriculture diversifies.

5. 2010

   The cirques and volcanic peaks inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.