Yabs (Petits Blancs des Hauts)
The poor white farmers of Réunion's highlands — descendants of early French settlers who never acquired estates, who farmed the cirques and the volcanic uplands on smallholdings, and who supply the island with its lentils, its geranium oil and a good deal of its self-mockery.
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Yabs (Petits Blancs des Hauts) people
Catalogue des tableaux modernes, aquarelles, pastels, dessins, sculptures, objets d'art, composant la collection de m. Arsène Alexandre et dont la vente aura lieu à Paris, Galerie Georges Petit les 18 (14782224845).jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
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.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Cilaos
Cirque community famed for lentils, thermal springs and embroidery.
Salazie and Hell-Bourg
Cirque settlement with chouchou (chayote) terraces and colonial-era spa architecture.
Plaine-des-Cafres
High plateau of cattle, geranium distillation and market gardening.
Gallery
1 images
Culture
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.
Stories & Oral Literature
Cilaos, Which Means One Does Not LeaveLocal tradition
The cirque's name is popularly derived from the Malagasy tsilaosa, the place one does not leave, and was first settled by maroons before poor white farmers moved in. The community that formed there is now known for lentils grown at altitude, embroidery developed in the nineteenth century, and thermal waters that made it a spa long before it had a road.
Geranium OilEconomic history
Rose geranium distilled on the volcano's slopes supplied the European perfume industry for a century, giving highland smallholders a cash crop they could grow on steep land. Competition from Egypt and China collapsed the trade, and the copper stills that survive are now mostly heritage rather than industry.
Proverbs
“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.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
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.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The Virgin
Focus of highland pilgrimages and roadside shrines
Saint-Expédit
Saint of urgent requests, with red shrines throughout the Hauts
The volcano
Addressed in speech as an agent with moods
Architecture
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.
Artifacts
Cilaos embroidery (jours de Cilaos)
Craft
Drawn-thread needlework developed in the cirque in the nineteenth century.
Geranium stills
Industry
Copper distillation apparatus of the highland perfume crop.
Case créole with lambrequins
Architecture
Timber house with decorative zinc fretwork, the island's domestic signature.
Cilaos lentils
Livelihood
High-altitude pulse with protected origin status on the island.
Historical Timeline
1665–1700s
French settlement; some settlers acquire estates and others do not, producing the highland smallholder class.
1800s
Cirques settled and terraced; thermal spa at Cilaos develops; embroidery tradition begins.
1900s–1960s
Geranium oil distillation becomes the highland cash crop.
1946–present
Departmentalisation, roads and electricity reach the cirques; agriculture diversifies.
2010
The cirques and volcanic peaks inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO: Pitons, cirques and remparts of Reunion IslandUNESCO
- Britannica: RéunionEncyclopaedia Britannica
- Parc national de La RéunionParc national de La Réunion
Premium & scholarly sources