Elephants and mahouts in Thailand: a shared history, from warfare to tourist camps

A man seated on an elephant's neck, guiding it with his voice and his knee: the scene seems timeless. Yet it sums up at least seven centuries of change. A war mount celebrated by the chronicles, a partner in the ritual captures of the Kuy of Surin, a draught animal registered like a buffalo, then the star of tourist camps after logging was banned in 1989: the Thai elephant has never been alone. At every stage, the mahout has seen his role, his income and his knowledge redefined. To trace this history is to understand how, in Thailand, a wild animal became a matter of communities, laws and the passing on of knowledge.

A team with two heads

In a camp in the northern mountains or in a village in Surin province, the same image recurs: a man perched on an elephant's neck, legs tucked behind the animal's ears, steering it with his voice and with light pressure. Visitors readily see a picturesque tableau. It is in fact the outcome of a very long history of coexistence.

A veterinary study on the welfare of captive elephants, published in 2020 by Pakkanut Bansiddhi and colleagues, notes that elephants have lived under human care in Thailand since at least the thirteenth century. They were first used in warfare, a role comparable to that of the horse in the West, as well as in religious and cultural ceremonies. Later they were employed in logging, that is, hauling felled trunks out of the forest.

The Asian elephant is not a domesticated animal in the way the buffalo is. For centuries, working elephants were replenished in part through the capture of wild animals. This is the whole body of knowledge of the Kuy of Surin, to which we shall return. An elephant, whether captured or born in captivity, becomes usable only through the mahout, in Thai khwan chang, who trains it, cares for it and drives it. This relationship remains the rule today. In a study of 33 camps in the north of the country, published in the journal PeerJ in 2018, every camp observed employed one mahout per elephant.

The history of the elephant in Thailand is therefore not simply the history of a species. It is the history of a working partnership, which each era has redefined: war, the forest, the law, then tourism.

The war elephant, between chronicle and history

A national memory

According to the available syntheses, the annals mention duels on elephant-back in the kingdoms of Sukhothai and Lanna as early as the late thirteenth century. There the elephant serves as a weapon and a command platform, and also as a mark of rank.

The most famous episode remains that of Nong Sarai, dated 18 January 1593. The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, whose version the historian Barend Jan Terwiel summarised in the Journal of the Siam Society in 2013, tell the scene as follows. King Naresuan challenges the Burmese crown prince Mingyi Swa to single combat on elephant-back. His elephant is in musth, a periodic hormonal state in males that makes them especially aggressive, and it charges the opponent. Naresuan's mahout is killed by a bullet. The king then implores his mount in tears and sprinkles it with consecrated water, before striking the Burmese prince a fatal blow to the shoulder.

What source criticism tells us

This account has become a pillar of Thai national memory. Historians nonetheless read it with caution. By setting the Siamese sources against European testimonies from the late sixteenth century, Terwiel concludes that the encounter was not a formal duel in the strict sense. Several sources, moreover, mention no duel at all. Even the location is disputed. The work of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab places the battle in present-day Suphanburi province, but a location in Kanchanaburi province has also been proposed. It is therefore more accurate to speak of the episode that tradition celebrates as the duel of Nong Sarai than of a fact established in every detail.

For our subject, the chronicle contains a valuable detail. Even in a narrative built to glorify the king, the elephant never acts alone. It has a mahout, whose death is deemed worthy of record. The chronicle also notes that two pairs of elephants clash: that of Naresuan and the Burmese prince, and that of the king's brother against a Burmese general. Combat on elephant-back thus appears as a matter of crews. It presupposes trained animals, seasoned drivers and, further upstream, an entire chain of capture and training.

The Kuy of Surin, 'elephant people'

Capturing under the protection of the spirits

This chain has left a living trace in the north-east of the country, among the Kuy (also transcribed Kouy or Kui), an Austroasiatic-speaking people settled notably in Surin province. The elephant traditions there belong to a particular subgroup, the Kuy Ajiang (or Achiang), literally 'Kuy of the elephants'. For generations they captured and trained wild elephants, leading expeditions along the Dangrek range as far as present-day Cambodia. A recent Thai academic article asserts that they have practised this activity since the Ayutthaya period (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries). This is a claim drawn from community tradition, without precise documentary dating.

The central object of this culture is the pakam rope, a capture lasso. The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, which holds an example, describes it as a rope hand-braided from the hides of three buffaloes, male and female mixed. It measures 30 to 40 metres and takes six people to make. A study published in an indexed Thai journal also mentions the use of cattle leather and of creepers, called avalaprang in Kuy.

It is not merely a tool. For the Kuy, the rope embodies their guardian deity, Phra Khru Pakam, and serves as a vessel for the spirits. The Phi Pakam brings together the spirit of Phra Khru Pakam with those of the elephant masters, the ancestors and deceased relatives. Before each expedition, the shaman and the elephant master paid homage at this shrine. According to the Cambridge museum, some Kuy believe that an outsider man may not touch the rope. Ropes made for non-Kuy or for display, such as the one in Cambridge, contain no spirits.

The expeditions relied on specialists, the mo chang (also transcribed hmor chang), the 'elephant doctors' who went into the forest. According to a University of Cambridge thesis, in the bush they spoke a special language, phasa phi pa, the 'language of the forest spirits'. Even today, in Ban Ta Klang, Chalerm Salangam, aged 70 when interviewed by the daily The Nation, explains that the role of 'elephant spirit man' passes from father to son. Prayers are said in Kuy, to the sound of the sang, a buffalo horn once used during captures. Offerings include a pig's head, fruit and bai si, ritual arrangements of banana leaves.

Why the great captures ended

The capture of wild elephants by the Kuy in the Dangrek came to an end in the late 1950s. The explanation most often given is geopolitical: tensions between Thailand and Cambodia closed off access to the border forests. The Cambridge thesis, entitled The Last Elephant Catchers, adds a heritage-based reading. In its view, Kuy culture found no place in the state's 'authorised heritage discourse', that is, in what institutions officially recognise as heritage, and this invisibility may have contributed to the practice dying out. The two explanations are not mutually exclusive. The first accounts for the abrupt halt, the second for the absence of anyone to carry it forward.

What is at stake goes beyond capture itself. The same thesis stresses that its disappearance threatens three forms of knowledge that depended on it: the role of the mo chang, the art of braiding the pakam rope and the language of the forest spirits.

A heritage recognised, staged and lived

The picture is not frozen for all that. According to the available information, still to be confirmed with the Ministry of Culture, the Kuy 'science of elephants' was inscribed in 2012 on the national intangible cultural heritage list. Ban Ta Klang, in Tha Tum district, is presented by DASTA, the Thai public body responsible for sustainable tourism, as an elephant village-museum and the Kuy cultural centre. Other mahout communities exist, such as Ban Khun Chai Thong, in Chumphon Buri district. According to DASTA's institutional narrative, the Kuy once trained war elephants before turning to shows.

Lasso capture is now re-enacted every year at the Surin Elephant Round-up, the great November gathering. The elephant also remains present in religious life: during Buat Nak Chang, young Kuy men ride in procession on elephant-back to the temple where they are ordained as monks. Between spectacle and rite the boundary is porous, and that is precisely what makes Surin a vantage point for observing how a body of capture knowledge has been transformed into living heritage.

A draught animal in the eyes of the law

The relationship between man and elephant was also shaped by law. According to work cited in a legal chronology published online, domestic elephants may have been legally classed as 'draught animals' as early as 1891. The original text could not be consulted.

The first documented turning point dates from 1921. King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) then enacted a law protecting wild elephants. They became state property, their capture and killing were prohibited without authorisation, and elephants 'with special characteristics', white elephants, had to be presented to the king. In 1939, the Draught Animals Act classed captive elephants alongside cattle and buffaloes. They were private property and had to be registered with the Department of Provincial Administration.

This risk is far from theoretical. Despite the ban on capture laid down as early as 1921, the illegal capture of and trade in wild elephants, notably from Myanmar, to supply the tourist sector remain a concern, according to the 2020 study. As early as the beginning of the 2000s, a report by the organisation TRAFFIC written by Daniel Stiles recommended registration at birth, microchipping and the creation of a genetic database. It was not until 2016 that three government bodies, the Department of Livestock Development (DLD), the Department of Provincial Administration and the Department of National Parks, agreed to count, microchip and DNA-identify all captive elephants. An ivory law had been passed in the meantime, in 2015.

This legal framework reveals something profound: the captive elephant is conceived first and foremost as a working tool, owned and handed down. It was this status that made the shock of 1989 so brutal.

From the forest to the tourist camps

The logging era

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Thailand is said to have had some 100,000 domestic elephants, almost all of them employed in logging. This figure, repeated from source to source, should be read as an order of magnitude. The elephant was then the machine of the forests: able to move across slopes and through undergrowth inaccessible to vehicles, it hauled logs out to rivers and tracks. One NGO points out that these animals often belonged to villagers or to mahouts of modest means, who hired them out to timber companies. The elephant was then a family's main capital, and often its main source of income.

The decline had begun well before the ban. DLD censuses counted 11,192 domestic elephants in 1965, then 3,381 in 1985. Habitat destruction and falling demand account for this drop.

1989: elephants out of work

In late November 1988, flash floods devastated the south of the country. They were widely attributed to deforestation. In January 1989, an emergency decree banned logging throughout the country. Overnight, thousands of elephants found themselves out of work, and their mahouts with them.

The consequences are described in the PeerJ study. Many mahouts headed for the big cities, Bangkok above all, to beg with their animal or to entertain tourists. Animal welfare suffered: insufficient food, unsuitable living conditions, elephants hit by cars. According to the same NGO, the elephant went from being a family's breadwinner to an impossible burden, and some mahouts left to work in Burma.

The rise of the camps

The answer came from tourism. The number of camps rose sharply after 1989. In 1993 the Thai Elephant Conservation Center (TECC) was founded at Hang Chat, in Lampang province. Linked to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Chiang Mai University, it aims at once at conservation, the preservation of local traditions and the improvement of tourism practices. In 2002 it was proposed to rename it the National Elephant Institute, but the two names coexist. The Ayutthaya Elephant Camp came into being in 1997.

Recent figures bear witness to this reinvention. In 2017 Thailand had 3,783 captive elephants, of which around 2,700 worked at some 250 tourist sites, according to estimates by the DLD and the national institute for elephant health research. In a separate census, the DLD also identifies 223 camps divided into three categories: observation only, activities without riding, and activities with riding. These series are not entirely consistent. The rise from 2,257 domestic elephants recorded in 1998 to 3,783 in 2017 is not explained by the available sources, and cannot be interpreted without further data. Wild elephants, for their part, are estimated at between 3,000 and 3,500 in the 2020 study.

The human make-up of the camps has also changed. Of the 33 northern camps studied, only 12% employ Thai mahouts exclusively. The others also recruit from ethnic groups in the border regions: Karen, Tai Yai (Shan), Palaung. The profession, once rooted in specialised communities, has opened up to a more mobile workforce.

A craft to pass on, a relationship to reinvent

The institution of the mahout weakened

The veterinarian Bjarne Clausen and Dr Taweepoke Angkawanish, in an analysis published in 2023, draw a distinction. The shift from logging to tourism has not changed the mahout's duties: feeding, caring for and driving the animal. It has, however, shaken what they call the 'institution' of the mahout. The pay does not compete with the average Thai income, and many practise the trade only briefly. This rapid turnover creates breaks in transmission. Yet a mahout's knowledge is acquired through prolonged contact with one particular animal. The free training offered by the National Elephant Institute therefore becomes crucial, as it seeks to recreate through teaching what family lineage once ensured.

What the pandemic revealed

The Covid-19 crisis of 2020 exposed the fragility of this model. With some 3,800 captive elephants largely dependent on visitors, the collapse of tourism had an immediate impact. National Geographic reported that at the Chok Chai camp, near Chiang Mai, only 15 mahouts remained for 56 elephants. One zoo put eleven elephants up for sale at 3 million baht each, and a food bank run by an NGO was feeding 1,800 animals. As in 1989, the loss of economic outlets showed itself first in the departure of the men.

In Ban Ta Klang, other balances are being tried out. According to The Nation, a camp in the village pays a monthly wage intended to guarantee the mahouts an income, the article putting the figure at 25,000 baht. It also supports the silk-weaving group formed by their wives. The idea is simple: stabilise the household to stabilise the craft. Chalerm Salangam puts the number of elephants in the village at 300, a self-reported figure that no independent source confirms.

A national symbol, a tangible bond

The elephant also holds a symbolic place of the first order. On 13 March 1963, the Royal Forest Department designated the white elephant as the national animal. In 1998 the government made this date Thai Elephant Day, Wan Chang Thai, at the proposal of the Asian Elephant Foundation of Thailand. This symbol draws on a history of war, royalty and forest. But day to day it rests on men of often modest means, from rural communities or border minorities, whose condition long remained on the margins of the national narrative.

The shared history of elephant and mahout should not, then, be read as a decline into folklore. It is a series of reinventions imposed by war, the law, deforestation and the tourist market. Each has displaced the partnership between man and animal without dissolving it. The question today is no longer only that of elephant welfare, now at the heart of the debate over the camps. It is also that of passing on a body of knowledge which, from the Kuy mo chang to the mahouts trained in Lampang, survives only as long as people are willing to make a living from it.

Sources and further reading

1. non relevé, The Creation of Thai Contemporary Folk Dance based on Cultural Capital 'Dance to Worship Kru Pakamchang of Kuy Achiang People', International Journal of Sociologies and Anthropologies Science Reviews (ThaiJo/TCI), 2025.
2. DASTA, Surin, the Land of Elephants: How People Live with The Giant Animals, Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration (Public Organization), non indiqué.
3. Prasob Tipprasert, Elephants and ecotourism in Thailand, FAO (actes 'Giants on our hands'), 2002.
4. Bansiddhi P. et al., Changing trends in elephant camp management in northern Thailand and implications for welfare, PeerJ, 2018.
5. Bansiddhi P. et al., Welfare Assessment and Activities of Captive Elephants in Thailand, Animals (MDPI), 2020.
6. Wikipédia (contributeurs), National Elephant Day (Thailand), Wikipedia, consulté 2025.
7. Wikipédia (contributeurs), Elephants in Thailand, Wikipedia, consulté 2025.
8. Wikipédia (contributeurs), Kuy people, Wikipedia, consulté 2025.
9. non relevé, SC78 Inf. 6 (statut juridique des éléphants et de l'ivoire en Thaïlande), CITES, 2025.
10. Daniel Stiles, The Elephant and Ivory Trade in Thailand, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, 2009.
11. non identifié, Timeline of the legal status of elephants in Thailand (figure et citations, dont Chaitae et al. 2022), ResearchGate, 2021.
12. Barend Jan Terwiel, What Happened at Nong Sarai? Comparing Indigenous and European Sources for Late 16th Century Siam, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 101, 2013.
13. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Battle of Nong Sarai, Wikipedia (en), consulté en 2025.
14. Wikipédia (contributeurs), Elephant duel, Wikipedia, consulté 2025.
15. non relevé, Giants in tourism: captive conditions, industry trends, and animal welfare implications for Asian elephants in tourism from 2014 to 2020, Frontiers in Ethology, 2025.
16. EleAid, Elephant Conservation in Thailand, EleAid (ONG), non indiqué.
17. Wikipédia (contributeurs), National Elephant Institute, Wikipedia, consulté 2025.
18. Elephant Encyclopedia and Database, Thai Elephant Conservation Center (TECC), elephant.se, consulté 2025.
19. non relevé, A year without tourism: crisis for Thailand's captive elephants, National Geographic, 2020.
20. non relevé, The Last Elephant Catchers: (In)Visible Indigenous Heritage in Thailand, University of Cambridge, Apollo Repository, non relevé.
21. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Kui Elephant Catchers and the Pakam Rope: A journey from Thailand to Cambridge, University of Cambridge Museums, non relevé (post-201.
22. non relevé, An elephantine task, The Nation (Thaïlande), non relevé.
23. non relevé, Giant step for monkhood, Bangkok Post, 2013.
24. Bjarne Clausen, Taweepoke Angkawanish, Elephant Care and Welfare in Southeast Asia Today: Part 3, Wellbeing International, 2023.