Qiang people's views are more common. It believes that the ancient Qiang people who lived in Qinghai, northwest of China, began to develop in all directions, and one of them swam to the southwest of the motherland. The early southern branch of the ancient Qiang people merged with the local indigenous tribes, and later Qiongfan in Xichang and Fan Dian in Yunnan were the ancestors of the Yi people. 3000 years ago, the Yi people were widely distributed in the southwest of China, that is, the so-called tribes such as Song Yue Yi, Wuyi, Kunming, Laojin, Momo and Pu, which often appeared in history books. The Han Dynasty called it "Southwest Yi". Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there have been two kinds of barbarians in the areas of Yi ancestors, and they have merged with other ethnic groups. During the long-term formation and development of Yi ancestors, their activities once spread all over the central areas of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces and a part of Guangxi, and their core areas should be the vast areas adjacent to the three provinces.
An important feature in the history of the Yi people is the long-term maintenance of the slave possession system. Around the Western Han Dynasty in the 2nd century BC, there was a split between nomadic tribes and settled agricultural tribes in the Yi ancestors' society. From the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, a group of ancestors of the Yi nationality were constantly divided, which indicated that the Kunming tribe had basically completed the transition from primitive tribe to slave ownership on the basis of conquering ordinary tribes. In the 1930s, Zhao Tong of Mengshe established the Six Zhao Dynasties, and the ancestors of Yunnan Yi people joined forces with the upper classes of all ethnic groups to establish the Nanzhao slavery regime. The ruling center is in Dali, western Yunnan, and the ruling scope reaches eastern Yunnan, western Guizhou and southern Sichuan, basically controlling the main distribution areas of Yi ancestors. Nanzhao slavery dynasty once ruled the Yi ancestors' areas for a long time, which had a far-reaching impact on the existence and development of local slavery. In the second year of Tang Dynasty (902), the collapse of Nanzhao slavery dynasty meant the demise of slavery in the areas of Yi ancestors. For more than 300 years in Song Dynasty, Yi ancestors in Rong (Yibin), Lu (Hanyuan) and Li (Hanyuan) were in the struggle between Song Dynasty and Dali regime, and the slave economy was relatively prosperous. In line with this, the slave production relations appeared the situation that big tribes enslaved small tribes. In the third year of Mongolia, Mongolia and Mongolia Khan (1253), Mongolian cavalry attacked Yunnan in three routes from Sichuan, passing through the Yi region, which led to the formation of a loose anti-Mongolian alliance in the divided Yi region and began to be unified under the name of Luoluo people. Accordingly, Mongolian aristocrats intensified their struggle for the local Yi people and developed into a chieftain system in some frontier ethnic areas, in which the hereditary positions of leaders of all ethnic groups were enfeoffed to rule the local people. From 1263 to 1287, the Yi Tusi were established in Yuexi, Xichang, Pingshan, Dafang, Zhaotong and Weining. Yi ethnic group
During the 276 years of Ming Dynasty, the land spanned the Yi Tusi (Mozi) such as Shuixi (Dafang), Wuxuan (Weining), Wumeng (Zhaotong), Mangbu (Zhenxiong), Dongchuan (Huize), Yongning (Xuyong), Mahu (Pingshan) and Jianchang (Xichang). On the basis of the above hierarchical relationship, the chieftain system of Shuixi, Jianchang and Wumeng Yi people in Ming Dynasty is still the superstructure of slavery. During the period of Kang Yong, the Qing Dynasty carried out the policy of "changing the soil into the stream" in the Yi area, which dealt a heavy blow to the forces of Tusi, Mutu and slave owners. With the development of social productive forces, some areas have quickly transitioned from slavery to feudalism.