For over two thousand years before the year 1800, we Dega people lived freely and peacefully in our homelands with highland villages. We were free to cultivate, hunt, travel and settle in our villages, free to believe and worship as we wished. We were free to live and die in peace until outsiders came to our homeland. Not even Chams, who had invaded our northern coastal areas of Danang in 875, dared not venture into our Central Highlands. Even our southern coastal region remains untouched until after Annam destroyed the Cham Empire in 1471 and forced them to flee south to Bien Hoa and Cambodia in 1697.
1815, The European presence begins in the Central Highlands when Father Buzumi, an Italian, and Father Carvalho, a Portuguese, both from the Jesuit mission in Macao, land in Danang (Tourane). Later, Catholic missionaries established a mission in Kontum, in the heart of the Central Highlands. They were the first outsiders to set foot on our country.