 The modern Kists are not to be confused with the historical "Kists" , an ethnonym of Georgian origin, which was used to refer to the Nakh people in the middle ages.The Kist people's origins can be traced back to their ancestral land in lower Chechnya.In the 1830s and 1870s they migrated to the eastern Georgian Pankisi Gorge and some adjoining lands of the provinces of Tusheti and Kakheti.