The Yuezhi or Rouzhi (Chinese: 月氏; pinyin: Yuèzhī, Wade–Giles Yüeh-chih) were an ancient Indo-European people originally settled in an arid grassland area spanning the modern Chinese provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu. After the Yuezhi were defeated by the Xiongnu, in the 2nd century BCE, a small group, known as the Little Yuezhi, fled to the south, while the majority migrated west to the Ili Valley, where they displaced the Sakas (Scythians).