Abstract: The maternal origins of six Chinese indigenous chicken breeds were investigated by sequencing the D-loop region of mtDNA. Of the six chicken breeds, Wenchang, Luxi game, Shouguang, Jining Bairi and Laiwu Black have five, five, five, six and seven haplotypes respectively, whereas Langya breed has only three haplotypes. Six Chinese indigenous chicken breeds were clustered in three clades, of which clade A is dominant. Clade A includes 17 haplotypes which are shared by ten Shouguang, nine Luxi game, five Wenchang, six Laiwu Black, six Jining Bairi and two Langya individuals, accounting for 100％, 90%, 84％, 75％, 60％ and 20％ of the total number of each breed, respectively. These indigenous chickens have close relationship with the G .g .gallus, G. g. jabouile and G. g. spadiceus distributed in Laos and Yunnan Province in China. Clade B contained eight Langya (80%) and one Jining Bairi individuals(10%) . Clade C contained one Luxi game (10%), one Wenchang (16.7%), two Laiwu Black (25%) and three Jining Bairi individuals(30%). Domestic chickens of Clade B and C were clustered with H19 and H32, H33 of G. g. gallus. The cluster results indicated that the six Chinese indigenous chicken breeds may originated from the continental subspecies of Gallus gallus of Yunnan, Laos and Vietnam or its surrounding areas. Gene flow is the major factor affecting genetic diversity of these chicken breeds. Mismatch distribution and Fu’s Fs test suggested that the five Shandong indigenous chicken breeds did not undergo population expansion in the past .