About 50,000 years before the Battle of Yavin (Star Wars - Episode IV), a groups of rebellious Jedi were driven off the known space of the Republic, and ended up in a planet dominated by a primitive species called the Sith. The powerful dark jedis found it easy to dominate that race and claim their own empire. For more than 10,000 years the Sith Empire and the Republic grew together in the galaxy, each one thinking of the other as ruined and lost in time.

The Sith managed to find the Republic and started the Great Hyperspace War. The Sith as a race died in this war, but the dark spirit of their lords, descendants of the dark jedis that once came to them as Gods survived to attract more believers to the Sith cause. Eventually, some jedi were lured to the Dark Side and start studying the old Sith black magic. These new Dark Lord of the Sith were not of the Sith race, but by using their knowledge and techniques, they gave the word Sith a new meaning: that of a religious path of Dark Side of the Force users. In the time from Episode I to Episode VI, the term Sith is used to mean the religion not the race.