The Nagas

Hill Peoples of Northeast India

Project Introduction The Naga Database

typescript - J.H. Hutton's tour diary in the Naga Hills

caption: pigs, paddy and skulls found; morung walls blown up with dynamite
medium: tours
location: Yungya
date: 10.4.1923
person: Hutton/ J.H.
date: 23.3.1923-1.5.1923
person: Pitt Rivers Museum Archive, Oxford
refnum: Hutton Ms. Box 2
text: 10th
text: Having rained all night it was still raining in the morning but cleared up about noon and the afternoon was quite fine. Even the sun came out, and while the Kamahu coolies cleared up the unfriendly khels' panbaris, the Chang coolies searched for pig, but found very few. What pig there were were hidden in holes in the ground excavated under the surface, so that the pigs could not root their way out. The paddy was mostly buried in earthenware pots. Okhulis were all buried and we only found one or two. Altogether the preparations made for our visit comes singularly elborate and complete. They had boasted that we should not get more than one pig, and they left that in the village (where it got burned) with a spear (which we never saw) but as a matter of fact they will probably not forget our visit for some time, and may prefer the surrender of their four assassins to its repetition. (They will not, though.) After lunch we went up to the burnt village (N.B. Fire does not appear to kill fleas) and blew down the morung walls with dynamite. It will take quite a long time to rebuild them. In the evening the Chang coolies brought back 30 to 40 old skull trophies which they had found hidden in the jungle. Most of them were probably Kamahu heads though one fairly recent one was pointed out as taken from Mongnyu. The Gaonburas of the three friendly clans played up very well.