536 a:;m'.\l report Smithsonian institution, 1921. 



:t ( once started to mock him, asking why he was perspiring so and 

 whether he had seen a leopard. 8 



The Sema were-tiger, or reputed were-tiger, with whom I was 

 best acquainted was Chekiye, chief of Lukammi and a son of the fa- 

 mous Chief Gwovishe of Tsukohomi. He would never admit to me 

 that he was a lycanthropist, but none of his Sema acquaintances 

 ever doubted but that his reputation was well deserved. 7 He came 

 nearest to admitting to me that he was a were-tiger on the occasion 

 of a tiger hunt in which I took part at Mokokchung on March 29, 

 1916. Ungma village ringed some tigers— there were certainly two 

 full-grown animals and two three-quarter grown cubs present. The 

 old tiger himself broke out early in the beat, mauling a man on his 

 way ; shortly after which Chekiye turned up, armed with a spear, but 

 no shield. The tigress broke near him and came within a few feet 

 of him, bit and mauled his next-door neighbour and went in again. 

 Chekiye, when remonstrated with for having stood quietly by and 

 not having speared the animal, said: "I did not like to spear her 

 as I thought she was probably a friend of mine." After the beat 

 he stated that the tigress killed was a woman of Murromi. a trans- 

 frontier village in unexplored country where all the population are 

 said to be were-tigers. He also explained that the tiger in a beat 

 was really far more frightened than even the hunters themselves, 

 which is probably true enough, and shrewdly observed that the use 

 of the tail, which is stiffened up and out behind and swayed at the 

 end from side to side, is to make the grass wave behind the moving 

 tiger, so that the position of the tiger's body is mistaken and the 

 aim disturbed accordingly, an observation which seems to be at least 

 true of the result of the waving tail. It was reported that he 

 claimed in private to be identical with the tiger that first escaped, 

 but he would not admit this to me, and there was indeed another 



» In February, 1921, the following case occurred : An acquaintance of mine named Zhetoi, 

 a son of the chief of Sheyebu village, became a were-leopard, and ate a number of animals 

 of his own village and of the neighboring village of Sakhalu, including two dogs belong- 

 ing to the very influential chief Sakhalu himself. In one case in his own village he told 

 the owner of a mithan calf that he would find the uneaten part of his calf stuck high in 

 the fork of a tree in a certain place, which proved absolutely correct. Sakhalu village 

 one day succeeded in rounding up the leopard that had been raiding the village stock, 

 but an urgent messager came running from Sheyepu imploring Sakhalu to let the leopard 

 they had ringed go, as if they killed it, Zhetoi would die. After this Sakhalu late one 

 evening shot at a leopard behind his granary in the dusk. Very early next morning a 

 message came from Sheyepu to say that Zhetoi had been shot at the night before by 

 Sakhalu and would he kindly forbear. 



I had this account independently from two sources, one of which came from Sheyepu, 

 while the other was Sakhalu himself, who told me that he would certainly shoot the 

 leopard, if he could, next time. He has not yet succeeded, and Zhetoi's elder brother told 

 me this year (1922) that he attempted to shoot at a leopard which he happened to 

 meet with when out after deer, but that his hand and fingers became miraculously numb, 

 so that he could not draw the trigger. Of course it proved on inquiry that the leopard 

 at. which he had been unable to fire was none other than his own brother Zhetoi. 



7 He was, however, once caught out in a pure and demonstrable romance by one of 

 my Sema Interpreters. 



