310 J.Butler — Rough Notes on the Angami Nag as. [No. 4, 



allies call themselves Te ngimas, whilst others if ashed who they are 

 would reply simply that they were men of such a village, and seem to be 

 quite ignorant of any distinctive tribal name connecting them to any 

 particular group of villages, — a strange fact, which I think is in a great mea- 

 sure accounted for by the state of constant war, and consequent isolation, 

 in which they live. The Kacharis, I may add, speak of the Nagas 

 generally as the M a g a m s a, and of the Angami Nagas in particular as 

 the D a w a n s a. 



I have long endeavoured to gain some satisfactory information regard- 

 ing the origin of these interesting tribes, but I regret to say that this is a 

 question upon which I have hitherto failed to throw much light. In my 

 wanderings to and fro, I have observed that there seem to be two very 

 distinct types running through these hills ; the one a fine, stalwart, 

 cheerful, bright, light coloured race, cultivating their, generally terraced, 

 lands, with much skill, among whom I place the Angami as facile prin- 

 ceps ; the other a darker, dirtier, and more squat race, among whom the 

 sulky Lhota may be pointed to as a good representative ; and I have 

 not failed to notice signs that the latter are giving way to the former, 

 wherever they happen to come in contact. A careful comparison of the 

 several dialects which I have long been busy collecting, will, I fancy, be one 

 of the best guides we can obtain for the proper classification of all these tribes, 

 but that is a matter of time, and the compilation of a vocabulary with any 

 pretension to correctness is far from being the easy task some imagine it 

 to be. 



The Angamis have a tradition that they originally came from the 

 south-east, and a fabulous legend goes on to relate how " a long time ago" 

 when the world was young, and gods, men, and beasts dwelt in peace, a god, 

 a man, a woman, and a tiger lived together ; how the woman died, and the 

 tiger attempted to make a meal of her ; how this led to the breaking up of 

 this happy family, and the separation of these incongruous creatures. After- 

 wards a quarrel arose between two brothers, the sons of their great Chief, 

 and they then both left the cradle of their race, each taking a different 

 path, the one " blazed" his path by cutting marks on all the " Chonihu'' 

 trees, the other on all the " Chemu" trees. Now the former always 

 remaining white and fresh for many days, and the latter turning black 

 almost immediately, the greater following took the former path, which led 

 them out into the plains of Asam, the latter and lesser number settled in 

 the hills, and hence the numerical superiority of the " Tephimas " or " Te- 

 phrimas" (men of Asam). This is the outline of a very long disconnected 

 narrative of their exodus, and it is not very flattering to be told that an- 

 other equally wild legend ascribes the genesis of the " white faces" to a 

 white dog and a woman, extraordinarily fair, who were floated off, amid 



