1S75.] J. Butler — Bough Notes on the Angami Nag as. 311 



broad waters on a raft, well provisioned for a long voyage. These crea- 

 tures are believed to have landed on some distant shore, and the result was 

 a race of white men, who bred and multiplied until they overran the land, 

 conquering all black races that attempted to oppose their onward progress. 

 This tale does not at first sight appear to credit us with a very noble origin, 

 but the fact is I believe that the " white dog " has been merely introduced 

 as a sort of Deics ex machina, in order to account in some way for some of 

 our, to them, most extraordinary powers. 



I find it recorded in an old letter dated thirteen years ago, that " about 

 " 300 years since, the younger brother of the then reigning Raja of 

 " Jaintia, became enamoured of his niece (the Raja's daughter) and 

 " forcibly seizing her fled with some followers from Jaintia to Dimapur, 

 " then the residence of the Kachar Rajas. Here he remained for some time 

 " protected by the Kachar Raja ; but his brother having sent out a large 

 " force to capture him, he fled to the hills in the vicinity of Dimapur, now 

 " known to us as the Angami Hills, and being accompanied by several Ka- 

 " charis, as well as his own followers, permanently established himself 

 " there, and from this colony arose the now powerful tribe of the Angami 

 " Xagas." This account is reported to have been received " from an in- 

 telligent hill Kachari ", who is said to have further stated that full con- 

 firmation of these facts might be gleaned from some of the old Jaintia 

 records ; and as a further argument to support his story, he is also said to 

 have pointed to the fact that the Angami women to this day adhere to the 

 peculiar manner of wearing the cloth tied above each shoulder, adopted by 

 the Jaintia women alone of all the other tribes on this frontier. For my own 

 part I have never succeeded in obtaining any confirmation of this strange 

 story, and am hence sceptical of its truth. However, I have deemed it right 

 to give it qium. val., in the hope that some future investigator may possibly 

 be able to pick up a clue to the story in fields where I have not had the 

 opportunity of searching, namely amid the archives of Jaintiapur. 



Our first actual acquaintance with the Angamis appears to have 

 commenced as early as 1831-32, when Captains Jenkins, Pemberton, and 

 Gordon were deputed to explore a route through their country, with a view 

 to opening out direct communication between Asam and Manipur. On 

 this occasion, although they were accompanied by a comparatively large 

 force, amounting to no less than 7C0 muskets, they were opposed with a 

 most determined resistance at every village they passed through, and so 

 bitter was the opposition made, that in many instances the villagers set 

 fire to their own villages, so as to destroy such provisions as they were 

 unable to remove rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the 

 enemy. From the date of that eventful jouniej^ until 1SG7, that is to say, 

 for a period of over forty years, the political history of our relations with this 



