812 J. Butler — Rotigh Notes on the Anr/ami Nagas. [No. 4, 



tribe has been one long, sickening story of open insults and defiance, bold 

 outrages, and cold-blooded murders on the one side, and long-suffering for- 

 bearance, forgiveness, concession, and unlooked-for favours on the other, 

 varied now and again with tours innumerable, deputations and expeditions, 

 the interesting details of which go far to make up one of the most im- 

 portant chapters of the yet unwritten history of a province, rich in such 

 stores, but which it would be out of place, if not impossible, to allude to 

 within the limits of this paper. 



With regard, however, to the effect of punitive military expeditions when 

 unaccompanied with, or followed by, other measures of a more lasting nature, 

 such as the actual occupation of the country, whether it be to exer- 

 cise absolute authority or mere political control, I may here briefly 

 draw attention to the Naga expedition of 1850, when a force of over 

 500 men, with 2 three-pounder guns and 2 mortars, and European Officers 

 in proportion, was thrown into the Naga Hills, to avenge a long series of 

 raids, which had finally culminated in the murder of Bhog Chand, the 

 native officer in command of our outpost at Samaguting. This Force 

 entered the hills in November 1850, and although they very soon drove 

 the Nagas out of their stockades, a portion of the Force remained in the 

 hills until March 1851, when our Government, loath to increase its respon- 

 sibilities, determined to abstain, entirely and unreservedly, from all further 

 interference, with the affairs of the Nagas, and withdrew our troops. In 

 the remaining nine months of that year no fewer than 22 raids were made on 

 our frontier, in which 55 persons were killed, 10 wounded, and 113 were 

 carried off into a captivity from which very few indeed ever returned. In 

 1853, the Government consented to the appointment of a European Officer 

 to the charge of North Kachar. A station was taken up at Asalu, which 

 was then formed into a separate subdivision, subordinate to Naogaon, and 

 stringent orders were issued, forbidding any interference with the Hill 

 Tribes : the Dhansiri was accepted as the extreme limit of our juris- 

 diction, and the Angamis were henceforth to be treated as altogether 

 beyond our pale. These measures had the effect, as might easily have 

 been anticipated, of simply temporising with the evils which they were 

 meant to eradicate, and hence we can scarcely be surprised to find that raid 

 followed raid, with a monotonous regularity, which all our frontier posts 

 were completely helpless to prevent. Thus between the 3 T ears 1852 and 1S62 

 we hear of twenty-four such atrocities being committed within the vaunted 

 line of our outposts, and some of them were accompanied with a tigerish 

 brutality, so intensely fiendish, that it is almost incredible that such acts 

 could have been perpetrated by human beings, savages though they were. 

 In 1862, three distinct attacks were made upon our subjects within the 

 short space of twenty-four days. In the first of these, at Borpothar, a Sepoy 



