608 Notes on Northern Cacliar. [No. 7. 



that site have come into the more central parts of the district, and 

 have allied themselves with other friendly villages ; but on greater 

 security being afforded them, they would to a man return and rebuild 

 their old village. When the soil near their homes is exhausted, 

 they proceed to great distances to cultivate, little heeding the labour 

 of conveying back their harvests ; and for a people who appear so 

 lazy and idle as the Nagas (the casual visitor generally finding them 

 sitting lolling at their doors, drinking grog) it is really wonderful to 

 see the sacrifices they make to this love of certain localities. Their 

 villages being placed on heights in most cases, water is not to be 

 bad any where near, yet they do not murmur at having to convey 

 it on their backs from the very bottoms of the adjacent valleys, five 

 or six hundred feet in perpendicular ascent, and perhaps as much 

 as a mile in distance. At such villages, strings of women, laden 

 with the necessary element contained in long bamboo choongas, are 

 seen making the weary journey morning and evening. From this 

 attachment to particular sites and to the country in general, I think 

 it may be inferred that the Nagas are the earliest inhabitants of 

 the soil. I leave it to others to find out where they came from. 

 But if the question be to draw a line of distinction, between the 

 aborigines of India, and those tribes who have emigrated into it 

 from the east, I would draw that line here, and place the Nagas, 

 although they may have some marks of a Tartar origin about them, 

 as the rudest of the aborigines of Hindustan — whereas the Cossiahs, 

 Meekirs, Kookies, Monipuries and Looshais, and many others are 

 directly connected with the far east. The three latter, having 

 approached their present localities from the south, may possibly 

 have been crossed with the Malay : for the Cossiahs and Meekirs, 

 who were undoubtedly earlier immigrants than either of these three, 

 retain the peculiarities of the Tartar countenance far more distinctly 

 than they do. 



The Nagas have no kind of internal government : they acknow- 

 ledge no king among themselves, and deride the idea of such a 

 personage among others. When questioned, they proudly plant 

 their spears in the ground, and pointing at them, declare they have 

 no other Rajah. They appoint as spokesman of the village some 

 elder who has the reputation of superior wisdom, or perhaps more 



