718 PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



Neither Ndgas nor Kukis drink milk, which they look upon as an excrement. # Their 

 native weapons are bows, spears and poisoned arrows ; the poison is said to be aconite. 

 They are now using guns, and employ urine and fseces in the manufacture of gun- 

 powder. They are demon worshippers. They seem to have slaves, and in both the 

 Ndga and Kuki villages there arc head-men or village elders, though in theory all the 

 men are equal. Both Ndgds and Kukis make very good coolies, but the Naga is 

 preferred, as he is both cheerful and enduring." 



" In the Na>a houses the wall of the front room facing; the entrance is decorated 

 with the heads and bones of the animals killed for food and in the chase. Heads 

 or horns of the Sambre deer, mithan buffalo, pig, barking deer, bear, dog, porcupine, 

 and Capricorn were recognised. Outside the entrance of the house of a head-man 

 a small grove of dead trees is sometimes seen. Each tree signifies a big feast, the trees 

 being set up as monuments of the head-man's hospitality. They are also used 

 incidentally for the growth of orchids. The Kukis do not set up monuments of dead 

 trees, but they fix trophies of the skulls and horns of animals at the entrance to their 

 houses.t A Kuki warrior therefore can point to the human skulls in his house as 

 evidence of his cunning and bravery as a head hunter, and to the crania of the large 

 mammals as testifying to his success in the chase and to his hospitality." 



" The Nagas shave the head, but leave a crest of hair in the middle of the crown 

 from front to back, which ends in a lock hanging down behind. The Kukis do not 

 shave the head. Neither they nor the Ndgas have hair on the face. The Tonkal Nagsls 

 wear a ring made of bone, or ivory, or porcelain, around the middle of the penis, and it 

 appears to be a mark of bad manners to appear without the ring." 



When the expedition occupied the Kuki village of Mougham some recent scalps 

 w r ere noticed on a tree near the chief's house in the highest part of the village. On 

 examining them more closely they were seen to consist not only of the scalp but of part 

 of the skull, the top of which had been cut off and the bone pierced with a spear. 

 They were trophies of the raid on the Naga village of Swemi. The Political Agent 

 told Dr Wright that in the Naga villages the young men sleep together in a house of 

 their own, but he is not sure if a similar arrangement is provided for the young women, 

 though he thinks that it is so.J 



The skulls of the Tonkal Nap-as were all from adults, though one was aged, 

 and in two specimens the upper wisdoms were not erupted. Six were without 



* Miss Mary H. Kingsley (Travels in Went Africa, p. 451, London, 1897) states that the West Coast Africans ha 

 a horror of the idea of drinking milk, and hold it as a filthy habit. 



t In some of the Pacific Islands, as in the Solomon group, human skulls and those of pigs, dogs, and dugongB are 

 preserved in and around the Tambu house, and the practice of preserving and decorating the skulls of relatives and 

 enemies alongside of the skulls of animals prevails extensively in New Guinea. 



X The custom of providing a separate sleeping house in eacli village for all the unmarried girls and another for all 

 the young men prevails generally amongst the races to the north-east and south of Assam (S. E. Peal in Journal Asiatic 

 Hoc, Bengal, vol. lii. part ii., 1883). A similar practice also exists amongst the Khonds, a hill tribe in the Indian 

 peninsula (P. W. Frazer, Silent Gods and Sun-Steeped Lands, London, 1895). It is also the custom with sonic 

 tribes in New Guinea and other islands in Polynesia. 



