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MESSRS. A. ROSE AND J. COGGIN BROWN ON 
homes. This branch of the tribe is evidently utterly savage, filthy in their persons, 
too lazy to till the ground except for the barest subsistence, and living on millet, maize, 
pork and wild honey. According to the Indian, who escaped after five months of 
captivity among them, they have no lamps or candles and at night the men sit round 
the fires smearing their faces with lard and ashes, drinking deeply of their fiery spirit 
and for ever plotting robbery and murder. 
Above latitude the Salween Valley opens out into broader reaches and the 
wild Uisu are replaced by a more tractable folk, the real Uutzu, who appear to be 
unconnected with them in language or in customs. At present the Independent Uolos 
of western Ssuchuan and the Uisu of the Upper Salween are the only two of the frontier 
tribes which have effectually resisted the onward advance of their powerful neighbours, 
and, for the Uisu, it will probably be many years before the Chinese venture to cross 
that great limestone barrier with its snow-clad peaks, to penetrate the dense jungle 
of the malarial Salween Valley — of which they have a superstitious dread — and to face 
the cross-bows and poisoned arrows of this disunited but fierce and warlike race. 
Whilst the above description will serve as a general idea of the life of the I y isu, it 
may prove useful and suggestive to give a more detailed account of their customs 
and their language, and also a series of anthropometrical measurements, from which a 
clue may eventually be found to link them with some at least of the many tribes living 
near at hand. 
Scattered through various publications many of which are difficult to obtain, there 
are numerous references to the Uisu people, and a brief 
Previous Workers. # # x x 
notice of these is given below: — 
DR. JOHN ANDERSON,' Medical and Scientific Officer to the expeditions under 
Colonel Sladen and Colonel Browne to Western China in 1868 and 1875, mentions the 
existence of Ueesaws in the hills around the Hotha and Sanda valleys between Teng- 
yueh and the Burma Frontier. He drew attention to the fact that they appeared to 
be the same people that Cooper 1 2 met , under the name of Ueisu, on the northern frontiers 
of Yunnan and in Yunnanese Thibet. Anderson also gives a brief and incomplete 
account of their dress, and a short vocabulary of their language ‘ ‘ which,” he remarks, 
‘ ‘ shows a strong affinity to Burmese.’ ’ 
SIR J. GEORGE SCOTT, K.C.I.E., 3 in the ethnological chapters of the 
Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States,” has brought together much informa- 
tion collected by Captain H. B. Walker, Mr. E. C. S. George, Mr. G. C.B. Sterling, C.I.E., 
and other workers. We have compared this with our own observations in the present 
paper. Sir George Scott, however, separates the Uihsaws or Uisaws from the Uisus, 
and seems inclined to regard them as a separate race. 
1 See “ A report on the expedition to Yunnan via Bhamo," by John Anderson, M.D., etc., Calcutta, 1871. Also 
Mandalay to Momien,” a narrative of the two expeditions to Western China of 1868 and 1875 by the same author, 
London, 1876. 
2 Cooper “ Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce.” 
3 See “ Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States,” Vol. 1, Part 1, pp. 587-588. Rangoon, 1900. 
