LISU TRIBES OF THE BURMA-CHINA FRONTIER, 
265 
Language. 
With regard to inheritance, the property of the father is divided equally amongst 
his sons, whilst the daughters are left portionless, as assets to the rest of the family, 
who may be expected to benefit from their wedding gifts in the fullness of time. 
Accounts vary with regard to the keeping of slaves, it being generally reported 
that among the Black Lisu men are held in captivity and made to work as tillers of 
the fields, as hewers of wood and drawers of water. They are allowed to marry lisu 
women and their children are free. It is also reported that they have no female slaves. 
Prince Henry was informed, however, that their prisoners were held to ransom (which 
is undoubtedly true), and that women were kept as bondswomen, rarely married, but 
that slaves might intermarry and their children would be free. 
Unlike the Lolos, the lisu have no written language, and it is strange to see their 
homes, even in proximity to Chinese settlements, utterly 
devoid of any written character, the most treasured posses- 
sion of their literary neighbours. Three vocabularies are attached to this paper, which 
may prove useful as they are fuller and more complete than any which have been 
published before. They are chiefly interesting, however, in showing the close relation 
between the language of the different branches of the tribe, that of the Black Lisus 
being taken from a tribesman from the extreme North of the Salween area, whilst the 
Hua Lisu use the words given in the third column with little variation throughout the 
frontier mountains. It is believed that no vocabulary of the Black Lisu has been 
published before. 
The chief crops are maize, millet, buckwheat and hemp, the two first being much 
valued as producers of wine, whilst the last is needed for 
their clothes, the strands being boiled in wood-ashes to 
loosen the fibres. The independent Lisu have great trouble in obtaining salt, and their 
predatory habits may be traced in part to their desire for this necessary of life. Wild 
honey is collected by all and forms an important part of their diet. Both men and 
women are fond of tobacco, which is grown by the wild Lisu in the lower and warmer 
clearings near the river bank and is much prized by them. Opium is little used except 
in close proximity to the Chinese, and we have not met any of the tribesmen who are 
addicted to the drug. Pigs, goats, sheep and dogs are kept in most of the villages, 
but pork is the only meat which is used for food. 
The religion of the Lisus appears to be a simple form or animism or nat-worship , 
sacrifices being offered to the spirits of the mountains 
Religion. _ ° _ _ 
and hills, for whom little swinging altars — not unlike the 
nat altars of the Chingpaw (Kachins)— are suspended from the trees. The ancestral 
ghost is also an object of reverence if not of terror, and is honoured by an altar placed 
opposite to the door of the house— a simple shelf with shreds of red and white paper 
unmarked by characters — and offerings of wine. Their ancestral worship does not 
appear to have been borrowed from the Chinese, and is more probably one of the 
primitive acts of homage, from which the more elaborate Chinese system has been 
developed. Among the wilder Lisu medicines are not recognized, all ills being attri- 
buted to the influence of some malign spirit, whose wrath must be appeased by offerings 
