487 
streams too by trees or canes supported on the cantilever principle. In 
spite of this isolation however the Angami are keen traders. Among 
themselves they traffic in cotton, rice, fowls, cloth ; to the plains they take 
cotton and nettle cloth, ivory, wax; these they exchange for salt, shells, 
brass, and iron, and, if they can obtain them, gunpowder and muskets. 
The difficulties of communication are partly overcome by a curious hospb 
tial system. The Angami of one village finds in every other at least one 
house in which he will obtain shelter and food, and be safe from any sud¬ 
den murderous impulse. Between his village and this house there exists a 
kind of “guest-friendship." And as natives of A are ‘guest friends’ to one 
house in B, so are natives of B ‘guest-friends’ to one or more houses in A. 
Other houses in both villages have similar and reciprocal relations with C, 
or D, or E,—with all the villages around. No feud, however bitter, admits 
of the complete violation of this relationship. In their dealings they do not 
chaflfer; a price, usually fair, is named as what they will take or give, and 
the bargain is concluded or abandoned at once. They use no measures or 
weights of their own, but are adopting the Indian ones along with Indian 
currency. They count beyond 100 and have a word for 1000. They 
have no name for gold or copper, but use an expression for silver, whose 
purchasing powers they realize. Their old currency was of shells and 
brass, though iron was their great desire and its possession the chief index 
of wealth. In some of the neighbouring tribes to the east it forms still, 
in the shape of thin slips, singly or in bundles, a medium of exchange. 
The home-life of the Angami is quiet and peaceable. The women 
do all the household work, carry water—often a very laborious occupa¬ 
tion—and weave. The men sit about on the stones or on wooden plat¬ 
forms beside their houses, nursing the children or doing nothing, gossiping 
with neighbours and drinking. The national beverage is termed dzu, 
(literally, water); it is made from pounded Coix, is whitish and, 
as offered to strangers, of a thin consistence and with a sub-acid taste. 
It is refreshing and very slightly intoxicant. This kind is carried about 
in bottle gourds, A thicker variety, a food rather than a beverage, is 
eaten with the aid of a stick out of a buffalo-horn by the well-to-do; out of 
a bamboo “chunga” by their poorer neighbours. Besides this, rice pounded 
by a stone on a wooden platter, sodden, and mixed with stewed or roasted 
flesh is the staple food. Pig, cows, fowls, deer yield the flesh, but 
hardly any thing comes amiss. Dogs, cats, rats, squirrels, owls, lizards, 
frogs, fish, land-crabs are all eaten, nor does the Angami palate relish 
17 
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