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A tradition of putting up grave effigies to great warriors ie. head-takers. |
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Meheni Angami - had an effigy but it has now decayed - besides the effigy he had a huge wooden pillar (20 feet high) carved with 32 heads - in pairs - at the top the pillar forked - a head at the top of each fork - (cf. Mills' photo). This signified that he had taken heads from 2 villages in the course of one raid. As extra homage, 10 subsidiary smaller pillars with rows of carved heads - tallies of heads taken by warriors of his Khel on raids participated in by him. |
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Evige Angami - also had an effigy but this had decayed also - in addition a row of 13 wooden posts (2-3 ft. high) carved with 1-2-3 or 4 heads SKETCH |
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the heads = the number taken in one raid |
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one post with two heads at the top SKETCH |
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Besides the little row of sodden lichen-covered posts more than 100 rounded stones - the women he had loved. |
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Each village has different conventions and gennas, different ways of interpreting tallies, different ways of interpreting gates, every gate, every warrior's memorial tells a story but the alphabet differs with the village. |
