The Nagas

Hill Peoples of Northeast India

Project Introduction The Naga Database

typescript 'Journey to Nagaland', by Mildred Archer. An account of six months spent in the Naga Hills in 1947

caption: visit to Yekhum and Sanis
caption: trip to Kohima
caption: headman's grave
medium: diaries
ethnicgroup: Lhota
location: Sanis
date: 14.8.1947
production:
person: Archer/ Mildred
date: 9.7.1947-4.12.1947
text: Today we saw the grave of a headman who had just died. He was buried outside the door of his house and his grave is covered with bamboos, some planks from his bed and matting. A little fence is built round the grave and at the corners on the top of a bamboo are hung offering - a gourd of rice beer, a little rice and six pieces of meat. His dao-holder, bears'-hair circlet and ivory bracelets were on his grave and his red cloth was also hung up to show he had performed a mithan sacrifice. A little fire was burning at the head of the grave, 'to keep the mosquitoes from biting him in the afterworld'. For a year the family will continue to put an offering of their first fruits on his grave; a cucumber, some maize or a bunch of bananas. His poor old widow wept bitterly as we stood by the grave.