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Konyak-Angami similarities at Anfang; excellent jhuming system |
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Yanghong to Anfang, across the valley of the Muksha - a rather ticklish march as the two villages are very much at war and Yanghong had the greatest reluctance to meeting Anfang and vice versa, and neither could carry on the land of the other, or have the other village on their land. Eventually we got Yanghong - with some difficulty - as far as the place where Anfang were waiting, there let them put their loads and go, after which Anfang came out and picked them up. |
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Anfang a less interesting village than Yanghong, but of finer physique and possibly still more reminiscent of the Angami in appearance. They went up the path with our loads singing "We are the tigers to Yanghong", "We are tigers to (the villages on) the Piyongkung". As they had hidden all their heads we could not compare their trophies with these of Yanghong. Anfang speaks a dialect virtually identical with that spoken in the administered Konyak villages and is friendly with Chui and other villages on our borders. Wakching gaonburas met us here with a dak, there is, however, no chief in this village of any sort and no-one obeys any orders at all. The village meant to be friendly, but gave a lot of trouble by being utterly without organization - a very Angami trait. It has the finest jhuming system I have seen. Only millet and jobs tears are grown, but the whole hillside - very steep - is made into ridges and sort of quasi terraces with logs and all the alder trees are preserved and pollarded, and the crop very carefully sown. The ground is cultivated for one year and left to lie fallow for three or four and then cleared again with apparently admirable results, showing what can be done with steep jhum with careful preservation of alder and precautions against denudation. I was very strongly reminded of the jhums of Khonoma and Mozema, where the land is actually terraced and thick with pollarded alders. Height 5350 ft. at the camp below the village. |
