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Decline of Puilomi for no obvious reason; abandoned Kacha Naga villages |
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20/5/1926 To Kolkul - about 16 miles or more through Puilomi (or Phuima) a Naga village quite near as the crow flies, but a very long way as the path goes since it is necessary to go down to the Holkong fields of this year and then come back through those of Puilomi. |
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I counted Puilomi, who complained that all their commission was lost in paying for non-existant tax payers last year, and assessed them on the tikka plan. It is a decaying village - once it must have been very big and it has dwindled much within the memory of my dobashis. There seems to be no obvious reason for this. The village has plenty of land and gets good crops. The site should be reasonably healthy, it is on the top of a spur and is not particularly low. There doesn't seem to be much malaria and the young men looked stout and healthy, but there were very few children about, and there seemed to be more than a fair proportion of childless old men. I passed another site, deserted like Halalo, by Kacha Nagas, between Puilomi and Kolkul. A great rock standing up like a castle above the Barak - ideal for defensive purposes and one would also think healthy enough. They say you can only get to the flat top by using a ladder 20 ft. long, and it was on the top that the houses were. The inhabitants deserted the site and broke up among Birema, Jalukema etc. The Kacha Nagas lose about 1000 of their population each census and I do not know why. |
