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to Logong; problems concerning coolies and communication; detailed description of alleged slave trade route and practices |
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22/11/1926 To Logong, about 10 miles, but the distance very deceptive. From the top of the ridge Logong looked quite close, but the path kept diving into nullahs and climbing out again. |
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Yangpi carried our loads as if we had used Yali there would have been no one left to carry from Logong to Saochu, Logong being a little village. Owing to these small villages this route is a bad one for a column getting coolies from the country. Up to Yali the signallers kept up direct communication with Mokokchung, and a party had also gone on to the top of Piyangkung, to keep touch when we were out of reach of Mokokchung, but from Logong itself we could get neither station, though Mokokchung was still visible from the top of the range. |
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Many villages came in here, Chingmei, Tuensang and the Konyak villages whom we propose to reach tomorrow. Chingmei is at peace with Panso for a change, and Chingmak of that village reports that it has about 600 houses and is a little smaller than Tuensang. Chingmak says that Panso sell their prisoners to a place called Himbu, a village on the Burma side of the high ranges. They pass through the hands of Noklok and Pangsha on the way. A woman of Chimi was captured by Panso last month and sold to Noklok for two mithan. Noklok sold her to Himbu for an ivory armlet and a smallish mithan. Himbu are said to keep slaves bought in this way as servants and not to kill them. There is a boy of Teikhu (or Tukhemmi) a village a few miles north of Phelungrr, which I visited last year, and like Panso and Noklok inside the "control" boundary, who went to Panso a few days ago to work in someone's house and was tied up by one Langshen, who caught him on the path (the man he was working for had sent him to scare birds in the field) with a cane collar where he awaits sale, beseeching his captor to kill him rather than sell him. He will be the fifth slave caught and sold by Panso since the harvest of 1925. Some slaves are passed on from Himbu to a place called Shep, and thence to Taklang where they are believed to be used for sacrifice by putting them tied in the fields when ready for burning and so consuming them. Taklang is within reach of a place where there is a big river on which boats are used and where war is not allowed. Chingmak's information is reliable as far as it is within his own knowledge, and the fact that 5 slaves have been sold by Panso for villages or for trade further east may be taken as correct. The river on which boats are used can be reached in five Naga marches. It might perhaps be the Namzalein, or conceivably the Chindwin itself. The Taklang and a neighbouring village called Khyengtong, are said also to put a live slave in the hole in which the king-post of the morung is stepped (on the top of the slave), but these stories are to be taken with caution. The Aos always accused the transfrontier Nagas across the Dikhu of burning slaves in their fields, but they do not do so so far as we know them. Pansore is known to Chingmak as Thounoknyu. They are said to sell slaves only very occasionally, but Panso and Noko to make a practice of it. Noko is outside the control boundary. As far as Chingmak has any knowledge, other villages do not practice this trade in slaves at present. |
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Two women came in from Phempak here to represent the chief who was ill. One of them was sent into shrieks of hysterical laughter by Capt. Gamble's repeatedly removing and replacing his false teeth surreptitiously. The poor woman thought she must be deranged, as she saw him one minute with a full set of teeth and next with a huge gap. |
