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Extensive fortifications at Jakphang; use of firearms there |
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28/11/1926 To Jakphang, about 5 miles, perhaps six, the way we went, as Yungphang carried and being hostile to Jakphang the latter village made a path to go round the village below it to a tipa beyond on which we camped. Probably they did not want Yungphang in the village at all and the direct route was all blocked up with felled trees. Yangching who also helped to supply coolies are however friendly with Jakphang. |
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This village is perhaps the most strongly defended Naga village I have ever seen and the north gate was protected by 5 palisades, 2 ditches and a ladder climb to the village door. The approaches and all the surroundings of the village were stiff with panjies and intersected with panjied fences running in all sorts of directions and offering very serious obstacles to any stranger not knowing his way about. The village must be very ancient to judge by the depth which paths are worn. It seems to have many enemies an very few friends. It belongs to the "Chagyik" group of Konyaks and seems to be in most respects similar to Yonghong, its most formidable enemy. There were stones hung up as a magical means to take heads as at Aghching, or perhaps also as witnesses to peace makings as in some Phom villages - not in this case peripatetic. As at Yonghong, there are morungs under which penned pigs provide the sanitation of the villages and get fattened simultaneously. The dead are placed on machans wrapped in mats |
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The buffalo headed "drums" are of the same pattern as those at Sakchi. I fined the objectionable headman and kept him in hand- cuffs in the quarter guard till the fine was produced - a gun of sorts, a mithan calf and a cowrie belt and some very poor layas. |
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It is said that there is a gun in nearly every house in this village. They had made sundry preparations for a hostile encounter with us, and had taken the precaution to panji and defend elaborately the path leading to the more northerly villages on the ridge, as if we had burnt the village and broken the fences there other hostile villages would have started raiding for cheap heads. Possibly there were precautions taken against us, which they wished to conceal, in front of the village giving an additional reason for bringing us by a round about route to the back of it. |
