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to Cheswezumi; cultivation versus grazing rights; evolution of Naga villages; an aged gaonbura remembers Butler and Reed |
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To Cheswezumi, chased by a concourse of litigants only to find a larger one awaiting me. Thevopesimi have cultivated this side of the valley on land which is the normal grazing ground of Satazumi and Yarabami. They have made their fields in scattered patches and none of them are fenced. They have cultivating rights, I think, but can claim no damages for the cattle trespass if unfenced and it is hard to see what the cattle will leave. |
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They tell me that Thevopesimi, Yarabami and Satazumi all originated from a bigger village down in the gorge of the Theseru where Thevopesimi panikhets now are. I fancy the river dwelling element in the Naga tribes must have been pretty widespread at one time, and was perhaps forced up on to the hilltops for considerations of defence by an immigrant tribe which in this case presumably fused with them to form Chakrima Angami, as they now are. Throughout the eastern Angami villages there are clans known as Solhima - strangers, now, of course, indistinguishable in appearance from the rest of the population. |
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Chazubami applied for a school and produced a would-be master, who will probably not do. |
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Dupa, the old gaonbura of the Hrakotsomi clan of Chazubami met me on the road to say that he had not long to live and wanted powder, to be fired over his grave. He remembered "Johnny Sahib" - Capt. Butler - in whose time he was old enough to carry a man's load, and claims to remember the historic encounter between Kekrima and Lt. Reed, but that was in 1852, I think. He has grey woolly hair like an old Negro, and I asked for some (for microscopic examination) but he would not let me cut any off even as a keepsake. |
