The Nagas

Hill Peoples of Northeast India

Project Introduction The Naga Database

typescript - memoir of time in the Naga Hills as a Deputy Commissioner, 1919-1920

caption: tour with Mills in Ao country
caption: Ao cemeteries
medium: articles
ethnicgroup: Ao
production:
person: Cantlie/ Keith
date: 1919-1920
acquirer:
form: private collection
refnum: loaned by Dr Audrey Cantlie
text: One had to be careful in avoiding the path leading through the cemetery to the villages, each placed on a hill for defence in the inter-village wars of pre-British days. The Aos built a platform of plaited bamboo raised on poles and roofed over for their corpses. These erections were in a row side by side. When a corpse had rotted entirely and the bones fallen to the ground the place in the row was reckoned as vacant for another corpse so a stench usually greeted anyone passing through.