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Kooki migration; monoliths |
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As we had covered so much ground so late it was necessary to return for the survey of it & as we had had a good 28 miles of it the previous day, a halt was decided on. Butler started for some shooting after chota hazari while Mr Ogle & self took it easy until past 12 o/c when we started back down the valley. This is level near the stream with a steady fall, the hill spurs rising partly on the L.B., steep on the Right. Alluvial deposits of coarse conglomerate occurred here & there, remnants of a much more extensive deposit which must at one time have filled the valley, but to no great thickness. Those I saw were abt 30 ft thick. We continued down the valley for [blank] miles & then struck up an easy spur to the Kooki village of Aimulkun. The fellows were very civil & the headman a near relation of Hotingmang Thado, by name Kaiaboom, presented us with a present of fowls eggs. They turned out & cut away some trees with great alacrity & men women & children all clustered round us in a most friendly way. This colony was one of the first that was driven into Munipur by the Looshais (& this was the very first time I ever heard a Kuki use that name) were given ground to settle on by Col Wm McCulloch in abt 18[blank]. Kaiaboom was in possession of a letter from that officer recommending him strongly to his successor. [note on back of sketch: Kaiaboom Mingtho is a chief of a vill: of Kookies, long ago settled by me and who brings firewood for me. He was amongst the very first of the Kookies that came here from the south and is most useful and will prove the same to my successors to whom I recommend him. sd. Wm. McCulloch 29th Oct. 1861.] They said they had occupied a village in the [Southern] Hills called Takunglong. Since that time they have moved on in this direction seeking new lands & exhausting them by the jooming mode of farming & they will no doubt eventually settle in the Naga Hills district on or under the forest clad slopes of the Japvo mass. We very much wanted to set up a trig mark here & made it a station but time did not [permit] & as it was it was dark before we reached the Koimaru river again. On the path down the next spur by which we went I noticed some very fine large monoliths, set up by the Nagas who formerly had occupied the present site of Aimulkun but who had removed since further to the North & were now at Konsomah. On this spur was also a huge cairn of stones dome like in form abt 27 yards in circumference abt 10 ft high & surmounted by a small upright stone. This was now quite overgrown & must be many years old. Tolerable sized trees growing out of it. The [Kalish] boulder stones with which it was constructed were regularly & cleverly laid with their plane surfaces inching to the centre of the pile. [sketch: |
