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Capt. Butler, first British agent in the Naga Hills |
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It will be unnecessary to refer at any length to the history of our relations with the Nagas, extending now over 50 years, which have been "one long sickening story of open insults and defiance, bold outrages and cold-blooded murders on the one side, and long (48) suffering forbearance, forgiveness, concession, and unlooked for favours on the other", as the late Captain John Butler, Political Agent in the Naga Hills remarks in his able and interesting paper on the Angami Nagas, published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part 1, 1875. Suffice it to say that in consequence of the raids continually made by the Nagas on our territory, it was found necessary to locate a Political Officer at a place called Samaguting, just in the hills, and when Captain Butler succeeded to this appointment, being of active and energetic habits of mind and body, and not content to know his district from hearsay only, he organized a series of expeditions, commencing in the cold weather of 1870-1, and carrying them on till his death in 1876. That these expeditions should be made as useful as possible he applied for and obtained the services of a survey party to accompany him, and to his efforts to assist us, and to his own researches, we owe a great deal of our information, geographical, ethnological, &c. |
