| caption: |
punishment of villages across the Dikhu river |
| caption: |
Relations with Tributary States and Frontier Affairs |
| caption: |
punishment of Yangia and Tangsa |
| text: |
Not long after the Mazung expedition had returned, a daring raid into what was now practically, if not yet formally, British territory, was committed by the trans-Dikhu Nangta village of Yangia, the same village which attacked and destroyed the Giliki guard in the Sibsagar district in 1867, and where the Tamlu khel concerned in the Akoia murder above noticed had taken refuge. A head-taking party from this village killed three persons of Susu while returning from trading in Naogaon at the end of February 1889. Mr. Davis, who was stationed in the Ao country, found undoubed proof that Yangia was the offending village, and he at the same time learnt that during 1888, soon after Mr. McCabe's departure, Yangia had killed two men of Tamlu while trading across the Dikhu and also that Tangsa, the village next to Yangia, had once during 1888 raided on Tamlu by night and killed a man there in his own house. It was imperatively necessary to punish the murders of the Susu men promptly and hardly less so to avenge the murders of the Tamlu men, which village though recalcitrant when visited by Mr. McCabe in April 1888, was not most submissive and had been selected as the site of a police outpost. Accordingly, the Deputy-Commissioner having now returned to the Ao country for the fourth time, at once marched across the Dikhu with a force of 100 men. It was found that two khels of Yangia only were concerned in the Susu murders and the rest of the village received the police force in a friendly manner. The guilty khels flatly refused to give up the murderers in the Susu case or to pay a fine imposed in the Tamlu case, and their houses and grain were accordingly destroyed, the friendly khels being warned that another time the whole village would certainly be held responsible. Tangas was next visited and the gaonburas having refused to come in to answer to the charge of raiding upon Tamlu, the village after a halt of one day, was burnt on the 24th March. |
