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age progression in the morung; village guard |
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Within the 'kienga,' the small boys fagged for the bucks, keeping the morung clean, washing clothes, carrying wood and running errands, and received in return some measure of protection from their patron, his cast-off finery, and a little instruction when he went out to trap or fish. |
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Then came the next stage, adolescence. |
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From the day he assumed the kilt and entered manhood till the day he set up house on his own account were the best years of a male Zemi's life. Excused all field-work, except what he cared to do; indulged by his parents in every frippery and luxury of dress; left all day with nothing to do but drink beer, gossip, make baskets, play music, and finally so to bathe and array himself as to be an object of admiration to all the girls as they came in from the fields; permitted, tacitly encouraged, even, to spend his nights in courtship - what more could a youth want ? Life was short; marriage and the cares of a family came all too soon. The Zemi, with their innate love of pleasure and beauty, of dance, music, colour and the good things of life, gave all they could to their young people in the short space stem economics allowed. Admittedly, in return, the bucks were supposed to form (84) the village guard. This, in spite of administration, could not be left to decay. The Zemi were, like all Nagas, headhunters; war was the natural state of the hill-tribes, a state in which, to them, the Pax Britannica was but an interlude. The Zemi, never warlike themselves, valued the peace greatly. But the threat remained. There were people living in 1940 who could remember the last Angami raid; and it was two decades since the Kuki rebellion had restored, temporarily, the old conditions. We were, as it happened, to see something like them again. |
