The other conclusions I would suggest are some of them frankly
speculative, but are perhaps not at variance with current views on the
history of Indonesia in general. I should deduce a stage at which some
race of Kol-Mon-Annam or Mon-Khmêr affinities was in occupation,
leaving traces of that occupation in certain implements, weapons and
perhaps in some folk-tales. I should describe the immigration from the
north-west or west as definitely Bodo in character, and ascribe to this
origin the erection of Y-shaped posts [42] and the practice of reaping
by hand, and the indications of the more recent existence of a
matrilineal system. Beyond this, whatever the Singphos and Kacharis may
be, an admixture of Tai blood from the east is beyond dispute. It is
the nature of the immigration from the south which is most intriguing.
No one who has had much to do with the Angamis could fail to perceive
the difference of disposition and character between them and the other
Naga tribes, though it is very difficult to state in what it actually
consists, and it is certainly not so great as to constitute an entire
distinction between the Angamis and the rest of their fellow-Nagas. My
own view is that the Angamis contain a very much greater proportion of
blood bequeathed by a mixed body of immigrants from the south (some of
them at any rate nearly related either in blood or culture or both to
the Igorot of the Philippine Islands), who already consisted perhaps of
two races of which the weaker and less numerous was a race of settled
habits and developed civilization, while the stronger was of more
barbarous but warlike type. [43] The inhabitants they found already in
occupation would be either absorbed into one of the two divisions of
this mixed tribe or make a third class where they survived in
sufficient numbers, and to this source I would ascribe the social
institutions of the Western Naga tribes. I would ascribe the elaborate
system of terracing to the more civilized of the southern immigrants,
and to these southern immigrants in general the use of elaborate
stone-work in building and the erection of stone monoliths and perhaps
the practice of burying their dead—the Angamis even bury the heads of
their enemies—and also perhaps the use of ultra-democratic
institutions. If these deductions be correct I should regard the Semas
as having received chiefs from the more barbarous of the southerners,
and in the Lhotas I should see the result of a more intimate contact of
both southern elements with the tribe at present represented by the
Sangtams, who seem to have at one time occupied much more of the Naga
Hills than they do now that a large and still increasing proportion of
their tribe has been absorbed by the more virile Sema. The Khoiraos,
Kacha Nagas, Tangkhuls and Marami have all been much more strongly
influenced by the culture of these southern immigrants, than have the
other tribes north of the Angami country, and have accepted their
culture to varying degrees.
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