"I visited four other villages or _goungs_, and there may be as many more in Assam, each containing about three or four hundred people. Every community is under the patriarchal government of a chief, from whom the village takes its name.... The chiefs of villages would combine against a common enemy, but are as independent of each other as the old Highland heads of clans.... I was curiously reminded of the clan distinctions, by observing that the home-grown cotton cloths differed in pattern in the different villages. In all cases chequered patterns were worn, presenting as various combinations of colours and stripes as our own tartans, and each village possessed a pattern peculiar to itself, generally, though not universally, affected by the inhabitants."--_Travels in Northern Assam_, Field, i., 1870; _vide also Hunter's "Rural Bengal,"_ 1868, p. 217. The same tendencies, under similar circumstances, where the tribes were not crowded or in fear of warlike neighbours, was noticed among the Red Indians some forty years ago. Now, I suppose, instances would be rare. "When a nation of Indians becomes too numerous conveniently to procure subsistence from its own hunting-grounds, it is no uncommon occurrence for it to send out a colony, or, in other words, to separate into tribes.... The tribe so separated maintains all its relations independent of the parent nation, though the most friendly intercourse is commonly maintained, and they are almost uniformly allies. Separations sometimes take place from party dissensions, growing generally out of the jealousies of the principal chiefs, and, not unfrequently, out of petty quarrels. In such instances, in order to prevent the unnecessary and wanton effusion of blood, and consequent enfeebling of the nation, the weaker party moves off usually without the observance of much ceremony."[26]