From the north-east or east, as has been mentioned, some of the Konyaks
derive their origin. The Kalyo-Kengyu tribe, with perhaps Singpho
affinities, trace their origin to the north in so far as can be
ascertained from the two or three villages on the Ti-Ho river with
which we are at present in contact. The Sangtam claim to a
south-eastern origin has been mentioned. The Northern Sangtams merely
point to the south, but the Southern Sangtams derive their origin from
the Chindwin valley to the south-east of them, and have a vague
tradition that their tribe has become separated into two parts of which
one went apparently west, while remnants are believed to exist in the
Chindwin valley still. It seems likely that the part of the tribe that
went westwards may be represented to-day in the Lhota tribe, who have a
similar if more definite tradition about the splitting of their tribe
into two parts, of which one stayed behind at the time of migration.
The Tamans, again, located round Tamanthi in the Chindwin valley were
at one time located in the hills to the east of them and returned to
the valley, leaving some of their fellow-tribesmen behind in the hills,
and might possibly be connected with those same Southern Sangtams. In
any case they trace their origin to China across the Irawadi valley,
and the descendants of part of their tribe are presumably still
somewhere represented among the Naga tribes.
Of tribes with a southern origin, the Angami is the principal if not
the only representative, though here again we find strong indications
of a mixed origin. To their present site they came from the south-east,
having come into their present country from the Tangkhul country to the
south of them, but unmistakable traces of terraced cultivation have
been found far to the south in the Lushai Hills, and it is possible
that the immigrants, who brought in this method of agriculture so
peculiarly the attribute of the Angami and, though in a less perfect
form, of their Tangkhul neighbours, came from further south still.
While a spirit in the sky is regarded by Angamis as the ancestress of
them all, one legend of their origin, a legend apparently of the
Kepepfüma division of the tribe, derives the Memi Angamis from the
daughter of a local god at Mekrima (Maikel) impregnated by a cloud that
came out of the south, and while a common Angami tradition points to a
village, in the Tangkhul country, known to them as Piwhema, as the
remotest place known to have been a fount of the Angami tribe, a
commoner legend still traces the two divisions of the Angami tribe, the
Kepezoma and the Kepepfüma, to two brothers who emerged from the bowels
of the earth at Mekrima just as the ancestors of the Ao tribe emerged
at “Six-Stones” on Chongliemdi Hill. In Kohima itself, however, the
biggest Angami village, one important clan, the Puchatsuma, came from
the west like the Khoiraos, while another clan claims to have come from