The reports of 1889 were more concerned with the measures carried out for their subjugation than with descriptions of the people and their manners. In the main, what is written in the Burma Gazetteer published in 1908 is true of the Chins of twenty years ago:—
"They are a sturdy, warlike, hospitable people, slow of speech, grave of habit, paying great regard to rank and to the ties of clan, but spoilt by their intemperance, their vindictiveness, their treachery, their greed, their lack of persistence,[64] and their personal uncleanliness."
There is a quaint humour about this description which is refreshing in a Gazetteer. A race would have to be good indeed if, with such an array of vices, there was anything left to spoil.
Their villages are described as built on the hill-slopes, some of them fortified; and their houses are often solid, elaborate structures. Their dress is the reverse—a loin-cloth, none too ample, and a blanket for the men; a short skirt and jacket for the women. Home-woven check plaids are seen in a good many costumes, and some tribes have distinctive plaids, as in Scotland. The people are mainly vegetarians, but they will eat anything, from a dog to an elephant. They smoke tobacco in pipes, and they make a liquor from fermented grain, presumably rice, which is called zu. They suck up this, in the most approved fashion, through a hollow reed, out of the original still-pot. Enormous quantities of zu are consumed at Chin entertainments, which usually end in disgusting orgies.
The Chinbôks and Chinbons.
Tribes called the Chinbôks, claiming to be of the same stock as the Hakas but speaking a different language, are found at the head-waters of the Maw and Yaw Rivers. Farther south, at the sources of the Saw and Salin and on the eastern slopes of the Môn Valley, live the Yendus. Below them, and southernmost of all the Chins, are the Chinbons, who from the Môn on the east extend along the border of the Mimbu district into the Akyab and Kyaukpyu districts of Lower Burma.
These three tribes were less fierce than their kindred to the north, and possessed only the arms of savage warfare—the bow and arrow and spear. Some of them, those on the borders of the Tilin township at the headquarters of the Maw River, were noted for cattle-lifting. But the Chinbôks on the Yaw and the Yendus on the Saw and Salin Rivers rivalled the Siyins as slave-raiders. At the commencement of the winter of 1889 there were twenty-one captives in the possession of these tribes. They had made twelve raids since December, 1888, in which five villagers had been killed and sixteen carried off. Many had been wounded in resisting or escaping, and large sums had been extracted as ransom.
It was decided, in making up the account against these savages, not to go back behind December, 1888. In that month a notable raid had been committed on Taunggyo in the Pauk township, in which thirty-two persons were carried off and held to ransom at nine pounds sterling each, which appears to have settled down as the sum beyond which the ability or affection of the Burman would not go (see p. 318). After this crime trade with the plains had been prohibited to the Chinbôks, so far as lay in our power.
The difficulty in dealing with them lay in their want of cohesion and the absence of any sort of tribal bond. With the Shans there were the Sawbwas; with the Chins to the north there were the tribal divisions, more or less marked, with chiefs who could speak, or at any rate profess to speak, for their people. But with the people with whom we were now to come in contact there was an absence of political organization beyond the village, which was usually very small. It was necessary to visit as many as possible of the villages concerned in the raids, to receive the submission of each, and to impose fines for misconduct; and as an obligatory condition to insist on the surrender of captives, and the repayment of ransoms, not going back farther than December, 1888. Substantial guarantees for the future were also to be exacted.