[13] But even the Semas themselves contain traces of a mixed origin; there are clans in Vekohomi who admittedly came from the country to the south-east across the Tizu. These it is true claim that they were an offshoot originally of the genuine Sema, but there is little, not even probability, to support their claim. All the northern and eastern Semas contain large and demonstrable admixtures of Ao and Sangtam blood, and it is likely that the original blood of the Sema invaders is excessively diluted and that not even all the chiefly families are of true Sema descent. [↑]
[14] In Assamese the Lhotas speak of them as “spirits,” deo, but in their own language as “jungle-men,” orakyon. [↑]
[15] So has the Kacha Naga, and the Phom to some extent. [↑]
[16] See Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I. Book II., Map of the Races of Oceania. [↑]
[17] The black of a Naga’s or Kuki’s hair is normally a dull brownish- or reddish-black rather than the blue-black of some races. Children with reddish, or even yellowish, hair are particularly common in Phom villages. [↑]
[18] In the Konyak villages of Shiong and Tang there appears to be a whole clan whose hair is of this type. The member of the clan whom I saw had very curly hair which stuck out fuzzily in all directions. [↑]
[19] The Maru. Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, I. i. p. 386. The Lolos also burn their dead (ibid. p. 615) and put their ashes in clefts in the rock. In the Assam hills north of the Brahmaputra the Taroan and Miju Mishmis first bury, then exhume and burn their dead. The Khasi and Garo tribes also burn. [↑]
[20] In Yacham, a composite Ao-Phom village, each family has its own place of exposure where the bodies of its dead are exposed on a platform under thatch in the Ao manner, but smoked out of doors in situ, after which the heads are ultimately wrenched off and the bodies in their wrappings added to the heap in the clan burial tree. [↑]
[21] It possibly dates only from the comparatively recent absorption by the Chang tribe of certain Ao villages east of the Dikhu. Colonel A. E. Woods, touring among the Changs in 1900, states definitely that they bury their dead. [↑]
[22] Mr. Mills tells me that all these obsolete Lhota yanthang seem to be connected with the partial migration from the north as opposed to the general immigration from the south. [↑]