HUMAN SACRIFICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 March 1939, Page 2

HUMAN SACRIFICE

RECENT REPORT FROM ASSAM. FAMOUS HEAD-HUNTERS. A 30-year-old slave, bought for Rs. 600 (£46), is reported to have been sacrificed to a deity by Yanwang Maimong Nagas, a tribe living in an unadministered area, five days’ journey on foot from Margherita, Assam. •Officials have hurried there for an inquiry. The Nagas, hill tribesmen famous of old for their head-hunting raids, lose their bad habits but slowly. This is, however, the first charge of human sacrifice brought against them since 1930, when 30 cases were dealt with in the North-east Frontier tract and the neighbouring unadministered areas. As a result of a personal inquiry by the Political Officer, Sadiya, 500 human skulls were discovered and burnt to ashes in the Nagas’ presence. The Government has worked hard to stamp out human sacrifices, and the slavery that accompanies them, in the hills of north Burma and the adjoining part of Assam. Sir Harcourt Butler, when Governor of Burma, travelled up to the Hukawng Valley in 1925 to a manao (feast) of Kachins and Nagas. There he announced that they would be given money for freeing their slaves, who would repay it to the Government in easy instalments and live in the valley as cultivators like other free men. From that day forth “there must be no sale of slaves or gift of slaves as part of dowries, in settlement of feuds or otherwise, nor must families of slaves be broken up.” Sir Harcourt stigmatised a section of the Nagas under Kachin overlordship as responsible for human sacrafices. At a manao at Myitkyina two years later he made the same announcement in regard to The Triangle, where many unhappy slaves had run away and been replaced by means of raids. Frontier officers’ devoted efforts have resulted in freedom for many, but, as the Assam report shows, abominable practices still occur from time to time in these wild and tangled hills. The Hukawng Valley is 80 miles from Margherita.