Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 4).djvu/150

134 Chins, to the number of 300,000, hold the broken and difficult country bordering on Assam, Manipur and Bengal. A barbarous, drunken, turbulent people, divided into many tribes and clans, their main occupation in former days was raiding villages in the plains. Among the most important tribes are Taśhǒn, Yahow, Baungshe, Kanhow and Sôkte. Chins have given more trouble than any other of the border races. Sir George White, who won the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan, declared them to be the hardest enemy to see and fight that he had ever met. Their subjugation, rendered necessary by their predatory habits, was a laborious work. Even in the last few years troops had to suppress a serious rising. During the war, Chins were recruited for the army, and many went to France as members of a Labour Corps. The southern clans, Chinbôn and Chinbôk, on the Pakôkku border, have a curious custom of tattooing the faces of their women with closely set blue lines. This quaint and disfiguring art was not practised by the martial clans in the north. Apparently the feebler southern tribes were subject to raids by the Burmese and women were tattooed to render them less attractive and less liable to be carried away. The custom seems to be dying out. Tame Chins in settled districts, principally Sandoway and Thayetmyo, are quiet friendly people, careful farmers, whose neat and tidy villages compare favourably with the unkempt hamlets of Burmans.

Kachins. Far north are Kachins, a race of mountaineers, hardy, brave, and intelligent, whose pressure on the plains was checked only by our occupation. Numbering no more than about 170,000, they inhabit the hill tracts of Bhamo, Myitkyina, Putao, and Katha, and a substantial area in the Northern Shan States. Their stockaded villages are built on the crests of hills, the long, low, thatched houses accommodating several families. Divided into two sections, Chinpaw and Kha-ku, the five main tribes are Marip,