Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/118

 MEEREE, OR MIRI.

HE Meerees inhabit the northern part of Assam, and are of Indo-Chinese origin; as is indicated both by then features and by the monosyllabic character of their language. Then lands touch, on the north, the Abor country, and have more than once been entirely deserted, owing to the ravages of the Abors. Proteetion has now been afforded them, and they have returned; but the land is still but thinly populated, the only cultivation being along the banks of the "great river" Brahmaputra. Their head village is Motgaon. They are wild and barbarous in manners and habits, and then persons filthy and squalid: they are expert marksmen with bows and arrows, the latter tipped with a poison so fatal that a scratch causes death. They eat all sorts of wild animals, those not excepted which fall victims to their poisoned arrows.

The Meerees are industrious. Like many other semi-civilized tribes they hang on the skirts of the forests, making new dealings, which they cultivate only until the soil is exhausted. They grow much opium, which they barter for grain with the Assamese. Then religious ideas are very vague. They believe in a future state, and have an indefinite idea of a spirit who presides hi the regions of departed souls, as is shown in then mode of disposing of the dead, whom they inter fully clothed and armed, and supplied for a long journey with food and cooking utensils.

Marriage is a mere matter of barter or exchange, though its violation is looked on as the gravest of offences.

One of their houses is described as "70 feet long, raised on timbers, some perpendicularly and some diagonally placed, on which is laid a platform of bamboos for a flooring. The roof has gable ends, and is pitched very high, the thatch being composed of the leaves of a species of cane. The interior consists of one long apartment, 60 feet by 16 feet, from which a passage, extending down the entire length, is partitioned off. In the large apartment, down the centre, no less than four fires were burning on hearths of earth ; on one side were ranged, with some appearance of order, their arms, pouches, travelling apparatus, &:c. ; another portion of the apartment was decorated with trophies of the chase. In the centre, between the fires, frames of bamboos suspended from the roof served as tables, on which various domestic utensils were deposited."