In the winter of 2023, I took a long walk in the hills of northeastern Nagaland. For three and a half weeks I hiked from village to village in the region populated by the Konyaks, perhaps the most famous (one might say infamous), of the various Naga groups. All the Nagas were once headhunters, but most gave up their warlike ways and converted to Christianity well before living memory. But not the Konyaks. In their part of Nagaland, and also just across the border in Burma, headhunting activities continued well into the second half of the 20th century. In many Konyak villages, old warriors who participated in raids can still be encountered, even if their numbers are rapidly diminishing.
The first stop on my long walk was at a village called Shangnyu, which is to the northeast of the Mon district headquarters at Mon Town. I began by walking north from the town along a paved road, and then turned off on a jeep track which has existed at least since the 1970s, linking Mon Town to Shangnyu and then smaller villages to the east. The condition of the road is not terrible by the standards of northeastern Nagaland, though it would still make for a bumpy ride. But, at least while I was walking, traffic was light, and the road led through very pleasant tea-country interspersed with jungle. It was by no means a short hike from Mon to Shangnyu, but I didn’t regret opting to forgo a ride.
The Road to Shangnyu.
A small tea garden along the way.
When I arrived in Shangnyu, I was shown to the house of the king of the village. Konyak settlements were traditionally ruled by a class of autocratic sovereigns, known as Angs. This was a unique custom among the Nagas, as many of the other groups had elected chieftains. The ruler of Shangnyu was one of the “Great Angs,” a Konyak king with many lesser kings underneath him, making him essentially the ruler of a small independent nation.
With the incorporation of the Konyaks into the modern democratic Indian state, the power of the Angs has diminished in some respects. Many Konyak settlements have long since adopted elected village administrations, and, of course, the kings no longer make war upon one another. Still, the Angs are often more than mere figureheads, and in some cases dominate village governments. They also frequently receive tributes from their subjects in the form of donations of meat, and they are often important local political figures.
L. Ame Jongvang, the current sovereign of Shangnyu, who kindly allowed me to stay a night at his house.
In the late 1930s, the Anglo-Austrian anthropologist Christoph Von-Fürer Haimendorf travelled in the Konyak dominated part of the world as a guest of the British colonial administration. He visited a number of then-independent Konyak settlements, and also accompanied a punitive expedition against a village called Pangsha. Later, he compiled these experiences into a very readable combination travelogue/ethnography called The Naked Nagas. While Haimendorf never set foot in Shangnyu during his travels in the 30s (though he would three decades later on a subsequent expedition), he does devote a significant chunk of text to a story he heard dealing with the travails of Shangnyu’s royal family.
As Haimendorf relates (referring to Shangnyu by an alternate spelling, Hangnyu):
“It appears that twenty years ago the old Ang of Hangnyu died, and his two sons and his brother quarrelled over the succession. By right, his eldest son Auwang should have become Ang, but he was so young that his uncle hoped to supersede him. Time is not very important in Konyak villages, and the quarrel dragged on for some time, until the old men of Hangnyu, growing restless, sent a message to the powerful Ang of Chui, asking him to send one of his brothers as Ang to Hangnyu. In itself this would have been nothing unusual, for just as the Balkan countries received their dynasties from the other royal houses of Europe, so the Konyaks often “‘called’’ their Angs from other villages. But the Ang of Chui, realizing that he could only aggravate the situation, refused the offer: the ruling house of Hangnyu was not yet extinct, he said, and there still remained two pretenders to the throne. But the people Hangnyu, anxious to set their affairs in order, sent a message to the Ang of Pomau, who, not so wise as the Ang of Chui, sent his ambitious brother Kiwang to accept the throne of Hangnyu.
“At first all went well with the village of Hangnyu and its Ang Kiwang; he succeeded in defeating the hostile village of Tang, and quite a number of heads were captured. But not many years had passed before misfortune followed misfortune. Kiwang’s wife, of the chiefly house of Mon, died, and soon her only son followed her. And though Kiwang had numerous other children in the dark rooms of his long house, none of those sons could ever succeed him on the throne of Hangnyu, for their mothers were commoners, and the pure blood of the chiefs did not flow in their veins. Then several bad harvests shrunk the wealth of the village so much that Kiwang often found difficulty in providing the necessary number of buffaloes and pigs for the Spring Festival, and Tang, reversing the fortunes of war, attacked a party of Hangnyu people out fishing and captured no less than nine heads on a single day.
“The villagers—rather unjustly, I thought—held Kiwang responsible for all these misfortunes, and the now grown-up sons of the old chief only further embarrassed his position. Day by day the resistance to his power grew; his orders were ignored, only scanty tribute was paid, and his fields were neglected by his unwilling subjects. Finally the chief’s sons, confirming his disgrace, publicly and ostentatiously ate the right hind leg of a buffalo sacrificed at the rebuilding of a morung—by right the share of the Ang.
“Kiwang knew that his days in Hangnyu were numbered and he secretly sent messengers to his brother, the Ang of Pomau. But how could Ato, the mighty lord of Pomau, appreciate the prospect of Kiwang’s resignation? Would it not mean a loss of prestige for his whole house? His advice was not to precipitate matters. For though he could not openly interfere, he would invite the arrogant young Angs to a feast in Pomau and murder them. The plot was betrayed, however, and only one of the young Angs, Lowang, accepted the invitation. He arrived with an enormous escort of warriors, and they took great care never to let their weapons out of their hands. With icy politeness Lowang thanked Ato for his lavish feast and returned to Hangnyu, where he and his brother immediately dethroned and banished Kiwang.
“But the story did not end here, for many followers and servants had come to Hangnyu with Kiwang. They had built houses and acquired fields in Hangnyu, and their sons and daughters had grown up and found mates in Hangnyu. Were they now to return landless to Pomau? No, they had become Hangnyu people, and Hangnyu people they wanted to remain. “Well, if you are Hangnyu men, why don’t you fetch us a few heads from Pomau?” Mockingly the words had been said, but four of Kiwang’s onetime followers took them all too seriously.
“They crept into Pomau on a moonless night and cut off the heads of an unsuspecting sleeping couple. Unfortunately the deed was immediately discovered, and the Pomau warriors took up the pursuit of the raiders. Only one escaped, two were overtaken and put to death, and the fourth man, fleeing into the forest, climbed a tree, hoping to put his pursuers off the scent. In the morning the warriors found him. They surrounded the tree and held council. But the case was a difficult one. Under cover of darkness, and ignorant of their identity, they had killed two murderers; but now the light of day revealed with whom they had to deal, and though the crime, violating the most sacred bonds of the village community, had to be punished, their hands were tied, tied by the strictest of all taboos, which forbids the shedding of a relative’s blood. There was only one way to end the ghastly unprecedented situation: the Ang himself must intervene, for he stood above all taboos, and was so filled with magical power that nothing, not even the killing of a man of his own village, could harm him. So the old Ang Ato climbed a neighbouring tree, and, taking his muzzle-loader shot the offender. Auwang ascended the throne of his father, and still ruled in Hangnyu.”
There are reasons to be skeptical of this story. As transmitted through Haimendorf, it comes to us at many levels removed from its source. He claims that it was told to him by a Konyak elder in the village of Shiong by the name of Ahon who had served as an intermediary between the Konyaks and the colonial administration (a post that the British referred to as a dobhashi or dobhasi). Apparently Ahon’s friendliness with the Government made him some enemies among the Angs, for all of whom he had deep disdain. As Haimendorf writes, “in his heart [Ahon] still hated all chiefs,” and he “loved to tell stories of the less glorious deeds and fates of the Great Angs. He would spend hours relating how the Ang of such and such a village committed such and such dastardly deeds: all typical of Angs in general.” By making it very clear that Ahon had an axe to grind, Haimendorf casts quite a bit of doubt on the story. I suspect he included it more from an attitude of “print the legend” than from desire to precisely document historical fact.
Still, the tale illustrates something of the violence and turmoil of the era among the Konyaks. While the exact details may be suspect, there’s no reason to doubt that there was a succession dispute among the royal family of Shangnyu, which occurred only a few generations ago.
Haimendorf would only set foot in Shangnyu in 1970, after the Naga hills had been taken over by the Indian and Burmese governments and headhunting was largely, though recently, eliminated. By this time foreign influences had seeped deep into the hills. In his updated travelogue Return to the Naked Nagas, Haimendorf briefly describes meeting one Lupok, who was the grandson of Auwang, the victor in Shangnyu’s succession dispute. Haimendorf describes Lupok as “a youngish man decorated with the full face-tattoo of a headhunter” who “clearly did not [have a] distaste of foreign clothes. His fantastic attire consisted of a pair of bright green shorts and a dark plastic jacket, a head-dress of monkey-fur and feathers, and heaps of valuable beads enclosing his neck.” The current sovereign is Lupok’s son, and so Auwang’s great-great grandson.
Here is the traditional-style longhouse of the king of Shangnyu. It’s made mostly of woven bamboo, with a palm thatch roof and wooden beams inside. As you no doubt noticed, Konyaks love skulls. They are practically part of the landscape in northeastern Nagaland. Rather poignantly, one often sees the remains of animals that were locally extirpated generations ago decorating the outsides of longhouses. Bears, for example, have been pushed into a few remote pockets in the highest hills, and are rarely seen anywhere near villages, but their skulls are a ubiquitous decorative feature.
Human skulls collected in headhunting raids were also once proudly displayed, though these have been increasingly hidden from view in recent years. This is because the Konyak Baptist Church maintains, not unreasonably, that it is poor taste to display the remains of one’s decapitated neighbors for the benefit of gawking tourists. Frankly, much as this may deracinate Konyaks from their violent heritage, I get it.
Two badly degraded elephant skulls, along with those of numerous cows, in front of the king’s longhouse. Elephant skulls are a fairly common trophy in Konyak villages, though I’m told wild elephants have not been seen in the region for several generations.
Bear skulls hung on the outside of the king’s longhouse.
The interiors of traditional Konyak longhouses are very atmospheric and make for incredible photography. There’s constantly a fire burning somewhere inside so the air is always smoky. In the mornings and evenings the sun pours through small openings in the woven bamboo walls, creating innumerable, constantly shifting, directional beams.
This photograph was taken shortly before I set out from Shangnyu. Every minute the angle of the beams would change and different parts of the longhouse would be illuminated. It was tempting to just hang around there and try to get the absolutely perfect picture, but there was a whole lot of ground to cover that day.
A collection of various sorts of ancient megaliths in front of the king’s longhouse. Megaliths are a common sight across the Naga hills and were erected extensively up until the conversion of the Nagas to Christianity (which occurred at different times in different parts of the hills). My admittedly incomplete understanding of the phenomenon is that the stone monuments served an array of purposes, from memorializing the dead, to functioning as ossuaries, to commemorating feasts of merit, to being the homes of local spirits. The megaliths you see here were once situated around a large ficus tree, which has since disappeared. Among the Konyaks, these were frequently planted in close proximity to the king’s longhouse and were often hung with human heads taken in raids. There appears to be a young ficus growing among the stones.
Here are the megaliths as they appeared in 1923. Note that they seem to be arranged around a large tree that no longer exists. This photograph was taken by J.P. Mills, a British civil servant who operated in the Naga Hills during the first half of the 20th century. He is perhaps best known as the author of The Pangsha Letters: An Expedition to Rescue Slaves in the Naga Hills. The picture above can be viewed as part of the extensive digital collection of Naga material at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), at the University of London. The caption for the photograph on the SOAS website explains that it was “taken during a punitive expedition in April 1923 to the Konyak village of Yungya, certain inhabitants of which had carried out a head-hunting raid on Kamahu…The Konyak tribe lived in the northern part of the Naga Hills. To the west the Konyaks bordered the Assam plains and the Ao Nagas; on the south-east were the Phoms, and on the east the Singphos of Burma. At the time of these photographs much of their country was unadministered and little known and some of the villages visited during this expedition had never before been seen by Europeans.”
http://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA004447/00001
This large wooden carving is perhaps the most remarkable artifact in Shangnyu village. It used to reside in the king’s longhouse, though it has since been moved into a small heritage museum along with a few other scattered bits of old Konyak culture, including some rusty daos, locally made rifles, a light black-powder cannon, and, of course, animal skulls. Haimendorf describes seeing the huge carving in 1970. He writes: “The most outstanding feature of [the king’s longhouse] was an enormous carving cut out of a panel which formed the division between living quarters and open hall. The people of Shangnyu believe this carving to be as old as the village, and it is certainly the biggest carving I have seen in any Naga house, and the tree from which the panel was cut must have been gigantic. The carving consists of several groups of figures all cut out of the solid wood in high relief. Most prominent were two male figures in full ceremonial dress each with an oversized penis sticking out horizontally. Above and beside these were figures of monkeys and snakes, and of a copulating couple. The fertility symbolism of the carving was unmistakable, but the circumstances of its creation were no longer remembered.”
Two distinguished gentlemen with flagging erections, one of whom is carrying a severed head. The “fertility symbolism” is certainly unmistakable. Human heads were thought by the Konyaks to contain a sort of spiritual energy which helped crops grow and also conferred virility on the warriors who took them. Note the designs on the figure’s chests and faces, which are meant to represent the tattoos Konyak warriors would receive after participating in raids and collecting enemy heads. On the ground to the left of the warriors is a small wooden object. This is a portable throne that was reserved for the king of the village.
This is the same “portable throne” photographed by J.P. Mills over a century ago (I’ve cropped the original picture). http://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA004446/00001
A small carving of a man with a helmet and rifle atop an elephant.
I’m honestly not sure what’s going on here. The two figures are clearly monkeys. They have severed heads of some sort hanging above them. One assumes these are human heads, though they seem to be smaller than the heads of the monkeys. On top is what appears to be a damaged carving of a big cat. The Konyak kings see tigers and leopards as their spiritual counterparts.
A special thank to Khaopa Jongvang (left), the heir to the throne of Shangnyu, who guided me around the village, and then showed me the way to my next destination, the spectacular but largely overlooked village of Longzang.
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An especially impressive buffalo skull in the Shangnyu heritage museum.
Patrick Rogers 
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