The Founding of Chingjaroi

Resu, the founder and first Khullakpa, originally lived on Khundei hill. From there he moved to what is now the site of Phaibung Khunao. One day he went hunting, and wounded a large deer. He followed the tracks to a pool of water near the present site of the Khullakpa’s house. He climbed a tree and found millet, which he took. Next morning he went home, and his wife offered him rice and zu, but he refused it. That night he sought omens in a dream, and the dream told him to change the site of his village. He was to tie a rope round the neck of his mithan and a stone to the other end, turn the mithan loose and follow it. When the stone fell off, the site was reached. However, he found a suitable site behind the present one, and did not wait for the stone to fall. As he was clearing his house-site many lice came up from the ground, and after he had settled there tigers came and killed his cattle. Then he remembered the omen of the lice, and moved up to the present site of Chingjaroi, where he built a house in the position of the present Khullakpa’s.

He prospered in his new home, and had many cattle and was very rich. Seeing this, a man from the Phaibung direction came with only his dog and offered himself as Resu’s man. He became one of Resu’s clan, and was the ancestor of the Tamanchui. Another man came from the Lai-i direction, and was the ancestor of the Khansungchui; one from Kharasom way (Kharasom village was founded three generations before Mosem’s time) and he was the ancestor of the Amuniuma. Lastly a man came from the direction of Jessami and Lozaphemi, but he had no house and went with the Kharasom man, and so the clan he founded, the Lasema, are a sub-division of the Amuniuma. All these clans are sub-divisions in their turn of Resu’s clan, the Yangnuma, into which their founders were adopted; and so they may not intermarry with each other. They all live in the upper part of the village, and are called Yangnuma in their own language, and Krrugnameh by the Angamis.