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INHABITANTS OF YUNNAN. 267
arrows dipped in aconite. The Lisu carry off the women and children, and sell them
to the Burmese. They also seize the silks and jewellery, and consign the houses of
their enemies to the flames. Yet the mandarins deny the existence of these
dangerous neighbours, and even forbid their names to be pronounced. Their
complete destruction having been announced to the Central Government some
generations ago, these tribes have ever since been officially extinct.
In peaceful times the Lisu are very hospitable, and are distinguished amongst
the surrounding peoples for their spirit of clanship and solidarity. The land is held
in common, every family settling down wherever it pleases, and cultivating the open
tracts, or the clearings obtained by firing the forests. They trade with the neighbouring
tribes, and thus obtain the cowries (Cyprasa moneta) from the Maldive
Archipelago, with which the head-dress of their women is entirely covered. They
have rejected the Buddhist missionaries, and still adhere to the Shamanist practices
formerly universal throughout the extreme East. Their wizards cast lots to attract
the good spirits, and beat the tom-tom to scare the demons of the springs, rocks, and
woodlands.
The Shans, or " White Barbarians " of the Chinese, are more numerous in Burma
than in the Middle Kingdom, where they only occupy the south-west corner of
Yunnan west of the Salwin or Lu-kiang. All are subject to the mandarins, who
appoint the village head-men, making them responsible for the taxes. The Kakhyens
(Kachin), or Sing-po (Chingpo), as they call themselves, are one of. the most
enterprising races in the country, and regard the Shans as an inferior people, good
enough to supply them with muleteers and porters. Of small stature, but robust
and energetic, they pass much of their time in feasting and attending to the toilet,
tattooing arms and legs, and covering their dress with shells and all kinds of
ornaments. The women do all the work, even tilling the land and carrying burdens.
Hence the wife is chosen, not for her beauty, but for her physical strength, and he
is reputed the happiest paterfamilias who possesses the greatest number of
daughters, all destined to a life of ceaseless labour. Although surrounded by
Buddhist populations, the Kakhyens have retained their old animism, still addressing
their prayers to the nafu, or protecting genii. As in certain parts of West Europe,
they place a piece of silver in the mouth of the dead, to pay their passage over the
great river that flows between the two lives.
The Pei
(Pai, Payi, Payu),
an aboriginal people in the south and south-west of
Yunnan, and especially in the Salwin basin, are divided, according to their respective
domains, into Highland and River Pei. At some remote period they traditionally
inhabited the banks of the Yang-tze-kiang, whence they were gradually driven south
by the advancing tide of Chinese migration. Neighbours of theLolo, and kinsmen
of the Shans, they associate little with them, dwelling in isolated villages, with flatroofed
houses like those of the Tibetans and Miaotze. Their is complexion whiter
than that of the Chinese, and, like the Lolo, they are also distinguished from them by
their physical strength.
All insert in the lobe of the car either a silver cylinder or
a bamboo tube, an ornament replaced by the women with a cigar or a tuft of straw.
Most of the latter smoke tobacco, while the men have taken to opium. The women