Chapter 3 of 9

Stories

History is carried by people and places: a city remembered in song, a chief who escaped across a river at midnight, a healer who dreamed an alphabet. Each story is labelled by what kind of evidence it rests on.

Ciimnuai, the remembered city Oral tradition

Ciimnuai is remembered as the first Zo settlement in the Chin Hills. The 1896 British gazetteer lists it as “Chinnwe,” six and a half miles south-west of Tedim, close to Saizang, and records it as “supposed to be the birth-place of the original Northern Chins.” ^[1]

Guite tradition says the Guite house founded and ruled it. Their chronicle names Guimang I (around 1050) and Mangsuum I (around 1250), and says Geeltui, Kalzang and Tedim were founded from Ciimnuai. ^[6] Thadou tradition gives a different account, crediting Song Thu with a migration around 1500. ^[7] Some local historians think the name may once have belonged to earlier places outside the hills. ^[7]

Khampat and the great banyan Oral tradition

Many Mizo and Zo families remember Khampat, in the Kabaw Valley, as a home before the hills. A great banyan tree (bungpui) there is a symbol of that memory. ^[8] It still matters today. In 2016 India’s government asked Myanmar to help protect the tree, answering a long-standing Mizo request. A preservation committee and the Zo Reunification Organisation had campaigned for it. ^[9]

One scholar of Mizo memory notes that in folklore the ancestors planted the Khampat banyan before setting out on a migration that began at Zopui, west of the Tiau valley. The tree has become a unifying image of roots and shared land. ^[10]

Khan Thuam and the midnight ferry Oral tradition

Northern Chin tradition remembers Khan Thuam (died 1848), a Sukte chief (the “Kantum” of British records, who conquered much of the northern hills) raised by his widowed mother at Mualbem. ^{[11] [12]} In one well-known episode, nine village headmen plot to kill him and he flees with his family. While he crosses a river by rope ferry at midnight, the rope is cut and he is carried downstream, but he survives. ^{[11] [13]} His son Kam Hau later expanded the family’s power, eclipsing his brother. ^[11]

Khai Kam’s resistance and exile Documented

Khai Kam (1864–1919) of Khuasak led Sizang resistance when British road-builders entered the hills. British records name “Kaikam, the Siyin” among the leaders of the 1892 rising. ^[1] On 7 December 1888 Sizang fighters attacked a road party. A combined force of Sizang, Kamhau and Sukte men kept fighting into 1889, and the British built Fort White on captured land. ^{[2] [14]}

After a second rising in 1892, every Sizang chief but Khai Kam surrendered. On 16 May 1894, after the British took male relatives hostage, he gave himself up with his father and brother. He was sentenced to life and sent to the Andaman Islands. He was released on 14 May 1910 and came home. ^[2] A university in Kalay was once named after him, and a sports centre in Hakha and a park near Kalaymyo carry his name. ^[2]

The healer who dreamed an alphabet Documented

From 1900, Pau Cin Hau began dreaming of an elderly man he identified as Pathian, the creator. In one dream he was given a book of symbols. ^[3] From 1902 he taught people to worship Pathian alone and to stop sacrificing to spirits. For about three years no one followed him, and his own family objected. His first followers came around 1906. ^[3]

By 1931 the movement counted about 37,500 followers. Today there are about 5,000, centred on Siang Sawn in Chin State, and young followers now post in the script on Facebook. ^[3] Missionaries were divided about him. A 1932 Bible Society report saw his teaching as close to Christian ideals, while J. H. Cope dismissed it. ^[3] The scripts themselves are covered on Faith & Literacy.

Mautam: when the bamboo flowered Documented

Every few decades the region’s bamboo flowers all at once. Rats multiply on the seed, then eat the crops. In 1959 this mautam brought famine to the Lushai Hills. The district council asked Assam for help and was refused. ^[5] Anger over the famine fed the Mizo National Front. It declared independence on 1 March 1966, and on 5 March Indian aircraft struck Aizawl. ^[5] Peace came with the Mizo Accord of 1986. ^[5]

Add your family’s story

Every village has stories like these, and most have never been written down. Share one. We will label it as oral tradition and credit the teller.