Clan Chattan

“ We have already referred to, in its proper place, a mandate from King James V. in 1583, against the clan Chattan, in which he charges his lieges to invade the clan “to their utter destruction by slaughter, burning, drowning, and otherways; and leave no creature living of that clan, except priests, women, and bairns.” Even Captain Burt, in the beginning of the next century, writes of the Highlanders as if they were an interesting race of semi-barbarians, many of whom would cut a man’s throat for the mere sake of keeping their hands in practice. ”

“ The family piper, when from home at a wedding, heard his chanter crack, and at once started up, saying he must return, for The Chisholm was dead. And he was.
But the most famous of all such articles is “The Black Chanter of Clan Chattan.” This is a relic of the fight between the Clan Quhele and the Clan Yha on the North Inch of Perth in 1396. It is made of lignum vitæ, and, according to tradition is endued, with magical powers. ”

“ Before Captains Carmichael and Duncan Forbes, with the last of the four hundred, were slain, nearly a thousand of the Imperial dead were piled up within the slimy fosse.
Our Highlanders all died like good soldiers and true; for, of the four companies who perished there, three were composed of the very flower of the great Clan Chattan.*
* The Imperialists on this occasion shamefully mutilated the body of Dunbar. ”

“ As to the Davidsons, the tradition which vouches for the particulars of the fight at Invernahavon expressly says that the Davidsons were almost to a man cut off, and it is scarcely likely that they would, within so short a time, be able to muster sufficient men either seriously to disturb the peace of the country or to provide thirty champions. Mr Skene solves the question by making the Mackintoshes and Macphersons the combatant clans, and the cause of quarrel the right to the headship of clan Chattan. ”

“ A female and a minor was the legal proprietrix of the ancient possessions of the tribe, which, by her marriage, might be conveyed to another and a hostile family; whilst her uncle, the natural leader of the clan according to ancient custom, was left without any means to keep up the dignity of a chief, or to support the clan against its enemies. His claims on the estates possessed by the Clandonald were worse than nugatory, as they threatened to involve him in a feud with that powerful and warlike tribe, in case he should take any steps to enforce them. ”

“ A preconcerted plan of campaign brings little definite result; it never culminates in the attainment of any final issue, for, on the native side, there is neither union of tribes nor any combined organized attempt at even guerilla warfare, hence the destruction of [573] a cotta or the decimation of a clan has no immediate and lasting moral effect on the neighbouring warlike tribe. Life is cheap among them; a Moro thinks no more about lopping off anotherʼs head than he does about pulling a cocoanut from the palm-tree. ”

“ It has been fully ascertained that the inviolable regulations by which those clans were perpetuated amongst the southern nations were, first, that no man could marry in his own clan; secondly, that every child belongs to his or her mother's clan. Among the Choctaws there are two great divisions, each of which is subdivided into four clans, and no man can marry in any of the four clans belonging to his division. The restriction among the Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Natches, does not extend beyond the clan to which the man belongs. ”

“ The custom of acquiring a transfer of name and privileges by slaughtering their previous owner points to the more or less violent breaking-up of an older organisation in which great value was attached to clan-membership. It is obvious that where the clan-system is powerful such a custom would not be tolerated, and that in any society where it once got a footing it would prove a strong disintegrating force. That it has done so among these north-western tribes is evidently Dr. Boas' opinion. ”

“ The hereditary chiefs of the tribe are the Khans of Dagar and Bagra, but their influence is nominal, and the different clans are entirely democratic. Moreover, the Khan of Dagar does not belong to any of the Buner clans, but his family is recognised as the leading or Khan Khel family. The clan is neither so well armed nor so adept at hill fighting as other trans-frontier tribes, but can turn out some 6800 fighting men. ”

“ Thus perhaps the Hindu joint family came into existence as a subdivision of the exogamous clan with male descent, on which its constitution was modelled. In Chhattīsgarh families still live together in large enclosures with separate huts for the married couples. A human ancestor gradually took the place of the totem as the giver of life to the clan. The members thought themselves bound together by the tie of his blood which flowed through all their veins, and frequently, as in Athens, Rome and Scotland, every member of the clan bore his name. ”

“ Another reason for the institution of these totems, may be found in their influence on the social relations of the tribe, in softening private revenge, and preserving peace. Gallatin, on the information derived from a former Indian agent [12] among the Creeks, says, "according to the ancient custom, if an offence was committed by one or another member of the same clan, the compensation to be made, on account of the injury, was regulated in an amicable way by the other members of the clan. Murder was rarely expiated in any other way than by the death of the murderer ”

“ Travellers having but a superficial knowledge of the peoples they describe—especially in the days before savage kinship had become the subject of scientific investigation—are not careful to define, because they do not understand, the relationship of members of a tribe to one another. Their vague expressions “relatives” and “friends” are therefore subject to interpretation by what has been ascertained of clan-organisation, if we would avoid one source of error. But there is a further consideration which ought not to be overlooked. The clan system has rarely been found complete and unimpaired. ”

“ All other persons outside the clan were strangers or enemies, and no rights or obligations existed in connection with them; the only restraint on killing them being the fear that their kinsmen would take blood-revenge, not solely on the murderer, but on any member of his clan. A man’s life was protected only by this readiness of his clansmen to avenge him ”

“ And if the Shiuana were to hear an irrelevant or unpleasant utterance on the part of their children, things might go wrong. There is, beside, the barrier between clan and clan,—the mistrust which one connection feels always more or less strongly toward the others. Instead of the excitement and display of passion that too often accompany the preliminaries of great events in civilized communities, and which too often also unduly precipitate them, among the Indians there is reticence. They do not run to headquarters for information; they make no effort at interviewing the officers ”

“ They [484] are likewise under the apprehension of becoming the object of their revenge, by having their houses and stacks burnt, their cattle stolen, or hocked, and their lives at the mercy of the tribe or clan to whom the banditti belongs. The richer sort, to keep, as they call it, good neighbourhood, generally compound with the chieftain of the tribe or clan for double restitution, which he willingly pays to save one of his clan from prosecution ”

“ He is their leader in clan quarrels, must free the necessitous from their arrears of rent, and maintain such who by accidents are fallen to total decay. Some of the chiefs have not only personal dislikes and enmity to each other, but there are also hereditary feuds between clan and clan, which have been handed down from one generation to another for several ages. These quarrels descend to the meanest vassals, and thus sometimes an innocent person suffers for crimes committed by his tribe at a vast distance of time before his being began. ”

“ At the head of each clan is a chief styled Khan, to whom the Maliks are subordinate, but the tribesmen being intensely independent and impatient of control, it is not surprising that neither Maliks nor Khans enjoy any real power. ”

“ He oppresses and harasses, but never injures. A celebrated Brāhman of Changanacheri is said to own more than a hundred of these Chāttans. Household articles and jewelry of value may be left in the premises of homes guarded by Chāttan, and no thief dares to lay his hand on them. The invisible sentry keeps diligent watch over his master’s property, and has unchecked powers of movement in any medium. ”

“ This was carried so far that they are described as having at length become less a single nation than an aggregate of all the surrounding tribes. The stranger being received into one of the families as a husband, brother, or son, is treated with the utmost tenderness; and she, who perhaps immediately before exhausted all her ingenuity in tormenting him, now nurses the wounds she has made, and loads him with caresses. He becomes completely one of the clan, and goes with them to war, even against his former countrymen ”

“ The Khasi clan grew from the family. There is a saying common among the people, Long jaid ne ka kynthei, “From the woman sprang the tribe.” All the clans trace their descent from ancestresses (grandmothers) who are called Ki Iwabei Tynrai, literally, grandmothers of the root, i. e. the root of the tree of the clan. In some clans the name of the ancestress survives, as, for instance, Kyngas houning, “the sweet one.” Ka Iaw shubde is the ancestress of the Synteng tribe, and it is curious to note that she is credited with having first introduced the art of smelting iron. ”

“ At the time of my visit several of the clan were living at a place called Kultu. This is not properly a Toda village, the people living in a hut of the Badaga form near a tea plantation in order to sell the buffalo dung to the planters.
This clan now numbers only six males and three females, all belonging to one family (72) . They have neither kudr nor pòlm. [679]
1 By this I mean that there are now living thirty females who were born members of the Nòdrsol, but since a woman becomes a member of her husband’s clan, most of these are now members of other clans. ”

“ The basic unit of Sandeman society, the extended "family". While the clan-chief is in charge and has the last word, he is not--cannot be--a dictator. Until Overthrow, clans were established by the Shapers and restricted in size to 200-500 members; since then, some have gotten larger, and a new clan is formed by agreement between two or more "parent" clans who contribute members and resources. ”

“ The black sub-clan is strictly endogamous; the other, the superior sub-clan, is not. Their women may marry men of any other clan, the Pallichchan excepted. Union by marriage, or whatever the function may be named, is permissible between most of the other clans, the rule by which a woman may never unite herself with her inferior being always observed. She may unite herself with a man of her own clan, or with a man of any superior clan, or with a Nambūtiri, an Embrāntiri, or any other Brāhman, [302] or with one of the small sects coming between the Brāhmans and the Nāyars. ”

“ The idea of "real estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of occupancy, and—as among some ruder Indians—its individual members exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.
The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs (tecuhtli) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half starved. Clan officers. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from the council than among the Indians of the lower status. ”

“ Descent from the mother being always plain, the clan claimed descent in the female line even if every recollection of the female ancestor were lost, and theoretically all the members of one clan were so many brothers and sisters. This organization still exists in the majority of tribes; the members of one clan cannot intermarry, and, if all the women of a clan die, that clan dies out also, since there is nobody left to perpetuate it. The tribe is in reality but a league; the clan is the unit. ”

“ His mandates could neither stop the depredations of one clan against another, nor allay their mutual hostilities. Delinquents could not, with impunity, be pursued into the bosom of a clan which protected them, nor could his judges administer the laws in opposition to their interests or their will. Sometimes he strengthened his arm by fomenting animosities among them, and by entering occasionally into the interest of one, in order to weaken another. ”

“ The Klemantan tribes are on the whole far less warlike than Kayans, Kenyahs, and Ibans. Their offensive warfare is usually on a small scale, and is undertaken primarily for revenge. Their warlike ambition is easily satisfied by the taking of a single head, or even by a mere hostile demonstration against the enemy's house. Nevertheless, like all the other tribes, except the Punans, the Klemantans need a human head to terminate a period of mourning. ”

“ Pan Ch‘ao took the field with 25,000 men from Khotan and other Central Asian states with the object of crushing Yarkand. The King of Kutcha replied by dispatching his chief commander to succour the place with an army drawn from the kingdoms of Wên-su, Ku-mo and Wei-t‘ou, totalling 50,000 men. Pan Ch‘ao summoned his officers and also the King of Khotan to a council of war, and said: ‘Our forces are now outnumbered and unable to make head against the enemy. The best plan, then, is for us to separate and disperse, each in a different direction. ”