Note 451 — Chapter II · GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVERY.

The Kookies, according to Macrae, “at times … make captives of the children, and often adopt them into their families, when they have none of their own; and the only slaves among them are the captives thus taken”451. What our informant means is not quite clear. The children who have been adopted certainly are not slaves. Perhaps a part only of the captured children are adopted, the rest constituting the slave-class of the Kookies; but this is not clearly stated. Lewin asserts that all the hill-tribes (Toungtha, divided into Lhoosai, Tipperah and Kookies) formerly had debtor-slaves452; but as none of our other authorities make any mention of this, we doubt whether this general remark applies to the Kookies, the more so as, according to Macrae, “the only slaves among them are the captives”. So it becomes very doubtful whether the Kookies have slaves. Dalton’s statement that “all the enemies he [the Kookie] has killed will be in the happy hunting-fields in attendance on him as slaves”453 is not sufficient to decide the question. One thing only is certain: the Rajah has slaves. According to Dalton, murderers and thieves become slaves of the Rajah. Stewart affirms the same of those guilty of theft, burglary or arson, and Butler of thieves454. But if only the Rajah, who represents the public power, has slaves, the Kookies are not properly to be called a slave-keeping people. Whether there are other slaves, besides those of the Rajah, is not sufficiently clear.