Surveying the Nagas: Visual Representations of India’s Northern Hill-Tribes in the R. G. Woodthorpe Collection

Surveying the Nagas

Visual Representations of India’s Northern Hill-Tribes in the R. G. Woodthorpe Collection

12 November 2018 – 19 May 2019
Archive Case (First Floor)

This exhibition presents a selection of material from the Pitt Rivers Museum’s R. G. Woodthorpe collection, much of which has never before been on public view. The display case contains writings, sketched and photographic images, and objects produced and collected in the Naga Hills region of northeast India during the 1870s. These diverse items offer an insight into how British colonial officials understood and represented their interactions with ‘frontier tribes’, as they termed the inhabitants of the Naga Hills and other upland areas on India’s fringes.

The creator or collector of the items on display was Robert Gosset Woodthorpe (1844–1898), a British army officer in the Royal Engineers. He took a posting to India in 1869 and from 1871 worked for the Survey of India, engaged primarily in mapping frontier regions of Britain’s empire. Along with stints in the Naga Hills, Woodthorpe undertook survey work in upland areas to the east of Bengal, to the north of Assam, and in northern Burma. He also accompanied British military columns into India’s north-west frontier during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880) and during an expedition north of Kashmir in the mid-1880s. In the course of these surveys, Woodthorpe kept diaries and prolifically sketched landscapes and people. He became renowned as an expert on India’s frontiers, giving talks on his travels to prestigious London-based learned institutions, including the Royal Geographical Society and the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. In the final decade of his life, Woodthorpe rose to senior positions in British India’s knowledge-gathering establishment, eventually becoming second-in-command of the Survey of India.

The Naga Hills to the south of the Assam Valley was the region that Woodthorpe depicted most intensively. His survey work there took place in the mid-1870s, when the British colonial state sought to expand its control over a previously ungoverned and little-known area of narrow valleys and jagged mountain ridges. Colonial stereotypes of the numerous fragmented communities known as ‘Nagas’ that inhabited the region were already in circulation before Woodthorpe’s time. These pejorative representations emphasised the exotic appearance and violent tendencies of the people. Many of the images, written descriptions, and objects in the Woodthorpe collection built on and further embedded these reductive assumptions of ‘tribal’ culture. However, Woodthorpe’s materials were also the products of more intensive and sustained encounters between British colonial personnel and Naga individuals and groups than had taken place previously. The items of clothing, sketches, writings, and photographs displayed in this case reflect the complexities of these encounters, in which intimacy and violence intermingled, impacting both coloniser and colonised.

Cabinet card portrait of Colonel Robert Gosset Woodthorpe, standing, dressed in military uniform of the Corps of the Royal Engineers. Photograph by the P. A. Johnston and Theodore Julius Hoffmann studio (Calcutta), labelled ‘Johnston [and] Hoffmann’. Calcutta, Bengal (now in West Bengal), India. Circa 1891. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1998.271.33)

View of an unidentified Naga settlement on a hillside. Photographer unknown. Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. 1873–1874. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1914.5.2.62)

‘Konyak Nagas’ (handwritten caption). Group portrait of three Konyak Naga men, pictured standing, each holding a shield and a weapon (spear or dao). Photographer unknown. Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. 1873–1874. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1914.5.3.6)

‘Tangkhul Nagas’ (handwritten caption). Group portrait of Tangkhul Naga men, standing and sitting, pictured in front of a building. Photographer unknown. Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Manipur), India. 1873–1874. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1914.5.3.7)

‘Naga arms’ (handwritten caption). An assortment of Naga objects, comprising mainly different types of weapon (including spears and daos), arranged as a display to be photographed outside, in front of a hanging textile. Photographer unknown. Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. 1873–1874. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1914.5.3.28)

Page from one of Robert Gosset Woodthorpe’s diaries, titled ‘Naga Hills, 1876’, which contains drawings by him in the margin: ‘The clothes are generally plain white - a few blue & shepherd[’s] plaid have found their way in from the plains or neighbouring villages. Men in these villages tattoo on the chest after taking a head. A new form of tattoo is shewn in the margin’. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Woodthorpe Papers, Item 2: ‘Naga Hills, 1876’, p.32.)

‘Angami Naga’ (handwritten caption). Portrait of an Angami Naga man named ‘Dotsoll’, depicted standing, holding two spears and a shield. Watercolour painting by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. The original handwritten annotation by Woodthorpe indicates that the portrait was painted from life, near the Zullo (Dzulu) river, in the Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. Dated 19 April 1874. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1914.5.2.83)

‘Submission of Naga Chiefs’ (handwritten caption or title). This original painting, from which various copies derive, shows at its centre Captain John Butler, the British administrator in charge of the Naga Hills District, while also portrayed (standing beside the camera) are Dr Robert Brown, the Political Agent in Manipur, and the artist himself, holding a sketchpad. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1910.45.19)

Hand-coloured reproduction photograph of an original (monochrome) watercolour painting by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. The photograph is dated ‘1874’ and annotated in pencil below the print: ‘Coloured by Capt. Woodthorpe R[.]E.’ (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1910.45.18)

‘Angami of Kigwema’ (handwritten caption). Portrait of an Angami Naga man named ‘Kasakre’, depicted walking, holding two spears and a shield. Watercolour painting by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. The original handwritten annotation by Woodthorpe indicates that the portrait was painted from life, in the village of Piphema, in the Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. Dated 7 December 1873. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1914.5.2.29)

‘Soibang, Vangam of Chopnu (Bor Mutan)’ (handwritten caption). Portrait of a Konyak Naga man named Soibang, the chief or headman (vangam) of the village of Chopnu (Bor Mutan) in the Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. Ink drawing by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. Dated 1875. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1910.45.5.4)

‘Phemi – wife of Soibang’ (handwritten caption). Portrait of a Konyak Naga woman named Phemi, the wife of Soibang, chief of Chopnu in the Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. Ink drawing by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. 1875. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1910.45.5.6)

‘Gateway. Dekha Haimung’ (handwritten caption). Entrance gate to the Ao Naga village of Dekha Haimong, in the Naga Hills District of Assam (now in Nagaland), India. Ink drawing by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. Dated 1875. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1910.45.4.3)

‘Lhota Naga Village and Golgotha’ (published caption). Page of the author’s drawings reproduced in an article by R. G. Woodthorpe, ‘Notes on the Wild Tribes Inhabiting the So-Called Naga Hills, on Our North-East Frontier of India’ (part 2), The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 11 (1882), plate 18, figures 1 and 2.

Sumi (Sema) Naga wooden tail: ‘Wooden tail decorated with black & red-dyed hair & coix-seeds, worn by warriors’ (handwritten caption on catalogue index card). Collected by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe; donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum by Edward Thomas Wilson, May 1909. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1909.21.43)

Angami Naga neck and breast ornament: ‘Ornament for neck & breast of hair[,] cowries & coix seeds: a sign of conspicuous bravery’ (handwritten caption on catalogue index card). Collected by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe; donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum by Edward Thomas Wilson, May 1909. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1909.21.26)

Catalogue index card for an Angami Naga neck and breast ornament: ‘Ornament for neck & breast of hair[,] cowries & coix seeds: a sign of conspicuous bravery.’ (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Accession Number: 1909.21.26)

‘Surveying the Nagas: Visual Representations of India’s Northern Hill-Tribes in the R. G. Woodthorpe Collection’, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 12 November 2018 to 19 May 2019. (Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)

Cabinet card portrait of Colonel Robert Gosset Woodthorpe.

View of an unidentified Naga settlement on a hillside.

Photo of three natives of the Naga Hills

Group portrait of Tangkhul Naga men, standing and sitting, pictured in front of a building.

Page from one of Robert Gosset Woodthorpe’s diaries which contains drawings by him in the margin.

Portrait of an Angami Naga man, depicted standing as he holds two spears and a shield.

‘Submission of Naga Chiefs’ painting showing at its centre Captain John Butler, the British administrator in charge of the Naga Hills District.

Hand-coloured reproduction photograph of the original monochrome watercolour painting by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe.

Portrait of an Angami Naga man named ‘Kasakre’ depicted walking as she holds two spears and a shield.

‘Soibang, Vangam of Chopnu (Bor Mutan)’ Ink drawing by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe.

Phemi, wife of Soibang, Ink drawing by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe.

Entrance gate to the Ao Naga village of Dekha Haimong, in the Naga Hills District of Assam, India. Ink drawing by Robert Gosset Woodthorpe.

‘Page of the author’s drawings reproduced in an article by R. G. Woodthorpe.

Catalogue index card for an Angami Naga neck and breast ornament: ‘Ornament for neck & breast of hair[,] cowries & coix seeds: a sign of conspicuous bravery.’

Overview of the exhibition display at Pitt Rivers Museum.

Acknowledgements and Credits

Exhibition curated by Philip Grover and Thomas Simpson
Conservation by Andrew Hughes
Case design and installation by Jon Eccles
Acrylic mounts by Rebecca Ash, RJA Mountmaking
Special thanks to Ian Cartwright and Nicholas Crowe

You can read an article by co-curator Thomas Simpson on the exhibition’s central themes online here (Blogger/Pitt Rivers Museum Photograph and Manuscript Collections).