Mon Konyak Naga Tattooing Headhunting Opium Chang Heritage

Mon district in northeast Nagaland is the homeland of the Konyak Naga — India's largest Naga tribe and the last headhunters (last recorded head-taking in the 1960s). Konyak men carried facial tattoos (marking head-taking achievements) and wore elaborate hornbill-feather headdresses, brass chest plates, and ivory armbands. The Konyak Chang rice beer and opium (historically traded with Myanmar through the Pangsha corridor) shaped the social economy of Mon's remote villages. Longwa village in Mon sits on the India-Myanmar border — the village chief's house straddles the boundary, with one room in India and another in Myanmar. Mon's forests are the last habitat of the Burmese python, clouded leopard, and the Namdapha flying squirrel in India.