Abor Hills

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The Abor Hills is a region of Arunachal Pradesh in the far northeast of India, near the border with China. The hills are bordered by the Mishmi Hills and Miri Hills, and drained by the Dibang River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra.

During the British Raj, the hills had a reputation as a troublesome area, and military expeditions were sent against the residents in the 1890s. The region was administered as the Abor Hills District from 1948, with headquarters at Pasighat, but later reorganized into the Lower Dibang Valley and Lohit districts.

The Abor Hills are a tract of country on the north-east frontier of India, occupied by an independent tribe, the Abi people, formerly called the Abors. It lies north of Lakhimpur district, in the province of eastern Bengal and Assam, and is bounded on the east by the Mishmi Hills and on the west by the Miri Hills, the villages of the tribe extending to the Dibong river. The term Abor is an Assamese word, signifying "barbarous" or "independent," and is applied in a general sense by the Assamese to many frontier tribes; but in its restricted sense it is specially given to the above tract, because the Abi were considered to be difficult to control and resistant to centralized authority. In former times they frequently raided the plains of Assam, and have been the object of more than one retaliatory expedition by the British government. In 1893-94 occurred the first Bor Abor expedition. Some military police sepoys were murdered in British territory, and a force of 600 troops was sent, who traversed the Abor country, and destroyed the villages concerned in the murder and all other villages that opposed the expedition. A second expedition became necessary later on, two small patrols having been killed; and a force of 100 British troops traversed the border of the Abor country and punished the tribes, while a blockade was continued against them from 1894 to 1900.

The Abors, together with the cognate tribes of Miris, Daphlas and Akas, are supposed to be descended from a Tibetan stock.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.