Garo

The Garo, who call themselves A·chik Mande, meaning hill people, are a Tibeto-Burman people of the Garo Hills in present-day Meghalaya, speaking a Boro-Garo language, with kin across the border in Mymensingh. Oral tradition traces their migration from Tibet around 400 BC under leaders such as Jappa Jalimpa, across the Brahmaputra to the hills, where villages commonly end in -gre.

Garo society is matrilineal: the youngest daughter inherits household property, men move into the wife's home on marriage, and the clans require exogamous marriage. They traditionally followed the animist Songsarek religion, appeasing spirits with ritual and animal sacrifice, and were known to the plains states as fierce raiders and headhunters whose standing depended on the heads taken.

Mughal armies left accounts of these warlike hill people. Around 1800 East India Company officials did likewise, noting they remained beyond lowland control.