This is the tomb of Kaloka, the leader of the Kriçë tribe ,”die Kritze”, near the Tara River in Montenegro. This tribe is first mentioned in the 13th century in the Statute of Urosh in 1260. In battles with the Drobnjak tribe, it is lost and moves to a region beyond Tara, today a lost tribe.

The Kriçi were an Albanian tribe that inhabited the region around the Tara river, corresponding to modern day Mojkovac. Under similar names, the Kriçi are mentioned in historical sources, geographical and ethnological literature. As other pre-Slavic tribes in the region, they eventually assimilated into the Serb ethnos. Some toponyms in Montenegro and surnames are derived from the name of this tribe.[2]

Andrija Ljuburić (1891–1944) describes a folkloric tradition of the Drobnjaks who consider the Kričs to be a brotherhood or branch of the Matarugs. They fought against the first Slavic arrival in Herzegovina, led by their king Sumor. A branch of the Matarugs called Kričs moved as far as the Tara River.

According to the same tradition that speaks of the Matarugi, the Krici broke away and settled in the Tara valley (a river that takes its name from the Autariati). Meanwhile, the Novlans, expanding, reach the same area. Immediately after settling, they encounter armed resistance from the Krici, which is why they lose the war. The Krici impose on them as a condition of peace that the daughter of the Slavic leader marry the son of their leader.

Three years after the wedding, the Slavs invite the groom to a party. In a place where the leader Llapac Kosoric has come out to meet the groom, his daughter and his nephew, when he is about to greet them, he takes out his axe and kills the groom. The other Krici who was accompanying the prince immediately kills the Novlan leader.

Then follow long wars, which unfortunately lean in favor of the Novlans (now known as Drobnjak), who win the war precisely because they are helped by other Slavic tribes around them. The penetration of this tribe continues towards Kolashin in Montenegro, and their presence in northern Kosovo (Zubin Potok) is part of this uninterrupted colonization throughout the centuries.

The Serbian bride has taken her son and returned with him to the clan, where a brotherhood is derived from him but assimilated. The other Kričs who have survived have also been assimilated.

The Kričs in the Durmitor area have the haplogroup J2b1>M205>PF7321>CTS1969>YPS1>Y22075>Y22066, which means that they are not a tribe with the Matarugs, but the tradition that says they were a branch of them, perhaps can testify to the cooperation of these two tribes in the past. The haplogroup in question is autochthonous pre-Slavic.

References

Vlahović 1970, p. 93. Vlahović, Petar (1970). Zečević, Slobodan (ed.). “Screams — the Beginnings of Their Ethnic Stratification”. Gazetteer of the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade (33). Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade. GGKEY:PXCNL8YTPDP.

Ethnological Society of Yugoslavia (1977). Revue d’etnologie. Vol. 14. Ethnological Society of Yugoslavia.