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Updated: June 11, 2025
John Chinn the First gave them written promises that, if they were good from a certain date, the Government would overlook previous offences; and since John Chinn was never known to break his word he promised once to hang a Bhil locally esteemed invulnerable, and hanged him in front of his tribe for seven proved murders the Bhils settled down as steadily as they knew how.
Put it away." One climbed into a tree, and stuck the letter into a cleft forty feet from the ground, where it could do no harm. Warmed, sore, but happy, the ten returned to Jan Chinn next day, where he sat among uneasy Bhils, all looking at their right arms, and all bound under terror of their god's disfavour not to scratch. "It was a good kowl," said the leader.
If the Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did not wander after dark, they would not see him. Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than that he would see the light again in his own country. Send this news south, and say that it is my word." Bukta bowed to the floor. "Good Heavens!" thought Chinn, "and this blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as a die!
When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant execution, they accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing kind of sport, and were zealous to keep the wild Bhils under control. That was the thin edge of the wedge.
"Two heifers a week. We drive them for him at the foot of the hill. It is his custom. If we did not, he might seek us." "Blackmail and piracy," said Chinn. "I can't say I fancy going into the cave after him. What's to be done?" The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with his rifle ready.
It was slow, unseen work, of the sort that is being done all over India to-day; and though John Chinn's only reward came, as I have said, in the shape of a grave at Government expense, the little people of the hills never forgot him. Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended.
No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family usage. The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were their children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest of the many strange races in India. They were, and at heart are, wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions.
Left and right the Bhils had scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse. "My word!" he thought. "He's trying to frighten me!" and fired between the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot. A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the hill, and he followed discreetly.
A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils of old were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices. He was pushed cautiously before the presence; but young Chinn did not look at him. "I said the man that was bound. Is it a jest to bring me one tied like a buffalo?
It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together with many other matters not fit for print, that through five days, after the day that he had put his mark upon them, Jan Chinn the First hunted for his people; and on the five nights of those days the tribe was gloriously and entirely drunk.
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