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Updated: June 27, 2025
Many of them could hardly be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers; but in the south, where John Chinn the First was buried, the wildest still clung to the Satpura ranges, cherishing a legend that some day Jan Chinn, as they called him, would return to his own. In the mean time they mistrusted the white man and his ways.
"You know you've an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don't you?" said the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are allowed to look at it on Sundays. "Well, I wasn't sure.
What folly have ye Satpura pigs compassed that ye should need him at all?" "One came to us in the name of the Government with little ghost-knives and a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by the cutting off of our arms. We were greatly afraid, but we did not kill the man. He is here, bound a black man; and we think he comes from the west.
You never saw such a skin in your life." The Colonel tugged his moustache thought-fully. "Now, how the deuce," said he, "am I to include that in my report?" Indeed, the official version of the Bhils' anti-vaccination stampede said nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship. But Bukta knew, and the corps knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura hills knew.
It is supposed to be a clouded animal not stripy, but blotchy, like a tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war or pestilence or or something. There's a nice family legend for you." "What's the origin of it, d' you suppose?" said Chinn. "Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
We know he is awake, but we do not know what he desires. Is it a sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why does Jan Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword?
The sign is not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the love of night-running. He has said it." The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered. "He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has said it to me." "But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?"
But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an even voice answered: "I have come this far only because the Satpura folk are foolish, and dared not visit our lines. Now bid them wait on me here. I am not a servant, but the master of Bhils." "I go I go," clucked the old man. Night was falling, and at any moment Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the darkening scrub.
They carried news that it was good and right to be scratched with ghost-knives; that Jan Chinn was indeed reincarnated as a god of free food and drink, and that of all nations the Satpura Bhils stood first in his favour, if they would only refrain from scratching.
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