Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/198

KURUMBA OR KURUMAN time using a strong downward pressure, which naturally brings the palms to the bottom, when they are at once raised to their original position, and the operation continued till the naturally formed tinder ignites."

In his report on Forest Administration in Coorg, 1902-1903, Mr. C. D'A. McCarthy writes as follows concerning the Kurumbas, who work for the Forest department. "We experienced in connection with the Kurumbas one of those apparent aberrations of sense and intellect, the occurrence of which amongst this peculiar race was foreshadowed in the last report. The Chief Commissioner is aware that, in the interests of the Kurubas themselves, we substitute for a single cash payment distributions to the same value of food-grains, clothes and cash, in equal proportions of each. Now, seventy years ago, before the annexation of Coorg, the Kurubas and similar castes were prædial slaves of the dominant Coorgs, receiving no other remuneration for service than food and clothing. In fact, this institution, nothing less than real slavery, was not entirely broken up until the great demand for local labour created by the opening up of the country for coffee cultivation so late as 1860 — 1870, so that the existing generation are still cognisant of the old state of affairs. Last year, during the distribution of rewards for the successful protection of the reserves that season from fire, it seems that the idea was put into the heads of these people that our system of remuneration, which includes the distribution of food and clothing, was an attempt to create again at their expense a system of, as it were, forest slavery; with the result that for a time nothing would induce many of them to accept any form of remuneration for the work already performed, much less to undertake the same duties for the approaching season. It was someitime, and after