Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/147

 SHEORANEES. (257)

HIS tribe inhabits a wild portion of mountainous country lying on the spurs of the Tukht-i-Suleeman mountain, just without the British boundary. The Sheoranee territory includes the great mountain itself, which gives its name to the range which runs parallel to the Indus for 300 miles, and ends in Sinde. Of these mountains, the portion belonging to the Sheoranees is about fifty miles in length, and of considerable breadth westwards. The Zerkannee pass runs round the base of the Tukht-i-Suleeman, or throne of Solomon, mountain, and is the high and most direct road for caravans to and from Kandahar, and is in the possession of the Sheoranees, who, as a tribe, are entirely independent, and have proved to be very troublesome and annoying neighbours for a series of years. The number of fighting men that could be assembled by them is about 10,000: but these could not be brought together under many days if at all. They can, however, always gather a thousand men together, and on emergent occasions as many as three or four thousand. Under the Sikh Government the tribe was always at feud with the inhabitants and cultivators of the plains, committing continual aggressions, carrying off people for ransom, as well as their flocks and herds, and burning villages. Lands lying near their mountains could not be cultivated, and villages in the plains paid them one-fourth of their produce as black mail. The Sikh Government were entirely unable to check the depredations of this powerful tribe, and up to the period of the annexation of the Punjab there was no relief from, or cessation of, continuous outrages. Nor indeed, after the annexation, did local matters at all improve, and the endeavours of Major Reynell Taylor, the local political officer, to establish peace, were fruitless. In the years 1851, 1852, and 1853, many raids were made by them in force. Police stations and patrols were attacked and cut off, and the alarm and disquietude produced by them became intolerable. In March, 1853, the Sheoranees attacked British troops in force in the plains, and an expedition of 2,500 men, under Brigadier Hodgson, marched against them. On the 30th March the British troops carried