164 The “ Kols” of Chota-Nagpore. 
and Gangpore, inhabited by Ooriah-speaking Hindoos, to the east 
and north the Bengalee pergunnah of Dhulbhoom and district of 
Manbhoom, and north and north-east the Hindee district of Lohar- 
daggah, and it is occupied by a race totally distinct by descent, 
custom, religion and language from any of the three. A people on 
whose smiling country covetous eyes have often been directed, but 
into which no one ever attempted with impunity to intrude. 
It is impossible to say when the Hos first entered Singbhoom ; but 
as we find that the Chota-Nagpore Moondahs more and more assimilate 
to the Hos, as we approach Singbhoom from Chota-Nagpore, we may 
safely infer that the Hos came originally from that country ; and this 
is their own tradition. They appear to have brought with them and 
retained their system of confederate government by Purhas, but in 
Singbhoom the word now used to express it, is Pirhi or Peer. Thus 
the Colehan is divided into Pirhis, each under a Mankee as chief of 
the Pirhi, and each village having its Moondah as headman. 
According to their own tradition, the Hos displaced a nation of 
Jains settled in the eastern parts of Singbhoom, some remains of 
whom are still extant, and a nation of Bhuyahs from the western and 
southern parts, driving them out of, and appropriating to their own 
exclusive use, the richest part of the country. From these early times, 
probably more than 2,000 years ago, they have proudly held the 
country they acquired; and, in my humble opinion, they have the 
right to say they never submitted to rulers of an alien race, till they 
were forced to do so by the power of the British Empire. 
At the commencement of the present century, Singbhoom was only 
known to the British Government as a country under the rule of 
certain Rajpoot chiefs, all of one family, whose independence, when we 
first occupied the Orissa Provinces, Lord Wellesley promised to respect. 
After the final cession of all the surrounding districts in 1819 these 
chiefs, occupying a territory that embraces the Colehan, voluntarily 
submitted to the British Government, and immediately sought #he 
assistance of that Government in reducing the “‘ Hos” to submission, 
asserting that the Hos were their subjects then in rebellion ; but they 
admitted that for fifty years they had exercised no authority over 
them, and I find no proof that the Hos had at any former period ever 
submitted to them. It is not pretended that they were conquered, 
