The Bhils have now had to abandon their free use of the forests,
which was highly destructive in its effects, and their indiscriminate
slaughter of game. Many of them live in the open country and have
become farmservants and field-labourers. A certain proportion are
tenants, but very few own villages. Some of the Tadvi Bhils, however,
still retain villages which were originally granted free of revenue
on condition of their keeping the hill-passes of the Satpuras open
and safe for travellers. These are known as Hattiwala. Bhils also
serve as village watchmen in Nimar and the adjoining tracts of the
Berar Districts. Captain Forsyth, writing in 1868, described the
Bhils as follows: "The Muhammadan Bhils are with few exceptions a
miserable lot, idle and thriftless, and steeped in the deadly vice
of opium-eating. The unconverted Bhils are held to be tolerably
reliable. When they borrow money or stock for cultivation they seldom
abscond fraudulently from their creditors, and this simple honesty
of theirs tends, I fear, to keep numbers of them still in a state
little above serfdom." [346]