"The Oraons," Colonel Dalton says, "if not the most virtuous, are
the most cheerful of the human race. Their lot is not a particularly
happy one. They submit to be told that they are especially created as
a labouring class, and they have had this so often dinned into their
ears that they believe and admit it. I believe they relish work if
the taskmaster be not over-exacting. Oraons sentenced to imprisonment
without labour, as sometimes happens, for offences against the excise
laws, insist on joining the working gangs, and wherever employed,
if kindly treated, they work as if they felt an interest in their
task. In cold weather or hot, rain or sun, they go cheerfully about it,
and after some nine or ten hours of toil (seasoned with a little play
and chaff among themselves) they return blithely home in flower-decked
groups holding each other by the hand or round the waist and singing."