Their rule is always to camp outside a village at a distance of not
less than a mile. In the rains they make huts with a roof of bamboos
sloping from a central ridge and walls of matting. The huts are built
in one line and do not touch each other, at least a cubit's distance
being left between each. Each hut has one door facing the east. As a
rule they avoid the water of village wells and tanks, though it is not
absolutely forbidden. Each man digs a shallow well in the sand behind
his hut and drinks the water from it, and no man may drink the water
of his neighbour's well; if he should do so or if any water from his
well gets into his neighbour's, the latter is abandoned and a fresh one
made. If the ground is too swampy for wells they collect the water in
their wooden washing-tray and fill their vessels from it. In the cold
weather they make little leaf-huts on the sand or simply camp out in
the open, but they must never sleep under a tree. When living in the
open each family makes two fires and sleeps together between them. Some
of them have their stomachs burned and blackened from sleeping too near
the fire. The Sonjharas will not take cooked food from the hands of
any other caste, but their social status is very low, about equivalent
to that of the parent Gond tribe. They have no fear of wild animals,
not even the children. Perhaps they think that as fellow-denizens of
the jungle these animals are kin to them and will not injure them.