"The hill Korwas are the most savage-looking of all the Kolarian
tribes. They are frightfully wild and uncouth in their appearance,
and have good-humouredly accepted the following singular tradition to
account for it. They say that the first human beings that settled in
Sarguja, being very much troubled by the depredations of wild beasts on
their crops, put up scarecrows in their fields, figures made of bamboos
dangling in the air, the most hideous caricatures of humanity that they
could devise to frighten the animals. When the great spirit saw the
scarecrow he hit on an expedient to save his votaries the trouble of
reconstructing them. He animated the dangling figures, thus bringing
into existence creatures ugly enough to frighten all the birds and
beasts in creation, and they were the ancestors of the wild Korwas."
This legend is not peculiar to the Korwas but is also told by the
Halbas, Lodhis and other castes, and is a favourite Brahmanical device
for accounting for the existence of the autochthonous tribes.
"The Korwas," Dalton continues, "are short of stature and dark brown in
complexion, strongly built and active, with good muscular development,
but, as appeared to me, disproportionately short-legged. The
average height of twenty Sarguja Korwas that I measured was 5 feet 3
inches and of their women 4 feet 9 inches only. Notwithstanding the
scarecrow tradition the Korwas are, as a rule, better-looking than
the Gonds and Oraons. The males, I noticed, were more hirsute than
the generality of their cognates, many of them cultivating beards or
rather not interfering with their spontaneous growth, for in truth in
their toilets there is nothing like cultivation. They are as utterly
ungroomed as the wildest animals. The neglected back hair grows in
matted tails which fall behind like badly-frayed ropes, or is massed
in a chignon of gigantic proportions, as preposterous as any that the
present tasteless period has produced; sticking out behind sometimes
a foot from the back of the head.
"The women appear ground down by the hard work imposed on them, stunted
in growth, black, ugly, and wretchedly clad, some having only a few
dirty rags tied round their persons, and in other respects untidy
and unclean."
It is noticeable that the Korwas have a subtribe called Koraku,
and like the Korkus of the Satpura range they are called Muasi, a
term having the meaning of raider or robber. Mr. Crooke thinks that
the Korwas and Korkus are probably branches of the same tribe, but
Sir G. Grierson dissents from this opinion. He states that the Korwa
dialect is most closely related to Asuri and resembles Mundari and
Santali. The Korwas have the honorific title of Manjhi, also used by
the Santals. The Korba zamindari in Bilaspur is probably named after
the Korwas.