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The problem  During the nineteenth century, traders and moneylenders started coming
with trade into the forest more often.
 They wanted to buy forest products, offered cash loans, and asked tribal
groups to work for ages

 In the eighteenth century, the demand for Indian silk was high in
European markets.

 The silk market expanded so the East India Company encouraged silk
production.
 The Santhals of Hazaribagh reared cocoons and the traders dealing in
silk gave loans to the tribal people and collected the cocoons.

 The middlemen made huge profits.
The search for
work

 From the late nineteenth century, tea plantations started coming up and
mining became an important industry.

 Tribals were recruited in large numbers to work at the tea plantations of
Assam and the coal mines of Jharkhand.

Some took to  Many tribal groups had begun to settle down instead of moving from
Settled one place to another.
Cultivation  They began to use the plough and gradually got rights over the land
they lived on.
 British officials saw settled tribal groups like the Gonds and Santhals as
more civilized than hunter-gatherers or shifting cultivators.