Korku

The Korku are the westernmost Munda-speaking people, isolated in the Satpura hills on either side of the Tapti River in southern Madhya Pradesh and northern Maharashtra. Their name combines koro, person, and ku, alive, and their forebears were hunter-gatherers of the Satpura forests before turning to settled cultivation of millet, pulses and wheat.

They are organised into four subsects, the Mawasi being the largest and formerly given to raiding, and into exogamous clans with tree, animal and river totems. In the Mughal age their hills formed the remote forest fringe of the Handia sarkar under Gond chieftains.

After the Marathas took the country in 1742, Korku bands joined the Pindaris in raiding towns such as Harda, which they attacked in the years after 1801. British forces entered the region during the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817.