Malto

The Malto are the Malto-speaking branch of the Sauria Paharia, a Dravidian hill people of the forested Rajmahal Hills, where Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar meet. Their tongue is closely related to Kurukh, and Kurukh tradition remembers the Malto as a group that split off during a migration from the Son valley and followed the Ganges eastward into the hills.

They lived by shifting cultivation, hunting and gathering, moving village after a bad harvest and raiding the Bihar plains before vanishing back into the forest. Their religion centred on ancestral spirits and nature spirits called Gosain under a sun god.

Santal farmers began moving into the hills in the 1790s, and in 1832 the British government set aside a large tract of the Damin-i-koh for Santal cultivation; the Malto resisted the influx but were pushed into the remoter forests.