IDNO

D.63716.SND

Description

Pencil drawing of a kheddah or wooden stockade for trapping wild elephants. [EB 19/11/2025]

Place

S Asia; India; ? Assam; ? Meghalaya

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Sanderson, George Peress

Date

circa 1875 - 1888

Collection Name

Sanderson Collection

Source

Format

Drawing; Album print

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.63699 to P.63699. are pasted in album now numbered A.139. The collection belongs to G.P. Sanderson, who was an administrative officer, perhaps in Assam from 1866 to the 1890s. It is evident that he was involved in the hunting and training of wild elephants in the Garo Hills. They were probably taken around 1888-90. [SG 5/10/2001]

Bibliographical Reference: Sanderson. G.P. Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India: Their haunts and habits from personal observation, with an account of the modes of capturing and taming elephants. (John Grant, Edinburgh, 1907)
G.P. Sanderson is noted as being "Officer in charge of the Government Elephant Catching Establishment in Mysore." [Full text available on Archive.org, JD 21/1/2014]

Biographical Information: George Peress Sanderson was born in India in 1848, the son of Rev. Daniel Sanderson, who was a Methodist missionary in India from 1842 to 1867.
During his employment with the British Government in India he found time for big game hunting which included tigers, elephants and the Indian Bison. In September 1875, he was put in temporary charge of an elephant catching team of Bengal and worked in the Garo and Chittagong hills. They captured 85 elephants before he returned to Mysore. He introduced a novel way of catching wild elephants for subsequent taming and training in forestry work. Instead of trapping elephants in pits, he tried a method of driving herds into a kheddah, a fenced, ditched enclosure. In September 1875, he was put in temporary charge of an elephant catching team of Bengal and worked in the Garo and Chittagong hills. They captured 85 elephants before he returned to Mysore.
Sanderson died of tuberculois in 1892. [Info source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Sanderson, JD 21/1/2014]