Banjaras were historically pastoralists, traders and transporters of goods on the inland regions of India, for which they used boats, carts, camels, oxen, donkeys and sometimes the relatively scarce horse. The mode of transport depended upon the terrain; for example, camels and donkeys were better suited to the highlands which carts could not negotiate, whilst oxen were able to progress better through wet lowland areas. Their prowess in negotiating thick forests was particularly prized. They often travelled in groups for protection, this "tanda" being led by an elected headman variously described as a "muqaddam", "nayak" or "naik". Such "tandas" usually comprised carriage of one specific product and thus were essentially a combined trade operation. They could be huge assemblies, some being recorded as comprising 190,000 beasts, and they also serviced the needs of armies, whose movements naturally followed the same trade and caravan routes. The Duke of Wellington used them for that purpose in his campaign against the Maratha Confederacy around the late 1790s and Jahangir, a Mughal emperor who reigned in the early seventeenth century, described them as