An Onge couple photographed in the 1980s.
The woman's dress is entirely traditional while the man's is
a concession to the Indian photographer's prudery.
9. The Andamanese
A Traditional Society
by George Weber
This chapter deals with Great Andamanese society as it was - or is thought to have been - before the fateful year of 1858, of Onge society as it was before the no less fateful 1950s and of Sentineli and Jarawa society as it is thought to be today still. In short: with traditional Andamanese society. As far as the Great Andamanese are concerned, information on life during the old days reached outside investigators only through the uncertain filter of old peoples' dimming memories. They remembered and retold the talk of their parents at the campfires of their youth. Old peoples' ramblings though they be, they can still shed light on a society of ancient traditions.
Rather less remote are the memories of the old days among the Onge. Since the two societies were sampled half a century to a century apart and by totally different sets of researchers - British colonial administrators there, Indian anthropologists here - is is difficult indeed to reconcile the two sets of accounts and to establish which differences are real and which merely apparent.
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An Onge couple photographed in the 1980s. |
Social life among traditional Andamanese centred on something called, for want of a better word, the local group. This was a village community, albeit a highly nomadic one. It was in their local group that the Andamanese found peace and a secure place in the world, this was where they felt at home. Membership of a tribe had no practical importance; traditional Andamanese had few if any peaceful dealings with people from outside their own immediate neighbourhood. In most cultures, the family fulfils the emotional and physical functions that in Andamanese society were taken up by the local group. Children were readily adopted away from their parents, descent by blood did not interest anyone much and clans were quite unknown. Children were not expected to show more respect to their parents, real or adopted, than they had to show to all older people. It was age that demanded respect above all else.
Local groups were essentially nomadic, Aryoto somewhat more so than Eremtaga. The groups moved from place to place, wherever the most abundant seasonal food supply could be found, spending only the rainy season in the main camps. Rarely staying at one place outside the main camp for longer than a few weeks, each group remained strictly within its own tiny hunting territory. Any trespassing, let alone poaching, on the land of a neighbouring group would have led to immediate and serious problems. Just how ancient the local groups, their regular trails and campsites could be is shown by the kitchen midden that dot the Andamanese countryside. These are heaps of domestic refuse accumulated when a local group occupied the same site for a period of time year after year for countless generations. The midden are our only source of reliable information about the pre-1858 Andamanese and we shall look more closely at their evidence when we deal with the prehistory of the islands.
Midden were not just piles of domestic refuse that became useful platforms on which to build camps when they had reached a certain size. Their size also reflected the hunting and gathering prowess of the owning group and as such were a source of local pride, serving as a unmistakable markers to the surrounding hunting territory. The symbolic value of a large midden was further strengthened by a link to the group's ancestors by the custom, especially among Onge, to bury their dead or some bones from them under their communal huts, i.e. in the midden. Local pride in their kitchen-midden faded among the Great Andamanese after the 1860s and among Onge after the 1920s with the introduction of the dog. Dogs allowed even the most inept hunter to catch more than enough pigs and made the bow and arrow almost redundant. We find here that helping a primitive group become more efficient can destroy pride in its achievements, undermining the self-confidence necessary for long-term survival.
The size of local groups has been estimated at between 30 and 50 men, women and children. Each was made up of a few families consisting of father, mother and their unmarried children at the core with unmarried older spinsters and bachelors, widows and widowers and the occasional waif and stray on the fringe. The average group owned a territory of around 40 sq.km (16 sq. miles) while the average tribe consisted of 10 local groups. People were free to leave their own group to take up residence with another and this seems to have been quite a common occurrence. Newly-weds could take up residence wherever they wished: at the local group of the bride or the bridegroom or with any other local group that would accept them. Such movement between friendly local groups was easy but it was normally limited to neighbouring groups. Emigration outside the neighbourhood may have taken place in the old days but must have been rare. A crossing from Aryoto to Eremtaga or across tribal borders would have been unthinkable.
The traditional Andamanese aborigine had a very limited geographical horizon. Members of one group were unaware of the existence of other groups living as little as 30 km (20 miles) away. The ignorance of the traditional Andamanese (apart from the Onge) of their island geography was profound: they knew and cared only about their own hunting grounds and those of their neighbours. The Andamanese seem to have been quite unconscious of being one people and there was no fellow-feeling towards other Andamanese. Quite the contrary, in fact. If a member of one tribe found himself accidentally adrift in his canoe, fetching up on the beach of another tribe, his goose would as surely be cooked as if he had been a shipwrecked British sailor: he would be killed. A feeling of belonging together would only come to the Andamanese after the outsiders and their diseases had cut the ground from under all of them.
The local groups did not have their own names but instead were known by the area they occupied. This could be a major land feature, a hill, a rock, a creek, an island or the name of the main camp-site. For example, a local group of the Aka-Bale tribe living on the island of Teb-juru was known as the Teb-juru-wa, with -wa meaning "people". The northern equivalent of wa was koloko but the system of naming local groups was the same. A local group of the northern Aka-Bo tribe that lived on a creek (buliu) called Terant was known, with irresistible logic, Terant-buliu-koloko. Of 58 place names that could be translated, 39 referred to trees and plants, 12 to topographic features and 7 to socio-cultural aspects. In the old days, it would have been very rare to come across a person from an unknown local group so that the names of local groups became useful only after 1858 when people started to move around and had to identify themselves to strangers.
Several communities at peace with each other and connected by ties of friendship and matrimony, whose members knew and trusted each other and whose ancestors over many generations had done likewise, formed a higher-level grouping, the sept. Social contacts within a sept were frequent and close. Groups met for feasting, dancing and the exchange of gifts, while children were often adopted out to other local groups within the sept where their biological parents could visit them.
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The traditional Onge greeting appropriate for a long-absent husband or close friends . |
The traditional Andamanese had a carefully graded standard scale of friendly-to-hostile attitudes towards others:
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Degree of friendliness |
Traditionally thought appropriate |
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most friendly |
within the local group and family |
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friendly |
within septs (traditional ties of friendship) |
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courteous |
within the tribe as long as the Aryoto-Eremtaga line is not crossed and the other person is known |
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reserved |
across the Aryoto-Eremtaga line, whether within the same tribe or not and provided the other person is known |
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suspicious and unfriendly |
across tribal lines and provided the other person is known |
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hostile (often violently so) |
towards all unknown persons, whether Andamanese or not |
It was more tradition, an established and known position in society, rather than personal spontaneous likes and dislikes that determined conduct towards others. Not to be known and without somebody well-known to introduce him or her, could place any stranger in mortal danger. With their friendliness-rating like an impersonal computer program at the back of traditional Andamanese minds, shipwrecked sailors never stood a chance. Among Jarawa the same schematic way of treating strangers is still very much alive today. We have mentioned in a previous chapter how Indian anthropologists through patient efforts and much gift-giving had over the years established a sort of friendship with two Jarawa groups. Although these groups were "tamed" to a degree, any stranger who had the bad luck to chance upon them would be placed in a very dangerous position, especially if he did not immediately offer lots of presents. New faces were safe only if accompanied by someone familiar. Policemen had accompanied parties of anthropologists and some became well-known and liked by the Jarawa. In the 1980s and 1990s, after retirement, a few of these guardians of law and order established lucrative businesses bringing tourists to the Jarawa to shake hands and be photographed. Such illegal practices dramatically increase the risk of disease among the Jarawa and will undoubtedly hasten the demise of these groups. Even the rare Western tourists, despite their alien appearance and light skin colour, are readily accepted by the Jarawa as long as the beturbanned ex-policeman come along and as long as presents are handed out.
Among groups in close touch with outsiders, the standard friendliness-rating did not long survive 1858. We cannot say whether the Greater Andamanese of the later 19th century "really" liked their British masters, especially since there were only a few exceptional individuals among the British and virtually none among the convicts who took an informed and sympathetic interest in the aboriginal population. The Andamanese no doubt respected and greatly feared their colonial masters, their guns and superior technology. Doubtlessly they also disliked the ordinary British sailor and soldier for the incurable habit of pilfering anything moveable from any Andamanese village visited. As regards the mostly Indian or Burmese convicts that made up the main population of the islands, the Andamanese developed a new standard friendliness-rating.
The revised standard friendliness scale of the Greater Andamanese after 1858:
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Degrees of friendliness |
Thought appropriate |
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friendly |
Andamanese Burmese |
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pretending to be friendly |
British |
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openly unfriendly |
Muslims Hindus |
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A Jarawa couple's reunion. |
The remarkable ceremonial of greeting and the copious tears shed has attracted attention and comment from many observers. The Andamanese did not and still do not lightly show their social emotions. There were no special words for ordinary greetings like the English "hello" or "how-do-you-do." When two Andamanese met who had not seen each other for a while, they first stared wordlessly at each other for minutes. So long could this initial silent staring last that some outside observers who saw the beginning of the ceremony but not its continuation came away with the impression that the Andamanese had no speech. The deadlock was broken when the younger of the two made a casual remark. This opened the doors to an excited exchange of news and gossip. If the two were related, the older would sit down and the younger sit on his lap, then the two would cuddle and huddle while weeping profusely. If they had not seen each other for a long time, the weeping could go on for hours. In the eyes of outside observers, the embracing and caressing could seem amorous but in fact the ceremony had no erotic significance whatsoever. Kisses were not part of the repertoire of caresses; only children received kisses as a sign of affection. Greater Andamanese greeting ceremonies were loudly demonstrative, their weeping often turning into howls that could be heard, as was intended, far and wide. The Onge were less exuberant and were satisfied with the of a few quiet tears and with caressing each other. If there were many people, greeting returning hunters that had been absent longer than expected or meeting unusual visitors, etiquette required that the large mass of people should not cry until several hours after the arrival. When the howling started, it could go on all night. When more than a few people met, the initial staring was dispensed with. The following description of a larger ceremony dates to 1870:
Crying signifies with them reconciliation with enemies, or joy at meeting an old friend or acquaintance from whom they have been parted. Should two tribes [septs or local groups] meet, the newcomers have to commence, and the women have the priority in weeping; subsequently the men take it up, whilst it becomes the duty of the hosts to reciprocate in the same manner; first the females weeping and afterwards the males, occasionally the performance cannot be completed in one night, especially should the parties have been long separated, it may even be continued through several successive days. After the crying has been completed, dancing begins.
Crying for grief or for joy was known in traditional Andamanese society as in any other human society. The peculiar Andamanese greeting ceremony, beside its ritual and social significance, was the expression of a sudden overwhelming feeling of affection. The ceremony itself had the function of affirming and strengthening the social bond of friendship between individuals and groups.
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The traditional Great Andamanese farewell: a man says good-bye to his friend by lifting his hand a blowing on it . Staged photograph to illustrate the custom, by M.V. Portman, 1880s. |
The hunting ground (which among Aryoto groups also included fishing grounds) was the local group's most valuable, indeed its only, possession. It was held in common. The territory provided its members with all the essentials of life. Not surprisingly since the group's survival depended on it, the rights to the land were fiercely defended. So strong was the claim to the ancestral hunting grounds that as late as the early 20th century permission to hunt had to be sought from the owning group even if one frail old survivor was all that was left of it. In happier days, each member of the local group had the right to hunt and gather on the land held by his or her local group. Most borders between territories had been fixed from time immemorial; they were immutable and known to all. Trespassing and poaching could lead to bloody and sometimes long-lasting feuds between neighbours. As we have seen, the relationship between the richer Aryoto and the poorer Eremtaga was at best an uneasy one because the latter could not always resist the temptation the formers' richer territories presented. Generally speaking, borders separating Aryoto and Eremtaga groups were less well-defined than others and seem to have still been in the long drawn-out process of being sorted out through feuds and agreements - until 1858 made it all irrelevant. Local groups had carved up practically all the territory of the Andaman archipelago among themselves, only a few areas like Saddle Peak were avoided by all. In some places long-forgotten border disputes left traces of what must have been negotiated peace accords: there were areas over which two groups could hunt, others where one group had the hunting and another the gathering rights while at still other places two groups could hunt and gather at different times of the year.
The economic life of the traditional local group has been called a sort of communism and yet it was based on the notion of private property. With so few possessions to go round, the concept of private property did not acquire the overwhelming importance that it has in wealthier societies. There was no accumulation of property and practically no difference in wealth between individuals. In such circumstances theft was naturally rare but when one had been committed, it was a serious matter. Private property in traditional Andamanese society was limited to the portable items that each person had made for himself or herself, i.e. bow and arrows, harpoons, pots, nets, ropes and the like. A canoe was made in cooperation by several men under the direction of the owner who would later be obliged in return to help his helpers make their own canoes. In a village, each family erected and kept in repair their own hut. Communal huts were built in cooperation by several families while each family would then live in and be responsible for the upkeep of its own section.
During a successful hunt, the man whose arrow or harpoon had struck the quarry first was its owner. The person who found a beehive only became the owner if he or she climbed up the tree and brought the honeycombs down. The same principle applied to whatever a person could kill, catch, dig up or gather within the tribe's hunting grounds. The lucky owner of any foodstuff was expected to share with those who had little or nothing. While a married man could keep the best parts of his catch for himself and his family, bachelors were expected to distribute most of theirs to the older people. The result was a relatively even spread of the available food through the local group. Generosity towards the members of one's own local group and to friends outside was highly valued. Private property was also respected within the family, neither husband nor wife being free to dispose of the partner's private property.
A more abstract ownership and even something like copyright was also known. Any member of the local group could notify the others that a tree within the group's territory was to be reserved for him because he wished to make a canoe out of its trunk; such claims were respected by the others for years if the owner did not get round to his project immediately. Some men were also reported to have possession of certain fruit trees from which nobody could take fruit without permission and from which the owner expected his share of the picking. Such rights seem somehow alien in the context of traditional Andamanese culture. We do not know whether women could own trees nor do we know how and when the men's rights originated.
The Andamanese copyright was remarkable: songs were specially composed for large gatherings and those that had been successful with the fickle public would on request be repeated at later gatherings. All rights to such stone-age hit songs were reserved by the composer and no one except him (rarely her) was allowed to sing it. If anyone else tried without permission, it would have been regarded as theft. Andamanese songs were highly monotonous and very similar to each other musically. The creative work was in the words.
There was no concept of trade in our sense. In everyday life, a system of gift giving took the place of trade, leading to the mutual obligations that were a mainstay of traditional Andamanese society. Not only on special occasions but even during the daily life of a local group, presents were constantly exchanged. All moveable goods, including canoes and even the skulls of ancestors, could be given away. No one was free to refuse a gift offered. It would also have been the height of bad manners to have refused someone an article that had been requested. However, for every gift received something of roughly equal usefulness or value had to be given in return. Items could pass quite rapidly from person to person and, at least after 1858, could cross tribal borders. A person carrying an ancestral skull around the neck need not necessarily have any idea who the original owner of the skull had been or where the object had come from. The Andamanese saw the exchange of gifts as a moral obligation, as a means to spread friendly feelings and to keep friendships and alliances in good working order. That they could also have a practical value was of secondary importance to them. Eremtaga groups without access to the sea could acquire turtle shells or turtle fat while iron looted from shipwrecks was spread far and wide over the archipelago.
Gift giving was not always a simple matter, however, and since Murphy's law worked in Andamanese as well as in any other human society, things that could go wrong did go wrong. When the return gift did not come up to the sometimes inflated expectations of the original giver, quarrels and feuds could arise.
It was not until the 1880s that the Greater Andamanese had learnt to sell items such as bows and arrows to outsiders in return for money with which they could buy the items they craved but could not make themselves, such as sugar, tobacco or tea. At the same time some also began to perform traditional dances or sold locks of their hair for money. Nevertheless, the Greater Andamanese never really understood the concept of money and trade. All too often their commercial naivety was shamelessly taken advantage of but this did not seem to upset them. In 1867 the authorities tried to stop the exploitation by forbidding trade between outsiders and Andamanese. Prohibition did not work and business was back to normal soon. The Onge of the 1950s were playing the commercial game more astutely: one scientist who was trying to acquire two canoes for museum collections complained bitterly about the ruthless bargaining he was subjected to. There is a strong suspicion that the Onge may have traded, perhaps for centuries, with Chinese and others, diving for valuable sea shells in return for alcohol and opium. The outsiders would have regarded this as payment for the Onge's work while the Onge themselves would have regarded it as an exchange of gifts. Compared to the other Andamanese groups, a long tradition of contact and trade with the outside world would go some way to explain the Onge's adaptability towards British and later Indian outsiders, their greater commercial sense, their consistent peaceful attitude after the initial period of hostility as well as their more adventurous attitude towards the sea.
The possibility that at least some Great Andamanese groups practiced what is known as "silent trade" has been mooted and there is indeed some indirect evidence but no definitive proof. It should be noted that a society of complete hunter-gatherers is largely self-sufficient and is not under any great pressure to trade with the outside world. Traditional Andamanese are known to have been greedy for iron for a long time but their survival did not depend on the metal. If they could not get it, they had alternative traditional technologies to fall back on.
The daily routine in the succession of temporary camps that was traditional Andamanese life was dominated by the women. The men were too often away on hunting trips during the day to play an active part in camp life. The weather had to be inclement indeed to keep them from going out to hunt and in really bad weather not much could be done around the camp anyway. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Andamanese male traditionally shirked work in camp.
Visiting friends in other local groups was a major source of pleasure for traditional Andamanese. Visits by a single person or a whole family could take place at any time of the year but tended to concentrate on the months of the year between December and May when the weather was calm and stable. Married couples naturally wished to visit the local group in which one partner was born but in which they had chosen not to live. Parents of children adopted away also were keen to pay a visit and to see how their children were getting on. Hospitality towards friends was an important duty so that such visitors were sure to receive an enthusiastic welcome and the best food available.
More formal social gatherings, called jeg, were organized by influential individuals who decided on a time and place and who sent out the invitations by messenger. The host group was responsible for housing and feeding the guests. For the first few hours after their arrival, all would feel a little shy and awkward, a feeling not unknown at similar gatherings in more advanced civilizations. Visitors and guests then exchanged gifts such as clay for body painting, bows and arrows, baskets etc. This was a delicate moment when the diplomatic abilities of the presiding chief could be tested to their limits. If a quarrel broke out it would diminish respect for the man in charge if he could not quietly and discreetly defuse the situation. With the highly excitable Andamanese temperament and a tendency to take offence at the slightest provocation, any gathering was potentially explosive. Larger meetings often were called to put the official seal on the reconciliation after an old quarrel had been settled. A chief could gain much additional influence and respect from running a successful meeting but he could also ruin his position if something went seriously wrong. Some meetings of reconciliation ended as the starting point of a new feud.
We have seen that the Andamanese were individualists and not inclined to take orders from a person they did not respect. No one commanded and no one obeyed. It all had to be voluntary or required by tradition, there being nothing like a structure of government. Chiefs existed but had no power to enforce their will on anyone; they were only men of influence. A chief reached his position through strength of character; heredity played no role whatever. A headman had to rely exclusively on respect and reputation to keep his followers in line and loyal. Decisions were taken by all grown-up older men with the older women given a considerable voice as well. Younger people were expected to show respect towards their elders and their opinions counted for less but they were free to voice them and were listened to. The final decision was taken by general consent among the older members of the group. It was the headman alone, however, who directed the movements of hunting parties and who made all decisions that had to be taken quickly on the spot. He was also in charge of the meetings and festivities. Some headmen, again exclusively by strength of character, rose to be heads of a whole sept and even of a group of septs. None could acquire headship over an entire tribe, however, if that tribe was split into Aryoto and Eremtaga sections since none of these groups would accept a headman from the other section. The power a high-level headman could yield was limited by his personality as much as it had been at a lower level. Tradition prevented women from becoming chiefs, however strong their character but the wife of a headman enjoyed the same position relative to the women that her husband had with the men.
The British, military men and colonial administrators to whom a strictly hierarchical regime was second nature, understandably took a dim view of this unfamiliar, formless, almost democratic non-government. After looking in vain for chiefs with the sort of authority a chief was expected to have over his subjects, they solved their administrative problem by creating a system of chieftainships and by appointing intelligent and trustworthy natives to the position of "rajas" as intermediaries between natives and colonial authorities. The Indian title of raja (king) was rather preposterous for such local appointees but it caught on. The Andamanese did not readily accept the authority of the new rajas but followed them of their own free will if they could gain their respect. Most rajas were, in fact and unsurprisingly, the traditional local headmen.
The Andamanese system of social ranking was based very strongly on age. Old people, men and women, had to be shown respect. They received the best pieces of any hunting success of younger men and they made all the important decision affecting the group. It was also they who made and unmade chiefs. Old men took the most beautiful of the younger women as wives as we have already seen - with entirely predictable effects on the birth rate. In many way traditional Andamanese society functioned as a gerontocracy. Considering the relatively heavy burden that the old put on the young, it is surprising how little grumbling there was among the victims of the system even when traditional society was disintegrating in the second half of the 19th century. We know nothing about the thoughts of young people during the old days but we can safely assume that they took it for granted, consoling themselves with the thought that in the fullness of time they would reach the same privileged position. The duty that one person owed another was not so much governed by the degree of relatedness or marriage as by relative age. What duties a child owed to his parents or a man and woman to his or her older siblings differed little from what the same persons owed to any other person of comparable relative age. Relationships between child and parents had, of course, a somewhat different quality from other relationships but the peculiar system of adoptions shows that this difference at least from age six upwards should not be over-estimated. Most societies, primitive or advanced, have high respect for the old but few have carried the principle to such lengths.
While social status was very closely connected with age, there were other ways to gain a better position in society. Hunting prowess was high on the list for men but generosity and kindness towards members of the local group and other friends (but never to outsiders) was also highly esteemed in both sexes. A person with a violent temper, on the other hand, was feared but not respected. A chief bursting out in a fit of bad temper would make everyone run for cover - but he diminished his own authority which he would later find difficult to re-establish.
The grip of tradition was tight in the Andamans but it was their own tradition, they were happy with it. Everybody was left with a considerable margin of individual freedom and the work that had to be done was done communally and was rarely arduous. There was no harsh compulsion, just the gentle if insistent tug of tradition. The hunt was as much pleasure, the gathering as much social event as they were work and necessity. Many well-meaning outside officials working with the Andamanese pitied the "poor creatures" and patronized them in their "wretched and miserable condition." They felt duty-bound to improve them, by force if necessary, thereby involuntarily hastening the extinction of the race. For their own part, the Andamanese tried to avoid being drawn into alien ways of life. All those groups who did not or could not keep their distance are now either extinct or heading that way. The traditional Andamanese, embedded in their largely undisturbed society, did not see their condition as wretched. It is hard to blame the Andamanese when they refused a life, however civilized, of paid drudgery in fields, plantations or factories. Even worse, in many ways, was the option of receiving free government handouts with nothing left to do. The Andamanese were (and the Jarawa and Sentineli certainly still are today even if we cannot ask them) quite satisfied with the lifestyle that had been good enough for their ancestors for untold millennia. It was not paradise but it was home. Only with the onslaught of epidemics and the disintegration of their society did the word "wretched" begin to fit reality.
One sad and revealing Indian photograph dated to around 1980 shows a number of Onge plantation workers sitting on felled logs during a break in their work. No less sad and revealing is a British description of the Andamanese playing the amusing fools at a social event of fashionable colonial society at Port Blair 1885:
Several Andamanese lads have been taught to wait at table, and proved both useful and handy at such duties, behaving with most becoming gravity, as if, indeed, they had been to the manner born! It is a somewhat absurd sight to see these jet-black imps dressed in white, with their arms crossed and head thrown back, standing like statues behind their masters' chairs, watchful to fulfil any service required. When a dance had been given in the settlement it has been amusing to watch them in the balconies endeavouring to vie with their masters' performances in valse [waltz], polka, and galop: I have seen them, after taking note of the step, select their partners (all boys) and set to work, thinking evidently that it is part of the sport for each couple to cannon against another!
The same author then closes his book about the Andamanese with the following observation:
But though the Andamanese can thus in a measure enter into and enjoy civilised employments and amusements, the instincts of savage life, with its unrestrained freedom of action, generally prove in the end too strong for them, and they are carried, by an apparently irresistible impulse, back to their jungle homes, where they resume their aboriginal customs and habits.
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