Text8

 

8. The Andamanese

 

The Tribes

by George Weber

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The Andamanese Negrito

Chapter 1 has already given a
very brief overview of the four distinct groups of Andamanese
Negrito. Here we will go into more detail and add a historical
dimension. We have mentioned the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the
Jarawa, the Jangil and the Sentineli, without explaining what these
groups are (or were), how they differ from each other and how they
might be related.

Firstly, it should be made clear that the Andamanese “tribes” are
not tribes in the way the term is normally understood is ethnological
and anthropological literature: the Andamanese tribes had very little
power structure, they had “chiefs” only in times of trouble, they had
no tribally-owned territory, no clans and not much in the way of
revered common tribal ancestors. Indeed, it is easier to define the
Andamanese tribes by what they are not, rather than by what they are
(or were).

Basically, each Andamanese “tribe” is merely a collection of
independent local groups that speak the same language, share a common
culture and tradition and are bound to each other by bonds of family
and tradition. There is no tribal territory, only a number of hunting
territories each owned by a local group. The Andamanese were fully
aware of the linguistic basis of their “tribes”. All Greater Andaman
tribal names contain the prefix Aka-, Akar-, A- or Oko-. In the
various tribal languages these meant “from the mouth” or “language.”
A member of the Akar-Bale tribe, therefore, was someone coming from
the tribe speaking the Bale language.

 

 

 

Andamanese tribal societies were first disrupted by the British
and the penal colony they set up there in 1858 in the wake of the
“Great Mutiny” of northern India. During the later 19th century and
until the 1930s, the penal settlement was used for all sorts of
people from criminals to politicians opposed to British rule in
India. The effect on the Andamanese was dramatic and wholly
destructive, as the following map illustrates

 

The first outsiders to take a scientific interest in the
Andamanese and to record their findings were not aware of the
existence of any sub-divisions among them. The Andamanese were
thought to be one large tribe, all speaking the same language. It
took the permanent settlement of 1858 for the British to realize that
this was not so. Much of what had at first been thought to be
unpredictable behaviour – friendly one day and hostile the next –
turned out in the light of growing knowledge to have been contact
with more or less closely related but quite separate and independent
groups. Initially, every newly-discovered group was called a “tribe.”
When more and more were found, confusion reigned for a few decades
until it was realized that there was a complex hierarchy of
groupings.

At least among the Great Andamanese, the hierarchy of groups
started with the nuclear family at the bottom and went up through the
local group (a few families ) through the “sept” (a few local groups)
to the largest unit known to the Andamanese, the “tribe” (a
collection of septs, sometimes friendly, sometimes quarrelling with
each other at times). Early literature is full of confused references
to local groups, septs and tribes, the terms often used
interchangeably. We discuss these social units in more detail in the
following chapters. The separate and extinct subdivision of tribes
into Aryoto (shore dwellers) and Eremtaga (forest dwellers) groups
will be dealt with later in this chapter. Suffice it to say that
because of the very limited geographical mobility of individuals
living within their local groups, traditional life took place almost
entirely within remarkably restricted geographical limits. The
enormous productivity of plant and animal life exploited by the
traditional Andamanese made this possible over, we think, tens of
thousands of years.

Among the other three major groups – the Onge, the Jarawa, the
Jangil and the Sentineli – a similar hierarchy may operate (or have
operated) but details are sketchy and known with any certainty only
for the Onges. Among the Onge the hierarchy seems to be simpler than
it had been among traditional Great Andamanese groups. The Onge, for
example, never separated into different linguistically different
“tribes” as the Great Andamanese did. The Jarawa also may be
organised rather like the Onge while nothing whatsoever is known
about the way the Jangil have grouped and Sentineli still group
themselves.

The languages of the Great Andamanese tribes form a “linguistic
continuum” – each language is relatively closely related to its
geographical neighbours on either side of a long line of languages,
with languages further apart also being further apart linguistically.
The two languages at the extreme ends of the continuum (Aka-Bea and
Aka-Cari) were mutually unintelligible. Such a continuum is known
from other societies and is an indication of a very long and
undisturbed settlement of the area by the groups involved.

There is not much to be gained by listing local groups and septs
within the different tribes. The lists compiled by early researchers
were necessarily incomplete and by the 1890s the accessible Great
Andamanese groups were rapidly dissolving. None of the Onge-Jarawa
groups had at that time been studied in any depth and even today
their internal structuring is far from clear. It is also conceivable
that there have been entire tribes that died out from disease before
they could be discovered and recorded. The Jangil discussed later in
this chapter seem to be such a case, and there could have been
others.

As a purely linguistic and cultural entity, the traditional tribe
was not an entity of great relevance in the daily life of a
traditional community before the 1860s. When communication,
intermarriage and travel between the tribes increased under the
impact of the rapidly growing British-Indian cultural influence,
membership of a tribal group assumed greater importance. In 1980 of
the 23 surviving Great Andamanese persons (all of mixed
Indian/Burmese/Andamanese ancestry) one person each claimed Aka-Cari,
Aka-Kora, A-Pucikwar and Akar-Bale while three claimed Aka-Bo and the
remainder Aka-Jeru tribal affiliations. Because of intermarriage
between Indians and Burmese as well as between different Andamanese
tribes, these claims had little cultural meaning but were (and today
still are) a source of pride in their own history and tradition on
the part of a people on the edge of extinction. The language of the
present-day Great Andamanese is a mixture of a number of Great
Andamanese languages (especially Aka-Jeru), Hindi and English that is
called “Andamanese”, “New Aka-Jeru” or “Jero”.

There is also a grouping above the tribe: on the one hand, there
were the ten Great Andamanese tribes and on the other hand the four
tribes of the Jarawa-Onge group. The only place where these groups
were in direct contact with each other at the time the first British
researchers showed up in the 19th century was in the southern part of
Great Andaman. The meeting of the two groups was not friendly: the
Aka-Bea and the Jarawa seem to have slaughtered each other in a
bitter jungle war that may have been going on for a long time,
perhaps centuries, before the British arrived.

There is some genetic evidence that the Andamanese have been
largely isolated from the rest of humanity (though not necessarily
living on the Andaman islands all the time) for 60,000 years. Around
30,000 years ago, there appears to have bee some mixing with another
group (again, maybe not yet on the islands). Whether the two main
groups (Great Andamanese and Onge-Jarawa) represent this partial
merging 30,000 years ago is an open question. For more details see
Chapter 6 (especially Endicott et
al.). If it does, it means that one of the two groups (most likely
the Great Andamanese) were already settled on the islands when the
ancestors of the Onge-Jarawa arrived. Much more research is needed
before these questions can be answered with any certainty. What makes
answering the questions important is the fact that the Andamanese are
among the oldest (if not the oldest) surviving group of living
humans. What can be found out about their prehistory and origins is
of great interest and relevance to the prehistory and origins of
mankind as a whole.

The differences between the Andamanese groups at all levels groups
that were found in the 19th century must have evolved more or less in
situ over a long period of time. It seems likely that, once the
ancestors of at least the Andamanese had arrived in the islands, the
various groups diverged more and more while staying in roughly the
same place. We will discuss these and other questions relating to
Andamanese origins and prehistory in later chapters.

The differences between the Onge language on the one hand and the
Great Andamanese languages on the other are considerable. A
vocabulary of several hundred Onge words was found to share less than
a dozen common roots and stems with the Great Andamanese. The
relationship also is not obvious and can be brought to light only by
a detailed linguistic analysis. Although clearly related in varying
degrees, the tribal languages were (and those surviving today still
are) quite distinct and separate languages. They should not be called
“dialects”. Linguistic change in static societies is slow and there
cannot have been many societies more static and long-lived than those
of the Andamanese. On linguistic grounds alone, therefore, the tribes
must be ancient. They differ not only linguistically but also in many
cultural details: from the form of their huts, their bows and arrows,
their canoes, their ornaments, their utensils, their traditions. In
the following chapters we shall try to explain some of the more
obvious and important differences between them.

 

The Great
Andamanese

It is conventional practice to classify the Great Andamanese into
two or three groups: the northern and the southern groups with
sometimes a middle group added. This classification is convenient but
is based on geography rather than linguistic or cultural criteria.
The ten tribes of this group clearly and obviously form one related
group.

As mentioned above, the Great Andamanese languages form a
linguistic continuum from north to south with neighbouring languages
more closely related than those further away from each other. The
Aka-Bea and Akar-Bale languages were closest, being mutually
intelligible to some extent. It is known that the two tribes felt
closely related and the names they had for each other (as listed in
the table below) confirm this. While most Great Andamanese tribes had
practically no contact with each other, the two southernmost tribes
are known to have had what in Andamanese circumstances must be called
intensive relations before 1858. It is possible that we have here an
example of a tribe in an early stage of the process of splitting into
two smaller tribes.  

At the other extreme within the Great Andamanese grouping, the
differences between Aka-Bea in the south and Aka-Cari in the far
north were substantial and the two languages – in the unlikely event
of individuals meeting before 1858 – were mutually
unintelligible.

The differences between the Great Andamanese languages involved
mostly the vocabulary and pronunciation rather than grammar and
syntax. The myths and legends of all the Great Andaman tribes also
give the same picture: they differed in many details but were
recognizably from the same stock. The so-called Wot-a-emi legend is
particularly interesting. The legend related the belief (common to
the tribes living around the A-Pucikwar: the Aka-Bea, Akar-Bale,
Aka-Kol and Aka-Kede) that the fire was acquired from the mythical
being Biliku at Wot-a-emi on Baratang Island in A-Pucikwar territory.
The A-Pucikwar were regarded as the original tribe and they were
called “the people who speak Andamanese.” Our sources do not name the
tribes that did not know of this legend – it could hardly have been
current among those who were not aware of the A-Pucikwar’s
existence.

 Names some Great Andamanese tribes had for each other:

 

It does seem that the Great Andamanese had a seemingly
irrepressible tendency to split into ever smaller units. Before the
British arrived, there was little contact between the various tribes.
Each tribe resembled a self-contained, self-sufficient and rather
self-satisfied club with membership figures of between 200 and 700.
Yet even these tiny tribelets managed to split still further into the
minuscule sub-groups of jungle-dwelling and shore-dwelling septs that
did not mix much The possible existence of a third sub-group of
creek-dwellers within the Eremtagas, might indicate that at least the
forest dwellers were in the process of splitting up still further.
Whatever was happening to the tribes before 1858, that fateful year
changed everything.

One is left to wonder just how far the Great Andamanese, had they
been left to their own devices, would have carried the process of
splitting. Taken to its ultimate degree, it would have meant the
self-extinction of the race. Their often violent dislike of
outsiders, of things foreign and of having their traditional way of
life disturbed in any way was an adaptation that had been successful
for thousands of years at preventing outsiders from overrunning the
islands. While such xenophobia would have been a useful defensive
adaptation, it may well have grown out of control to the point when
the “we and they” among Andamanese groups became so restricted that
it excluded all but the members of the local group and a few friendly
neighbouring groups. We do not how how these attitudes developed but
it was what the British found in 1858.

I is true that among Greater Andamanese, local groups situated
directly at the tribal border show some evidence of cross-border
traffic but nothing is known on the nature of such contacts. We have
a brief report on linguistic seepage across tribal borders, colouring
the local dialect on either side of it – no more.

Very little is known, too, about the cultural differences between
the ten Great Andamanese tribes. Best known from the writings of Man
and Portman are the Aka-Bea. Later researchers investigating the
northern tribes could only salvage what they could from groups that
were close to dissolution. Radcliffe-Brown, our major source for the
northern tribes, was primarily interested in presenting his
interpretation of the available evidence and only secondarily in the
collection of new data. He tended to refer to the northern tribes as
a whole, showing more interest in what they had in common than it
what divided them. To the Greater Andamanese themselves, their tribal
differences, of course, loomed large and seemed enormously important
– until 1858 when truly different outsiders moved in.

Today, all that is left of the Great Andamanese is a tiny group of
roughly two dozen people living on Straits Island reservation with
their material needs taken care of by Indian government social
workers.

Unlike their northern cousins on Great Andaman, the other major
grouping among Andamanese, known as the ONGE-JARAWA GROUP does
not form a close linguistic, cultural or geographic unit. Its four
members (the Onge, the Jarawa, the Jangil and the Sentineli) differ
widely in many respects and are (or were) separated by varying
expanses of sea. Geographical separation over long periods (certainly
into the thousands of years) is most likely to be responsible for
this state of affairs. Nevertheless, both the Great Andamanese and
all members of the Onge-Jarawa group are of the same race: they are
all unquestionably Negritos.

 

The Onge

The Onge are the only easily accessible tribe of the Onge-Jarawa
group today. Because of their friendliness and relative accessibility
for the past 100 years, more is known about the Onge than about any
other living Andamanese group. Almost all of the research on them was
done and published after 1950 by scientists working for the Indian
Anthropological Survey.

Sadly, the Onge like other Andamanese groups, also seem to be on
their way to extinction. Friendliness in the Andaman islands has not
historically been a helpful trait in the struggle for survival.

Until the late 1940s, the Onge were the sole permanent occupants
of Little Andaman. Before that time, they led a largely traditional
way of life despite indications of some traditional trading activity
with outsiders (probably Malay and/or Burmese).

The British controlled the island after the late 1890s. M.V.
Portman enforced a degree of British authority over the Onge and
establish direct contact with a tribe that until his arrival had been
hostile. From the early 1900s onwards, the Onge had only intermittent
contact with their nominal British overlords and continued their
traditional life undisturbed. On their part, the British were only
concerned to keep the island peaceful and out of the hands of other
powers, only interfering if they felt their own position threatened
or when shipwrecked sailors were molested by Onge goups. During the
Japanese occupation of the islands (1942-1945) the short-lived new
masters took the same attitude, stationing only a few soldiers on the
island to observe shipping movements. They largely ignored the
Onge.

Non-Onge began to settle on Little Andaman in large numbers in the
early 1950s when the Indian government moved thousands of mainland
refugees to the island. They brought new diseases and caused
ecological disturbances that quickly led to a precipitous decline in
the number of Onges (refer to Chapter
7 for the relevant statistics).

When the newly established Indian government took over, it meant
well. Unfortunately, it was also inexperienced and as the next 50
years showed, it was exceedingly slow to learn from its mistakes.
British neglect of the Onge was not well-meant but it worked for the
benefit of the Onge who were left to conduct their traditional way of
life undisturbed. Indian do-goodery, on the other hand, was not.
Swarms of social workers totally untrained and unprepared for dealing
with a hunter-gatherer culture, unsuitable prefabricated housing,
inappropriate government-issue clothing, acculturisation programs,
alcoholism and drugs all became daily facts in the bewildered
hunter-gatherers lives. Infertility and child mortality remain
serious problems today with the reasons for them remaining obscure.
Indian efforts to bring modern medicine to the island have not made a
noticeable dent in the many problems, including the declining
numbers. The issues of British and Indian interference with the
Andamanese tribes and the policies behind it are discussed in much
greater detail by C.
Krebs in an article published on this web site.

The Onge are now settled in a reservation while the rest of the
island is populated by Indian and Nicobarese farmers. Although the
administration has corrected many of the early mistakes, it is
doubtful whether the Onge can survive as a distinct group. A culture
as well-adapted to their environment, as primitive and alien as
theirs can only survive in isolation, an isolation that is no longer
feasible even if it was seriously attempted.

The tsunami of 24th December 2004 did not affect the Onge much.
They knew what to do and suffered no known losses.

The Onge, alone among all Andamanese groups, also had acquired (or
perhaps retained from ancient times) some skills of seamanship – and
with them the ability to travel some distance across the open sea.
Onges fished and hunted regularly on and around the uninhabited
islands between Little Andaman and Rutland Island. For a few decades
during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries they even had a
sort of outlying colony on Rutland Island. That similar migrations
must has taken place in ancient times and long before the 19th
century is indicated by the presence on Great Andaman, North Sentinel
island and Rutland island of people related to the Onge: the Jarawa,
the Sentineli and the Jangil. The Onge “colonists” of the late 19th
century certainly were replacing the fading Great Andamanese of the
Aka-Bea tribe when the British first became aware of the situation in
the 1890s.

It is likely that the drive of the Onge towards northern hunting
grounds after 1890 was caused by the presence of the British and
their Indian prisoners in southern Great Andaman. The local tribes
there had been weakened by more than 30 years of contact with
outsiders and their alien diseases. That the Onge drive towards the
north also faded away after some decades could have been for the very
same reason.

The Onge have always been less inward-looking and more
enterprising than the other Andamanese groups. Their flexibility may
have had something to do with their long-term contacts with the
outside world.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Jarawa

 

Jarawa (also sometimes spelt Jarwa, which is closer to the
original pronunciation) means “stranger” in the language of the Great
Andamanese Aka-Bea . The Jarawa call themselves Ya-eng-nga
(which, invevitably, means “human being”. Without the characteristic
Jarawa prefix ya- this is very close to what the Onge call
themselves: en-nge, and which in Onge also has the same
meaning as in Jarawa, a major piece of evidence for the
long-suspected relationship between the two groups.

The Jarawa are the quintessentially “hostile Andamanese”. They
seem to have been at war with the Great Andamanese in general and
with their main enemy, the Great Andamanese Aka-Bea tribes, for a
very long time.

When the British landing party established itself at Port Blair in
order to set up a penal colony in 1858 it knew nothing of the Jarawa.
They soon heard about them, from their their new Great Andamanese
Aka-Bea allies that there was a ferocious tribe hiding in the
interior of South Great Andaman. The British paid little attention,
being wholly preoccupied with the difficult task of establishing
their new penal colony in a climate that seemed to them more hostile
than any new tribe could be.

After things had settled down at the new headquarters in Port
Blair, time and energy became available for exploratory expeditions
into the territory of the mythical Jarawa. While one Great Andamanese
tribe after the other was contacted, their lands explored and
friendly relations established and new diseases spread to all and
sundry, the Jarawa remained stubbornly hostile and resistant to all
attempts at establishing contact.

With hindsight, we can now see that a major reason for the
relentless hostility was the use of Aka-Bea trackers by the British.
These were paid with food, tobacco and alcohol and even issued with
arms and ammunition. The British never seem to have questioned the
practice on the principle that Andamanese = Andamanese. It took a
long time before the British realized (and the realisation never had
practical consequences) that Jarawa and the Great Andamanese were
hereditary enemies. The British were perpetually disappointed when
their Aka-Bea allies found nothing but deserted Jarawa villages. They
also soon discovered that a Jarawa village, once it had been entered
by outsiders, was abandoned by its owners. It was merely chance when,
occasionally, elderly men, or women with children were surprised and
captured. Such captives were then taken to Port Blair to be
“questioned” and given food and gifts. Most soon sickened and many
died before they could be returned to the place where they had been
captured. This practice of casual kidnapping did nothing to endear
the British to the Jarawa and the hostilities continued until the
last years of the 20th century.

In 1858, Aka-Bea and Jarawa were hereditary enemies that had been
fighting each other for a long time, probably centuries. It is an odd
fact that when the British in 1790 made contact with natives in the
region of Port Blair they found one group hostile and another
friendly without realizing that they dealt with two entirely
different tribes. Lt. Colebrooke even took some friendly natives with
him to Calcutta and to the Nicobars. More than a century later M.V.
Portman realized that these early “friendlies” had been Jarawa:

On reading Lieutenant Colebrooke’s account… it became
evident to me that the aborigines with whom the people in
Lieutenant Blair’s settlement on the South Andaman in 1790 et
seq., were friendly,… were members of the South Andaman Jarawa
tribe. The description of their habits, weapons and utensils, and
the vocabulary given, leaves no room for doubt on this point.

The “hostiles” of those early days must have been the Aka-Bea who
70 years later would become the first and closest allies of the
British. The colonizing power could not win the friendship of both
groups:

From the Aka-Bea-da I [Portman] have learnt that
in former times the Jarawas were more numerous and powerful than
they are now, and they inhabited the Southern part of the Harbour
of Port Blair, the Western part, and much of the neighbouring
interior. Many “Kitchen-Middens” on the shores of the Harbour have
been pointed out to me as the sites of Jarawa villages, and the
Aka-Bea-da further prove their contention by showing that these
shell-heaps contain the refuse of articles which the Jarawa eat,
but which the Aka-Bea-da will not touch.

The disappearance of the Jarawa from the Port Blair region after
the 1790s almost certainly is connected with their early contacts to
the British. The diseases that a century later would extinguish their
hereditary enemies, quite possibly reduced the number of Jarawa and
allowed the Aka-Bea to gain the upper hand. As one British
administrator wrote:

… how swift the disastrous effects of our relations with the
Andamanese have been to them. 

After things had settled down at the new British headquarters in
Port Blair, time and energy became available in the 1860s, for
exploratory expeditions into the territory of the mythical Jarawa.
While one Great Andamanese tribe after the other was contacted, their
lands explored, friendly relations established and new diseases
spread, the Jarawa remained stubbornly hostile and resistant to gifts
offered.

With hindsight, we can now see that a major reason for the
relentless hostility was the use of Aka-Bea trackers by the British.
These were paid with food, tobacco and alcohol and even issued with
arms and ammunition. The British never seem to have questioned the
practice on the principle that Andamanese = Andamanese. It took a
long time before they realized (and the realisation never had
practical consequences) that Jarawa and the Great Andamanese were not
only Andamanese but hereditary enemies. The British were perpetually
disappointed when their Aka-Bea allies found nothing but deserted
Jarawa villages. They also soon discovered that a Jarawa village,
once it had been entered by outsiders, was abandoned by its owners.
It was merely chance when, occasionally, elderly men, or a woman with
children were captured. Such captives were taken to Port Blair to be
“questioned” and given food and gifts. Most of the captives soon
sickened and some died before they could be returned to the place
where they had been captured. The practice of kidnapping, of course,
did nothing to endear the British to the Jarawa and the hostilities
continued until the end of the 20th century.

British attempts at teaching the rare male Jarawa captives Hindi
or English and then setting them free to be intermediaries never
worked, either.

On 25th March 1884 a British expedition chanced on a male Jarawa
group that collected honey in the jungle. A fight ensued that was
conducted with bows and arrows on the Jarawa side while the British
used knives and guns. One Jarawa man was killed and one wounded in
the leg. The wounded prisoner, named Talai, was taken to Port Blair
and tended at the hospital there. He recovered and was soon on
friendly terms with the British. He kept busy by learning the Hindi
language and made himself agreeable to the Officer in Charge of the
Andamanese, Mr. Portman, in
whose house he lived. Talai accompanied Portman wherever he went and
also fraternized with Great Andamanese at Port Blair. In June Mr.
Portman led an expedition of 30 Indian convicts and 70 Great
Andamanese (in this context a small army rather than a mere
expedition) to the elusive Jangil tribe on Rutland island in yet
another attempt to track down Jarawa (the Jangil at that time were
thought to be Jarawa). Talai accompanied the expedition and was
placed under no restraint. He was last seen shooting fish with two
Great Andamanese boys . He then quietly absented himself and
disappeared. Later it was established that he had gone to the
northern end of Rutland Island where he had made a raft and crossed
the straight to south Great Andaman. Mr. Portman had high hopes that
he would turn into a useful intermediary but Talai was never seen or
heard of again. In 1888, a Jarawa boy named Ike was captured and kept
much as Talai had been. His behaviour in semi-captivity was friendly,
he learnt Hindi and was popular among other Andamanese at Port Blair.
Then he disappeared, only to reappear briefly and violently as a
member of a Jarawa raiding party. During a skirmish Ike was
recognized when he used his linguistic knowledge by abusing his
opponents in foul Hindi. After this incident Ike, just as Talai, was
never seen again.

Portman, after his diplomatic success with the Onge on Little
Andaman (see the section on the Onge above), had been hoping to
repeat it with the Jarawa, especially since he thought them to be
closely related groups. It did not work. In 1884 the British
authorities gave up trying to be friendly and concentrated on
containing the Jarawa problem by force. Portman received orders to
step up the fight and to re-motivate the Aka-Bea trackers by
withholding their rewards until they had some successes to show.

In 1872 the Jarawa had gone on the attack for the first time by
raiding the settlement at Port Blair. The year marks the beginning of
what the British later called the Jarawa Wars. This war ended only in
1997. During 125 years, hardly a year has passed when the Jarawas did
not conduct at least a few raids on the British, other Andamanese
tribes or Indian settlers and officials. Mr. Portman had a genuine if
authoritarian love and understanding for the Andamanese, including
the Jarawa, and seems to have implemented his new instructions with
some reluctance and restraint. When he retired in 1900, the Jarawa
war became much more brutal. Portman’s successor was actually killed
during a skirmish with Jarawas in 1902. Calls for their extermination
had been heard before but Mr. Portman’s moderating influence
persisted until 1901.

With the restraint gone, the genocidal party soon gained the upper
hand, helped along by a string of bloody Jarawa attacks. Many
punitive expeditions between 1910 and the 1920s were in fact
undeclared attempts at extermination. As Portman had warned his
successors: it could not work. Despite repeated heavy losses, the
Jarawa are still living in their jungles and were fighting until 1997
(see also chapter 1). It should
be noted, however, that genocide was never official government policy
even if it was indeed “fact” on the ground. The slaughter was in the
nature of a desperate attempt by mediocre colonial administrators to
solve a problem by any means in a penal colony that was becoming
itself increasingly brutal.

The worst attempts at exterminating the Jarawa took place during
the 1920s but they are – unsurprisingly – virtually documented. The
few documents that dealt with these dark events were kept locally at
Port Blair and were destroyed during the Japanese occupation of the
islands (1942-1945).

In 1997 the Jarawa wars suddenly came to an end: the Jarawa,
without any warning or negotiations, came out of their jungle
hideouts and wandered – stark naked as is their wont – through Indian
villages (where nudity is an absolute taboo). Wherever they went, the
Jarawa (mostly young men) helped themselves to everything that took
their fancy. They had no concept of money and were used to getting
free “friendship gifts” from the authorities. Their sudden acceptance
of the friendship that had been offered them since the 1950s threw
the authorities into confusion and panic. They were still discussing
options and action plans when the Jarawa, in 2004, announced, just as
mysteriously as they had come out of the jungle, that they would
withdraw again and that they needed no further gifts and wished no
further contact. And that was that. It left all non-Jarawa, from
administration officials and researchers to eco-activists and NGOs,
open-mouthed with astonishment.

 

 

 

 

 

The Jangil (Rutland
Jarawa)

The interior of the large and hilly island of Rutland, lying just
off the south coast of Southern Great Andaman, was home to the most
obscure of all Andamanese tribes. For reasons that are not entirely
clear, Andamanologists do not so much deny this tribe’s separate
existence as simply ignore it. On the rare occasions when the
Rutland-Jarawa or Rutland-Onge are mentioned at all, it is simply
assumed that they were ordinary Jarawa resp. Onge. The
interchangeability of the terms “Jarawa” and “Onge” during the 19th
century and into the 1930s has done nothing to resolve the
confusion.

The last time the Jangil tribe of Rutland was officially mentioned
(as far as we know) was in the Census of India, 1931, where on page 8
it is stated

In addition there was a fourth clan of Jarawas of which
nothing has been seen since 1907.

The mention of four “Jarawa” tribes does not refer to what we
today call Jarawas. It meant all members of the Onge-Jarawa group:
the Onge, the Sentineli, the Jarawa proper as well as the
Jangil. 

What the meagre evidence suggests is that Rutland Island until the
late 19th and perhaps into the early 20th century not only had
Aka-Bea (Great Andamanese) and Onge fishing and hunting communities
along its coasts but also a Jarawa- or Onge-like tribe living in the
interior. The vegetation of Rutland Island is unlike the nearly
impenetrable jungle in which the Jarawa tribes of Great Andamans or
the Onge of Little Andaman lived. Though hilly, Rutland Island has,
like North Sentinel Island, mostly dry, sandy soils that is overgrown
with relatively open jungle and brush.

The Andaman Association has in its collection a photograph by M.V.
Portman that must have been taken in the 1890s. It is simply labeled
in Portman’s own handwriting “a Rutland hut”. It shows two fairly
sizable structures, rather quickly built for short-term usage. The
two huts resemble Sentineli communal huts and some Onge constructions
more than anything else. They do not look like known Great Andamanese
or Jarawa constructions. If so, this would strengthen the idea that
the Jangil were more closely related to the Sentineli or Onge rather
than to the Jarawa.

To the best of our knowledge there does not exist a single
photograph of a Jangil person.

We only have one source for the existence of a distinct Andamanese
group in the interior of Rutland Island. But this solitary source is
of such quality that there can be little doubt as to the tribe’s
existence. Mr. M.V. Portman was in no doubt about the Jangil. As he
wrote in 1899:

It must be remembered that at this time [1874] it
was thought that the Jarawas on the South Andaman, and those of
Rutland Island, were one tribe.

Clearly, in 1899 when he wrote this, he did not think so anymore.
It was Portman who recorded the fact that the Great Andamanese
Aka-Bea called the Rutlanders “strangers” (Jarawa) or Jangil. In
order to distinguish the Rutlanders from the Jarawa living on Great
Andaman, we shall use the term Jangil here. The meaning of the term
(which Portman himself puts into quotation marks) is not explained
and remains unknown.

Throughout the 1880s and for some years later expeditions went
into what was then thought of as “Jarawa country”, including Rutland
island, in search of elusive groups. As far as the Jangil are
concerned, only traces of recent occupation, occasionally with signs
of a hurried departure and still burning home fires, but no people
were ever found. The failure of so many search parties criss-crossing
the islands was later justified towards higher authority as a measure
to accustom the Jarawa to the British presence. The early
expeditions, including those led by Portman himself, had a distinct
military flavour but were (before 1900) generally peaceful attempts
at making contact. Portman himself suggested in the mid-1890s that
the Jangil, “who have not been much molested by us” should be rather
more “molested” in future. This was rather out of character for
someone normally so sympathetic and understanding of the Andamanese.
Portman even went so far as to suggest the construction of a network
of supply tracks through the jungle from Portman Bay in order to
facilitate molestation. Nothing came of it and the interior of
Rutland Island with its Jangil seems to have been forgotten after
1901 when Portman retired and left for England. The Jangil never
suffered the genocidal military expeditions mounted by local
authorities during the first three decades of the 20th century
against the Jarawa of Great Andaman.

In July 1884 an expedition did finally capture a Jangil, male and
aged around 30 years. The captive man called himself Habia and it was
assumed that this was his name. He was brought to Port Blair where it
was found that he spoke a language different from that spoken by the
Jarawa of Great Andaman. Habia himself was described as “friendly but
half-witted.” After a fortnight at Port Blair he fell sick and was
returned to Rutland Island and – as usual with such captives – never
to been seen again.

Portman says that Habia

could not speak the same language as the tribe of Jarawas
on the mainland, and that he was an Aryoto and not an Eremtaga, as
they are. I [Portman] could, however, distinguish a
connection between the two languages, and at some former period
they were undoubtedly the same.”

It is infuriating that Portman does not give more detail than this
on Habia’s language although he must have studied it fairly closely
to make such a remark. The cryptic reference to Habia being an
“Aryoto” must remain unexplained. It may be a printing error,
transposing the two terms, or perhaps it meant merely that Habia was
different from the “ordinary” Jarawa who, in Portman’s time, were all
Eremtaga (for an explanation of these terms see below the
Aryoto-Eeremtaga Split). Portman himself later calls the Jangil
Eremtaga. The possibility that the captive was an Onge visitor to
Rutland can be discounted. Mr. Portman had visited Onges on Little
Andaman many times since 1880 would have recognized the Onge language
when he heard it.

It took another ten years before the Jangils appeared again in the
records. In 1894 a small boat returning from collecting edible birds’
nests sailed under the cliff on the southeastern corner of Rutland
Island. A group of Jangil surprised the owner of the boat, Moung Yu,
by waving at him from their clifftop lookout. However, when he turned
his boat towards them he was given unmistakable signs that they
wanted no closer contact. Mr. Portman remarked on this incident that
Moung Yu had the sense not to land or annoy the Jangil in any way.
Interestingly, Portman added that he knew there was a Jangil village
on that particular cliff and that he had often visited it and left
presents, but that he had never met anybody there.

The third and last recorded contact with the Jangil tribe took
place in 1895 when a party of Aka-Bea captured an elderly couple on
Rutland Island near the place of Moung Yu’s experience. The two were
the only people found in a village and probably no longer capable of
running away. They were brought to Port Blair and handed over to the
inevitable Portman who was eager to take them to Little Andaman to
see whether they could converse with the Onge. The plan had to be
abandoned when both captives began to sicken and pine in the
well-known Andamanese way. Both were hurriedly returned to the place
where they had been captured. All that could be established in the
short time available was that in personal appearance, in their
weapons and ornaments, the Jangil resembled the Onge and not the
Jarawa – but also that they were definitively not Onge. The question
of the Jangil language remained unsettled, much to Portman’s chagrin.
The captives spoke so rapidly and indistinctly with each other that
no recognizable words could be made out.

The Jangil couple’s attitude towards their situation, surroundings
and to each other was peculiar. As Portman observed

While at my house, the man, who was surly and
evil-tempered, kept begging my Andamanese to kill him by
throttling him or cutting his throat, and rejected all overtures
of friendship. His wife appeared to be more friendly and was
pleasant looking, but when she was willing to make friends with us
her husband abused and beat her, and once tried to kill her when
she went away for a short distance with an Andamanese woman, being
only prevented from doing so by his guards.

Although the Jangil are reported as having been “numerous in
former times” it can only mean that they were more numerous in the
days before the British became aware of their existence. The interior
of the small and not very fertile Rutland Island with little or no
access to the resources of the sea would not have provided a living
from more than a small group at the best of times. It is conceivable
that before the arrival of the great Andamanese Aka-Bea coastal
settlers the Jangil controlled the entire island and then could
indeed have been much more numerous. The fact is that we just do not
know. We also have no idea whether the Jangils’ relationship to the
Aka-Bea was as hostile as was that of the Jarawa on Great Andaman.
From the fact that the Jangil vanished shortly after the turn of the
century at roughly the same time as the Aka-Bea, makes it possible
that there was some intercourse between the two groups, enough to
allow the penetration of newly introduced diseases into their
community.

All we know about the Jangils’ later fate is that in 1907 the last
contact was made (though we have found no details on what happened
then). During in the early 1920s a British expedition searched the
interior of Rutland Island found no trace of any human
habitation.

 

The
Sentineli

It was very rare in the 20th and is quite unique in the 21st
century for the representatives of a sovereign government to wade
ashore on a small tropical island in order to place cheap baubles on
the beach, only to withdraw again in some haste, dodging arrows from
natives lurking in the bushes.

Most would connect such a scene with the Age of Discovery, with
Columbus, Vasco da Gama or Captain Cook. When, moreover, visiting
near-royalty is prevented from landing by a lone warrior on the
beach, the story must surely come from the realms of fantasy. Not so.
For precisely this scene took place in 1974. The island so difficult
to approach for royalty and commoner alike is North Sentinel island.
Ex-king Leopold III of Belgium, attended by the chief administrator
of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, in that year made an unsuccessful
attempt to land there. The royal party was faced down by a lone
warrior armed with bow and arrow and clad in nothing but a scowl and
a few personal decorative items.

Indian exploratory parties under orders to establish “friendly
relations” with the islanders have made brief landings on the islands
every few years since 1967. Unencumbered by security worries for a
royal dignitary, they could take higher risks. Their usual reception,
however, was just as unfriendly as the one for the ex-king. It was
all the visitors could do to place gifts of coconuts, plastic
buckets, iron tools and other marvels of modern civilization on the
beach before they had to scramble back into their dinghy, sometimes
under a shower of seriously hostile arrows. Blood was drawn at least
once, in March 1974, when an arrow met its mark in the left thigh of
the visiting team’s cameraman. On seeing that he had scored a hit,
the marksman on the beach laughed happily before stalking away to sit
proudly in the shade of a tree. He clearly considered that he had
done his duty by his people, as indeed he had.

For the past century all sorts of people, ranging from
anthropologists to policemen, from to self-important politicians,
administrators, naval officers,to private and occasionally
blue-blooded busybodies, have tried to land on the island and make
friendly contact. The estimated 50 to 400 Sentinelis on their 72
sq.km (28 sq.miles) island would not hear of it.

The earliest known mention of the Sentineli was published by the
British surveyor John Ritchie
who wrote down the following observation in 1771:

… and if we may judge from the multitude of lights seen
upon the shore at night, it is well inhabited…

Until 1880 no known attempt to investigate the island went further
than a circumnavigation of the dangerous reefs surrounding it. The
islanders themselves were seen only by their torches at night or
glimpsed as tiny specks on the beach from afar. In 1880 an expedition
under M.V. Portman successfully accomplished the first known landing
and exploration of North Sentinel island (see below).

 

The Sentineli are the quintessential Andamanese: to this day they
live their primitive but comfortable and unhurried lives in complete
isolation on a small island, they are hostile to all outsiders and
they do not wish to change this state of affairs. Violence is the
traditional way to ensure the undisturbed enjoyment of their way of
life. In the 21st century, they will kill strangers outright and they
hide from landing parties that look too strong to fight. If the
landing parties offer coconuts and other goods, they will condescend
to accept these, but as soon as the feel they have received enough,
an obscene gesture makes clear that the outsiders are no longer
tolerated and had better leave in a hurry:

 

The effect of the tsunami of December 2004 on North Sentinel
island – geographically – was devastating. For maps on how much the
little island was geologically affected by the earthquake (see
Tsunami Maps – Sentinel
island). The coastline of the entire island was change through a
massive tectonic uplift! It is a pity that we do not know what the
Sentineli themselves make of it all.

As far as can be observed from afar, all this geological uproar
did not affect the Sentineli much, nor has it softened their attitude
towards meddlesome outsiders. They might have suffered some losses
from the tsunami (we do not know) and they might have had food supply
and other problems (we do not know either), but they quite obviously
adjusted with amazing speed to their re-shaped island and its changed
conditions. It is just as well they did since the outside authorities
for months after the major event were fully occupied by first getting
their act together and then by keeping an Indian population totally
unprepared for such a calamity alive and above the water line.The
contrast between the “primitive” but adaptable Sentineli and a modern
civilization with all its fragile infrastructure was, and still is,
astonishing.

 

Picture below:

Sentineli on their island. They observe the approach of a boat with
an Indian “friendship” mission with grave suspicion and will not
allow a much closer approach.

The picture also gives a good impression of the nature and density of
forests on North Sentinel island.(Photo taken with a teleobjective in
the late 1980s).

 

We do not know how long the Sentinelis have been on their island
or how long they have been isolated there. There are a few Sentineli
skulls in collections at Natural History museums that are now being
analysed for traces of DNA. The results will be interesting and will
be reported here when they come out.

It has been observed that turtles have learnt to avoid the
Sentinelis who try to catch them. Since turtles are not among the
world’s fastest learners this must be an argument of sorts for a
long-term human settlement on the island. Be that as it may, from the
type of their body decorations and from what little is known of their
behavior and handicrafts, they undoubtedly belong to the Onge-Jarawa
group and probably also to the enigmatic Jangil of Rutland island
(extinct since the early 20th century, see above). However, Onges who
have been brought to North Sentinel Island by the British during the
19th century could not understand the Sentineli language so that a
considerable time of separation is likely.

The Onge had a name for North Sentinel Island and knew of the
island’s existence; they also appear to have recognized some degree
of relationship when brought into contact with Sentineli. The Jarawa
and Jangil lived in their jungles and did not venture onto the open
seas (at least as far as is known) so recent contact with them is
most unlikely. A comparison of the languages could perhaps answer
this question but with the Sentineli language virtually inaccessible,
there is nothing to compare with.  

In 1880 the British administrator M.V.
Portman became the first outsider known to have landed and
explored North Sentinel island. There were some Greater Andamanese
Aka-Bea tribesmen on this first of Portman’s several expeditions and
they warned of the Sentinelis’ hostile intent. The British did not at
this early time appreciate the many and complex enmities existing
among the natives. To increase the confusion, the Andamanese
themselves were not too clear about other groups who were not their
immediate neighbours. The Aka-Bea on this trip may well have confused
the Jarawa (who were their direct neighbors and ancient enemies on
Greater Andaman) with the Sentinelis (who probably had little or no
contact with the Aka-Bea). Taking Aka-Bea along was counterproductive
and may actually have strengthened Sentineli hostility. In 1974 there
was a repetition of this scene when the Indians brought three Onge
tribesmen (who are thought to be much more closely related to the
Sentinelis than the Aka-Bea had been) to the island but found them of
little help. The Onge were terrified of the Sentinelis and the
frustrated scientists could not even clearly establish from the
shouted exchange between Onge and Sentinelis (the Onge with the
boat’s loudspeaker at their disposal) whether the latter understood
at least a little of the formers’ possibly related language. The Onge
were too far from the beach to understand what the Sentinelis were
shouting back at them while their own amplified protestation of
desired friendship in the Onge language did not seem to go down well
with the Sentineli.

To return to Portman’s expedition: it is rather out of character
for him to have left us no report on his Sentineli expedition. All
that we have been able to find are a number of photographs kept by
the Anthropological Survey of India at Calcutta. These are of little
scientific value since all those that depict more than just
vegetation show Portman’s Aka-Bea trackers as “Sentineli” in what
Portman must have fancied “typical situations” such as cooking,
sleeping, keeping on the lookout for enemies. Portman obviously let
his imagination run free and allowed his Aka-Bea poseurs to ham it up
to a quite hilarious degree. Entertaining as these photographs are,
the lack of any surviving report on the scientific findings made by
Portman’s expedition is rather unfortunate. Today, little more is
known about the Sentineli than was in 1880.

The second recorded landing on North Sentinel island was brought
about by a very unusual event. Beginning at nine in the evening of
26th August 1883 distant gunfire was heard at irregular intervals and
this was interpreted as the distress signal of a ship. On the morning
of the next day the same Portman went out to search for the troubled
vessel in the area of Rutland Island, the Labyrinth group and North
Sentinel Island. He landed on the latter but found only deserted
villages and no sign of a distressed vessel. The natives had melted
away again in the face of superior numbers and firepower. The landing
party left gifts and then returned to Port Blair. The gunfire
continued, streams dried up briefly and the sea receded and advanced
several times in a most unusual way. Only when the telegrams arrived
did it become clear to the bewildered officials at Port Blair what
had happened: the “gunfire” was the final volcanic cataclysm of
Krakatoa, exploding 2500 km (1500 miles) away near Java.

North Sentinel island is not only defended to this day by its
warriors but also by rough and unpredictable seas, aided and abetted
by a nearly unbroken ring of treacherous coral reefs. The reefs make
the island all but inaccessible by sea for 10 out of 12 months and
fairly dangerous to approach during the remaining two. The island has
long been known and feared by sailors for its manifold defenses.
Decades would pass between visits, with the Sentineli living their
simple lives dreamily undisturbed – for the moment.

Unrecorded successful landings are likely but they cannot have
been numerous. Occasional poachers landing on the island and
contributing to the continued hostility of the Sentinelis are a
distinct possibility. It would be one explanation for the
inexplicable changes in Sentineli behavior from one visit to the
next, not too far from downright friendly one time, violently and
implacably hostile the next. Shipwrecked sailors may also have caused
trouble on the island from time to time throughout its history. As
late as March 1970 a wreck was spotted on a coral reef off the SE
coast of the island. On inspection it was found to have been lying
there for 7 or 8 months. There was no sign of the crew.

At least one escaped Indian convict from Port Blair is known to
have made his way to North Sentinel Island in 1896. Two others with
him were drowned on the reefs surrounding the island. The lone
survivor’s luck did not hold: he was killed by the Sentinelis and
left on the beach where his body was spotted and retrieved by a
visiting British party.

None of the recorded landings prior to the 1990s had been
successful at establishing friendly relations. The Sentinelis had
first demonstrated their standard pattern of avoiding visitors known
since the 1880s and were still following it in the 1990s. Small
visiting parties were seen off on the beaches. Whenever a larger
number of visitors threatened a landing, the islanders took to their
forests and did not return to the beaches until the intruders had
left. Gifts left behind initially seem only to have fed suspicions.
The Sentinelis may never have heard of Greeks but they clearly
understand the ancient warning of Greeks bearing gifts. As Indian
anthropologists admit privately today: how right they are!

Today, more than a century after the first known landing, the
Sentinelis are still the undisputed lords of their island. British
India has long since faded into history but the writ of independent
India applies to the island only in the sense that it has erected a
territorial slab on this oddest speck of land under its
sovereignty.

Immediaterly following the earthquake and tsunami of 26 December
2004 there were fears that the Andamanese negrito tribes had been
wiped out. The authorities were busy looking after their own and
could not be bothered to check on the “natives” until 3 days after
the disaster had struck. Then a helicopter was sent to fly over North
Sentinel island to check for survivors and if necessary to offer
assistance. The crew of the helicopter was confronted by a Sentineli
warrior shooting arrows at the machine while others were throwing
rocks. The message could not be misunderstood: the Sentineli had lost
none of their pre-disaster self-confidence and they still did not
want any help or contact whatsoever. It wass the most cheerful news
to come out of what was otherwise a devastating disaster. Whether the
Sentineli are safe in the longer run is not sure. The earthquake has
tiled the islands, some coral reefs have sunk wile others have been
raised with hardto estimate damage to thei Sentineli fishing grounds
(see the section on North Sentinel island of Tsunami Maps).

What can be said with a reasonable degree of certainty is that
Sentinels came – in a deliberate migration or as the result of a
group drifting off-course – from Little Andaman. There is also the
story of a Sentineli who grew up among Onge, best told in the
unavoidable Portman’s own words. The story illustrates the degree of
uncertainty surrounding things Andamanese even when one of the
best-informed authority in the field is involved:

The North Sentinel Island was visited on the 15th of
February 1895, and I took some Onges over there from the Quince
Islands, as I had learnt at their camp there that one of them was
a Sentinels, who had, some years before, left the North Sentinel
in a canoe and come across, via Rutland Island, to the Quince
Islands and the Little Andamans.

After a search on the 15th and 16th on the coast of the Island,
some of the inhabitants were seen near the north-west point in a
canoe; though called to be the Onges, and by their own countryman,
whom we had brought with us, they showed the usual signs of fright
and hostility, and as we did not wish to provoke an encounter, the
search party returned without getting close to them.

From my very slight knowledge of the Onge language, it is quite
likely that I misunderstood the supposed Sentinels, and he may
either have been driven away from the Sentinel in a storm,
possibly as a child, and have been adopted by the Onges when he
reached them on the Quince Islands, (the adults with him being
killed), or there may really be occasional intercourse either
between the Sentinel Jarawa and those on Rutland Island, or
between the former and the Onge.

It was interesting to note that, unlike their behavior when in
the jungles of the Great Andaman, the Onges on each occasion that
they have been on the North Sentinel, have taken the lead in
searching the forest for Jarawa [=Sentineli], and seemed
to have no fear of them.

Like the Onge but unlike the Jarawa, the Sentineli still make
canoes. That they build them in a style reminiscent of but not
identical to that of the Onge is another pointer at their origin. The
Sentineli do not use their canoes much and none has ever been seen
outside the protective coral reef surrounding their island.

The island and its inhabitants have enjoyed a peculiarly charmed
existence. Apart from a few brief visits during their 90-year rule,
the British took very little interest in the island and for decades
at a time seemed to forget its existence altogether. The Japanese
were not long enough in the Andamans to meddle, especially since the
island had no strategic importance. The Indians, too, took some years
before noticing their forgotten island. The first official census
after independence 1949 in 1951 failed to mention the Sentineli
altogether.

 

 

Repeated gifts left for them have mellowed the Sentineli a little
in the 1990s and a few visits during which landing parties on the
beach were not immediately chased away have taken place. But the
Sentineli are still on a short fuse. On one occasion a high-ranking
official pulled rank on the anthropologists and insisted on staying
longer and going closer to the Sentineli than the scientists
recommended. Binoculars on the visitors’ boats had spotted a number
of warriors hiding in the bushes; they made no hostile moves and
seemed to be there just to observe the meeting on the beach but their
presence was unsuspected by the visiting party on the beach. When
that party had overstayed its welcome and even tried to move closer
to the Sentineli, an invisible red line must have been crossed.
Warning arrow shots were fired while the hidden warriors stepped from
their hiding places. In the rush to the boats, the official
responsible for the mess was in such a hurry that his boat overturned
and he had to be pulled in, dripping wet. This seemed to amuse the
Sentineli as much as it did the accompanying anthropologists – though
the latter would have been well-advised to hide their mirth.
Unfortunately, at that moment the official’s armed guards panicked
and a shot was fired into the air. This went down very badly with the
Sentineli (who clearly knew what guns were for) and seriously hostile
arrows began to fly. Luckily for the visitors, their boats by that
time were already out of range.

There was a plan to set up coconut plantations on
North Sentinel island as reported in a revealingly casual way by two
Indian scientists in 1990 (one of them connected to the Max Planck
Institute in Germany):

Recently, there has been some sign of hope for
cultivating friendship with the Sentinelese which is pursued by
the Andaman and Nicobar Administration. Gifts are kept on the
shore which they hesitantly take away. Proposal is also under
consideration for the coconut plantation in the island.

The ubiquitous M.V. Portman – otherwise a fairly humane man by the
standards of his time and place – shows another side of his character
and colonial attitude when he started the evil ball rolling. He
suggested that the island should be turned into a coconut plantation
and its inhabitants forcibly accustomed to a British presence. In his
opinion North Sentinel Island was “admirably adapted” to the planting
of coconuts, adding that

if the government decide to convert the whole island into
a coconut plantation or if, for scientific or other reasons, it is
considered that the aborigines should be tamed, then… search
parties should go through the jungle and catch some of the male
Jarawas [Sentinelis] and should keep them in the camp…
they should be given presents and half the number caught should,
after a few days, be allowed to return to their villages… if
others do not come willingly… they must be captured and this
procedure must be persevered in until the majority of the people
on the island have spent some days in the camp, are accustomed to
us, and find that they are well fed and not injured.”

Happily, theses ghastly suggestions were not acted upon. When
we asked the Indian authorities in 1998 what had happened to the
reported plans for North Sentinel island, we received the following
communication:

EMBASSY OF INDIA BERNE K.N. Rao, Second Secretary (HOC) August 20th, 1998 No. Bern/P/352/1/96 Dear Mr. Weber, 1. Please refer to your letter dated 20.2.1998 regarding Andamanese negrito and North Sentinel Island. We have consulted concerned authorities in India regarding North Sentinel Island and the position regarding this Island is given below. 2. The Administration of Andaman and Nicobar Islands has no plan to raise coconut plantation on the North Sentinel Island since the Sentinelese are apparently self-sufficient with regard to food resources on the island. The island is totally isolated and is not being opened to colonisation to settle refugees and others. Further, it is the firm policy of the Administration not to interfere in the life of the Sentinelese. The Administration, however, keeps a vigil to prevent the possible intrusion by any encroachers into the waters around North Sentinel Island. This is to prevent the exploitation of the natural resources on the island and its territorial waters by the non-tribals and also to prevent physical contact with the Sentinelese to avoid possible introduction of foreign diseases among the Sentinelese. 3. I hope that the above information will satisfy you with regard to the concerns expressed for the Sentinelese in your letter. Yours sincerely (K.N. Rao)

Clearly this letter is based on what is official policy: the
government’s own “Master Plan 1991-2021 for Welfare of Primitive
Tribes of Andaman and Nicobar Islands” by S.A. Awaradi (former
assistant commissioner of the Nicobars and director of tribal welfare
in the Port Blair administration) published in January 1990 by the
Andaman and Nicobar Administration at Port Blair. It was to be
official government policy – until the Tsunami came along and stopped
it all. It is nevertheless a historical document and is reproduced
here in full. About the Sentineli Awaradi’s report had the following
to say: 

Admirable sentiments and reasonable policies. But the policies
must be carried out it and not just pronounced into the void. It has
been one of the major shortcomings of a succession of
Lieutenant-Governors and their administrations at Port Blair to let
discussions on “tribal” matters ramble on and on – with no clear
decision ever taken, still less implemented. The “isolators” argued
with the “civilizers” within the Anthropological Survey as much as
within the administration and so the matter was left for decades.
Those interested in a more detailed overview of former British and
present-day Indian policies towards the Andamanese negrito are
refered to an original publication on the subject Befriending the
Jarawa…

Official policies are one thing, reality on the ground another and
nowhere more so than in the Andamans. Attempts at contacting the
Sentineli by the Port Blair authorities to establish “friendship”
through gift giving continued in the 1990s and meet with some success
(if that is quite the right word). The same methods used on the
Jarawa since 1974 were used on the Sentineli: repeated gift-giving
visits (including VIP visitors) to accustom the Sentineli to the
alien presence with steadily closer physical contact and increasing
dependence on gifts. After the mid-1990s the Sentineli had mellowed
sufficiently to allow visitors on their beaches and gifts could be
handed over with actual physical touching (and consequent risk of
passing disease! the sientists worried about it, the VIP visitors did
not).

However, the embarrassment to the administration caused by the
“Jarawa crisis” starting in late 1997 grounded the dubious
“friendship” campaign towards the Sentineli. The visits to North
Sentinel Island ceased abruptly and have not been resumed. It is
possible that the authorities at Port Blair have learned from their
mistakes in handling the Jarawa, especially since some new personnel
isnow involved at decisionmaking level – but on past performance one
should not bet on it. Indian Supreme Court judgments and increasing
international attention have put the breaks on the local authorities.
They are no longer free to misbehave in the privacy of their own
islands while hiding behind a screen of admirable sentiments and
vague policies.

Optimists were delighted, pessimists wondered what the
administration would come up with to simultanenously comply and
sabotage the Supreme Court’s intentions. It is early days yet but it
looks as if the pessimists will have it. The trick used now is to
inundate the Jarawa with researchers, researchers’ assistants,
hangers on and servants. For details on this developing official
wheeze to kill off the Jarawa.

The practical problems surrounding North Sentinel Island are
indeed formidable and would test the capabilities of even the most
competent government. On the supply side there are growing numbers of
illegal fishing boats, coral collectors not averse to blowing up
reefs with dynamite and “businessmen” ferrying sightseers around the
island for a fee. On the demand side there are well-heeled tourists
on yachts looking for the “last challenge”, nosey parkers and
thrill-seekers of all kinds plus, of course, journalists after a
story. The Indian Navy’s job is to keep such visitors away from the
island but it cannot patrol there around the clock, not with the few
vessels available and the gun-running, smuggling and poaching going
on elsewhere in Andamanese waters. 

The Sentineli problem has vanished – but not been solved – for the
moment because the Port Blair authorities have found themselves
confronted with two new problems: on 21 October 1997 they had to face
the consequences of their own policies when the Jarawa came to town.
And on 26 December 2004 the tsunami struck and changed
everything.

While all Andamanese groups seem to have survived the tsunami
remarkably well – much better than the Indian settlers – their
long-term survival is far from being assured. The shock of the
tsunami has had a few positive effects. New and much more reasonable
government policies towards the aboriginal tribes are on the drawing
board and the relentless pressure of ever more settlers has subsided.
The islands are now feared as dangerous.

Whether they have much of a future or not is not clear but despite
the uncertainty, North Sentinel Island remains the most amazing human
time capsule anywhere on our planet.

 

The
Aryoto-Eremtaga Split

Apart from the tribal divisions described above, there had been an
additional division among Andamanese before the arrival of outsiders
in the mid-19th century. It was a division that went across tribal
lines. It separated the shore-dwelling Aryotos from the
forest-dwelling Eremtagas (there was also a third group, the
creek-dwelling Adajigs who seem to have been the cause of somewhat
specialized Eremtagas and about whom nothing further is known). The
division was particularly marked among the Great Andamanese where it
seems to have been the cause of some tension within tribes. The
Aryoto-Eremtaga split also still causes problems in scientific
literature where the two groupings are sometimes confused with
tribes. While the real tribes were based on language, the
Aryoto/Eremtaga dichotomy was based on different economic
environments and resulting different ways of life. The Onge on Little
Andaman had the same division (known in Onge as shore-dwelling
Embelakwe and forest-welling Engeakwe, respectively) but in a much
milder form with no specific hostilities between the two groups
known. What follows, therefore, is relevant mostly to the Great
Andamanese prior to around 1900 when the Aryoto-Eremtaga split had
largely disappeared in the cultural collapse.

Among Great Andamanese the Aryoto looked down on the Eremtaga in a
way that one could call “stone age snobbery”. There was competition
and some ill-feeling betrween the groups besides much interaction,
such as the exchange of gifts that went for trade among Andamanese.
We do not know how, when or why the division between people living
exclusively in the thick forests inland and those living along the
shores arose within the tribes nor why most tribes should be split in
this peculiar way. Archaeology may one day be able to trace and date
this development since the different food resources of the two groups
are reflected in the composition of their kitchen-midden. The Aryoto
and Eremtaga groups within each tribe spoke dialectal variations of
the same language. The little-known but predominantly Eremtaga tribe
of Aka-Bo had territories that included a long stretch of coast and
even off-shore islands but they seem to have made little use of the
additional resources. Living next to the sea, the Aka-Bo remained
stubbornly Eremtaga.

The Aryoto are far better known than their forest counterparts.
The earliest researchers were not even aware of the existence of the
Eremtaga, reporting the inland jungles as empty and unsuitable for
human habitation. While most Aryoto local groups had been discovered
before they died out or merged with other groups, the same is not
true of the Eremtaga. It is no coincidence that the last tribe
discovered just before 1901, the Aka-Bo, was mostly Eremtaga. The
territories held by many Aryoto local groups are known but are mostly
unknown for the Eremtagas. The information collected by the three
great early researchers in matters Andamanese came almost exclusively
from Aryotos and may not always be valid for Eremtagas – a limitation
rarely acknowledged in scientific literature.

 

The Aryoto-Eremtaga split among the tribes.

The Aryotos were said to be the more daring and adaptable of the
two. They exploited not one or two but five or more different
environments: that of the sea, the beaches, the coastal forests as
well as the mangrove swamps and creeks. Such flexibility gave them
far more resources and consequently a larger margin of safety in
times of drought and stress. They also had a more healthily varied
diet. This could explain why the Aryoto were physically stronger than
the Eremtaga. Also, any contact with outsiders touched the Aryoto
first; they were raided by slavers and they attacked vessels trying
to land on the islands. The Aryotos could do anything that the
Eremtagas could and more, but not always quite so well. The Eremtagas
were more specialized: they were expert trackers and hunters in the
forest. Their Aryoto competitors regarded them as stealthy, cunning,
timid and sometimes accused them of cannibalism (just as the Aryoto
themselves were accused by outsiders). When not actively quarreling,
the two groups had little contact with each other beyond a limited
exchange of goods.

An Eremtaga child could be adopted into an Aryoto group but
adoption in the other direction was not acceptable to the Aryoto.

We may note here in passing that snobbery appears to be an
ancient, deeply rooted and widespread human trait.