Andaman Islands

“ The Andaman Islands, which are about eight in number, and covered with trees, form a group at the entrance of the Bay of Bengal, and are near 750 miles from the Sand Heads at Calcutta, and twelve degrees from the Equator. That on which the vessel was driven was in point of latitude about the centre, and may be easily known by a remarkable hill somewhat resembling a puritan’s hat, and being placed in a hollow of the land, with much higher hills, both on the north and south of it. The anchorage is good, and a ship may be sheltered from all points. ”

“ And withal we find only three species of quadrupeds, and these small ones, thinly distributed along the skirts of the forest. In truth, the Andaman Islands and their fauna have long been a puzzle to the zoölogist.
But longer still, and to a far greater extent, have their human inhabitants perplexed the ethnologist; and here we arrive at the true peculiarity of the Andaman Islands,—that is to say, the people who inhabit them. With perhaps no exception, these people are the most truly savage of any on the face of the globe ”

“ Population.—The Andaman Islands, so near countries that have for ages attained considerable civilization and have been the seat of great empires, and close to the track of a great commerce which has gone on at least 2000 years, are the abode of savages as low in civilization as almost any known on earth. ”

“ So far from the islands having been uninhabited at the time of Vasco de Gama’s voyage, their 370population of naked blacks with frizzled hair had been described six hundred years earlier, and the story, which sounded reasonable to people puzzled by the appearance of a black population in the Andaman islands, is of course repudiated by ethnologists aware of the wide distribution of the negroid Papuans, really so distinct from any race of African negroes. [500] Not long since, I met with a very perfect myth of this kind. ”

“ The principal islands are, Great and Little Andaman, Rutland and the Labyrinths, the Archipelago, North Sentinel, Interview Island, Landfall Island, and the Cocos, but there are many smaller adjacent, while to the eastward are the off-lying volcanic islets of Narkondam and Barren Island. ”

“ Beyond these two islands is the sea of Andaman. The people on this coast eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion is black, with frizzled hair, their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet very large, almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked. They have no sort of barks or other vessels, or they would seize and devour all the passengers they could lay their hands upon. When ships have been kept back by contrary winds, and are obliged to anchor on this barbarous coast, for procuring water, they commonly lose some of their men. ”

“ In all these matters there is not much that is remarkable,—if we accept the extreme paucity of the zoölogy; and this is really a peculiarity,—considering that the Andaman Islands lie within less than eighty leagues of the Burman territory, a country so rich in mammalia; considering, too, that they are covered with immense forests, almost impenetrable to human beings, on account of their thick intertwining of underwood and parasitical plants,—the very home, one would suppose for wild beasts of many kinds! ”

“ There are besides many other safe anchorages about the coast, notably Shoal Bay and Kotara Anchorage in the South Andaman; Cadell Bay and the Turtle Islands in the North Andaman; and Outram Harbour and Kwangtung Strait in the archipelago. The whole of the Andamans and the outlying islands were completely surveyed topographically by the Indian Survey Department under Colonel Hobday in 1883–1886, and the surrounding seas were charted by Commander Carpenter in 1888–1889. ”

“ The Black Waters are to him those that cut off from happiness and home the criminals of that vast region to which he belongs. Beyond the Black Waters lie the Andaman Islands, where, at the present time, about thirteen thousand convicts of both sexes—thieves, murderers, and murderesses—endure the punishment of exile, the due reward of their crimes. ”

“ That he does not always do so is mostly because while on the move from place to place he may be content to sleep in the open, or take to the natural shelter of a tree or rock. Thus in the Andaman Islands the roving savages have been noticed to resort to the sea-shore, where, under some overhanging cliff that kept off the wind, they would scoop themselves out each a hole in the sand to lie in. ”

“ It is believed to be the first race inhabiting the Philippines, but, as well as everywhere else, except in the Andaman Islands, it has been more or less absorbed by the stronger races, and the result in the archipelago has been the formation of several tribes of half-breeds numbering considerably more than half a million. ”

“ From Sumatra they sailed to the Nicobar and64 Andaman islands, the natives of which were naked and bestial savages, though the country produced excellent cloves, cocoanuts, Brazil wood, red and white sandal wood, and various kinds of spices. They next touched at Ceylon, which appeared to Marco Polo, and not altogether without reason, to be the finest island in the world. Here no grain, except rice, was cultivated; but the country produced a profusion of oil, sesamum, milk, flesh, palm wine, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, and the best rubies in the world. ”

“ In the island regions of 174the Southern Hemisphere, while image-worship scarcely appears among the Andaman islanders, Tasmanians, or Australians, and is absent or rare in various Papuan and Polynesian districts, it prevails among the majority of the island tribes who have attained to middle and high savage levels. In Polynesian islands, where the meaning of the native idolatry has been carefully examined, it is found to rest on the most absolute theory of spirit-embodiment. ”

“ Mr. Man thinks it likely that the Andaman Islanders got their fire from one of the two volcanoes which exist in their island (On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, p. 82) . The Creek Indians of North America have a tradition that some of their ancestors procured fire from a volcano. See A. S. Gatschet, A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, ii. (St. Louis, 1888) p. 11 (43) .
823. O. Peschel, loc. cit. As to the fires of Baku see further, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. ”

“ Andaman—The Andaman Language is monosyllabic, and allied to the Burmese of the opposite continent.
Nicoaar &c.—The statement that there are Blacks in the Nicobar Islands is inaccurate. The tribes further from the coast are the rudest. ”

“ The first few days of the voyage passed happily, amid favorable weather and propitious winds, and the ship soon came in sight of the great Andaman, the principal of the islands in the Bay of Bengal, with its picturesque Saddle Peak, two thousand four hundred feet high, looming above the waters. ”

“ It is chiefly on islands of harsh climatic conditions, like Sakhalin, or of peculiarly restricted resources and area, like the Andaman, or of remote, side-tracked location, like Iceland, Sardinia and Cape Breton, that the stamp of the primitive or antiquated is strongest. Even when not apparent in race stock, owing to the ubiquitous colonization of maritime peoples, it marks the language and customs of even these late-coming occupants, because an island environment asserts always some power to isolate. ”

“ Strange to say, this mode of dealing with the Andaman islanders has been made repeatedly, and always with the same fruitless result. Whatever may have been the original cause that interrupted their intercourse with the rest of mankind, they seem determined that this intercourse shall never be renewed.
When plenty reigns among them, and there has been a good take of fish, they act like other starved wretches; and yield themselves up to feasting and gorging, till not a morsel remains. ”

“ The surface of Great Andaman is extremely irregular, and a central range of mountains runs from north to south, with an escarped face on the east, and a sloping declivity on the west, where marshy localities abound. ”

“ There is no trace of spirit or ancestor worship. The Andaman Islanders have a vague belief in a sort of god—“Püluga”—an invisible being who lives in a large stone house in the sky, and who made all things. They also believe in an evil one, to whom they attribute sickness and death. ”

“ I will conclude, therefore, with his account of the Andaman islander—who, with the Australians, Esquimaux, and Fuegians, dispute the point of being considered the lowest of mankind. It is said of the Andamans, “that they have no idea of a Supreme Being, no religion, or any belief in a future state of existence” (p. 346) . It is, however, casually mentioned that, “after death, the corpse is buried in a sitting posture.” ”

“ There are no permanent inhabitants, but the Cinques are occasionally visited by the natives (Öngés of Little Andaman and natives from Port Blair) , who probably find it a good locality for turtle and fish. We picked up in the jungle an arrow of a kind afterwards obtained at Little Andaman, and discovered a path that ran from south to north, where, on the shore of a little sandy cove, stood a hut similar to those already seen, save that sides had been added, thus making a semicircular shelter, and a small platform of sticks erected above the fireplace. ”

“ From here the furthermost of the Nicobars may be seen, and so one island may be seen from another, from the southernmost of those to Chitty-Andeman (Little Andaman) , which is southernmost of the Andamans, distant from Acheen about a hundred leagues. ”

“ When sailing along little known shores, especially in the tropics, a look-out man should always be stationed at the masthead, for from that place dangers of reef and rock unnoticed from the deck are plainly visible. Year by year coral-reefs increase, and banks alter so greatly that entire reliance cannot be placed on the chart, even though it be of comparatively recent date.
We landed on South Andaman in a little bay, whose waters lapped a beach of golden sand. It was, as usual, nearly filled with coral, but fortunately the tide was never so low that we could not land directly on the shore. ”

“ CONCLUSION. “O Oscar! this can be no penal settlement; it is a paradise, a perfect paradise of beauty!” was Io’s delighted exclamation as, aided by her husband, she stepped on shore. Imagination had pictured the Andamans as some hot waste of sand, or some burning rock, fit abode for criminals driven forth from their fellow-men; but perhaps the whole earth holds no fairer spot, none more favoured by nature, than these beautiful Eastern islands—“emeralds set in the ring of the sea.” There plants grow in the richest luxuriance; there verdure clothes the forest, and flowers spangle the earth. ”

“ It is rare that the population of an island is without clear, definite, and not very distant affinities with that of the nearest part of the nearest continent. The Cingalese of Ceylon can be traced to India; the Sumatrans to the Malayan Peninsula; the Kurile Islanders to the Peninsula of Sagalín; the Guanches of Teneriffe to the coast of Barbary. The nearest approach to isolation is in the island of Madagascar, where the affinities are with Sumatra, the Moluccas and the Malay stock rather than with the opposite parts of Africa, the coasts of Mozambique and Zanguibar. ”

“ The houses alone were typical of the change of race: those of the Negro peoples—the stock to which the Andamanese belong—are built directly on the ground, while here, among a group of (practically) the Malayan race, the dwellings were universally raised on piles. [15]
We landed next morning by wading through the surf, for the sea, though smooth off-shore, was breaking on the beach.
The shores of the bay rose precipitously from a beach of sand to an average height of 30 feet, and showed plainly the island formation of grey clay, sandstone, and overlying beds of upheaved coral. ”

“ Preparing ourselves therefore for a voyage, we took shipping and in fifteen days we came to the island of Bandan or Banda, whence nutmegs and mace are procured.
In this voyage to the isle of Banda, we passed about twenty islands, some of them inhabited and some desert. This island of Banda is very low, savage, and barren, being about 100 miles in circuit. It has neither king nor governor, but is inhabited by a savage and brutal people, who live without law, order, or government, dwelling in low huts scarcely rising above the ground, and having a scanty shirt for their whole clothing. ”

“ That such a pure and homogeneous type would evolve if a community were isolated from all others for a sufficient length of time is probable, but we have no clear evidence that such a state of isolation has been preserved for a sufficient period in any part of Europe, or for that matter in the world. The Andamanese have for long kept themselves in fairly complete isolation in a small group of islands, yet their type seems to show evidence of admixture. The same is more true of the Australian aborigines, although the island continent has almost succeeded in keeping out other placental animals. ”

“ Therefore, at most the valiant ones set an ambush, and according to the way it falls out the campaign is finished without the spoils being surrendered; for their articles of value, as there is so little good faith among them, are always kept buried, or are so light that they are carried along with them. On that account he alone is judged powerful who has people to make war by sea. In ancient times this power caused all this island to pay tribute to the king of Mindanao in order to be free from his attacks. ”