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NEW DELHI – At the end of the 19th century, a British naval officer described the fact of entering a distant coral-lined island in the Andaman Sea and meeting one of the tribes of hunters- the most enigmatic gatherers of the world, an extremely isolated group of "extremely shy" people. who ate roots and turtles and stored a pile of wild pork skulls.
Fascinated, the officer Maurice Vidal Portman essentially kidnapped several islanders. He took them home to a larger island, where the British ran a prison, and saw the adults get sick and die. After sending the children back to the island, he ended his experience, calling it a failure.
"We can not say that we have done more than aggravate the terror and hostility of all who come," writes Mr. Portman in his 1899 book.
During the next century, few foreigners returned. The island, called North Sentinel, was a world of scrub and hills the size of Manhattan. Almost everyone who dared to visit was greeted by flying arrows. In the 1970s, the director of a National Geographic documentary took one in the leg.
[Read about T.N. Pandit, an anthropologist who spent time with the Jarawa and Sentinelese tribes.]
Perhaps the islanders have been traumatized by this original abduction. Perhaps they feared a foreign disease. Nobody has ever understood exactly why they are so hostile to strangers and their language remains a mystery.
Over the years, North Sentinel has become obscure again. This is until Wednesday, when the Indian government revealed that a young American had paddled up to the shore by kayak and that members of his tribe had killed him at l & # 39; arc.
The episode seemed to be a cultural clash between an open and adventurous stranger who was perhaps trying to educate the islanders about Christianity and the local group. But he sought to win one of the most impenetrable communities in the world.
Last week, John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old from Washington State, paid $ 350 to a group of fishermen to take him to North Sentinel in the dark. The fishermen had warned him not to go there.
Nevertheless, Mr. Chau rowed up to the coast with a kayak and a Bible, according to Pathak Dependra, the chief of police in the area.
He tried to talk to the tribes, who were small and wore a yellow paste on their bodies, in their own language. Some were friendly, others not, according to Mr. Pathak, who quoted a long note given by Mr. Chau to the fishermen just before going on a kayak in case he did not come back.
In that letter, he wrote that Jesus had given him the strength to go to the most forbidden places on Earth, police officials said.
His father, Patrick Chau, said Thursday that his Christian faith was a comfort after the announcement of his son's death. He said he was particularly comforted by a scripture passage: "There is time and seasons for everything under the sky".
Missionary organizations said that Chau died for the ultimate cause and that friends described him as a martyr.
"John was a kind and sensitive ambassador of Jesus Christ," said a statement from All Nations, International Christian Missionary Group. "The privilege of sharing the gospel has often been very expensive. We pray that John's sacrificial efforts will bear eternal fruits in a timely manner. "
According to the fishermen who helped Mr. Chau, they drove for several hours from Port Blair to North Sentinel. Mr. Chau waited until the next morning, at dawn, to try to disembark. He put his kayak in the water at less than one kilometer and headed to the island.
The fishermen said that members of the tribe had shot him arrows and that he had withdrawn. He apparently tried several times to reach the island over the next two days, according to the police, offering gifts such as a small football, a fishing line and scissors. But on the morning of November 17, fishermen said they saw the islanders with his body.
The seven people who helped Mr. Chau reach the island were arrested and charged with culpable homicide not constituting murder and violation of the rules protecting indigenous tribes. In an Instagram post, Mr. Chau's family called for the release of the seven people and said he had "ventured voluntarily".
India strictly monitors access to tribes, which enjoy protected status, and indigenous groups living on the islands of Andaman and Nicobar are among the best kept.
The islands are more than 700 miles from the mainland. And the Indian government has decided that any contact with these islanders, whose way of life has changed very little over the centuries, could destroy their culture and perhaps even their lives. Their immune system may not compete with modern microbes.
But some officials say this approach is outdated and paternalistic.
The islanders, whom Mr. Pathak described as a cultural treasure to be protected, wear loincloths and live in simple huts. They are thought to be between 50 and 100, and hunt with spears and arrows shaped from pieces of metal that strand on their shores. Their island is heavily forested.
T.N. Pandit, an Indian anthropologist who visited North Sentinel several times between 1967 and 1991, said their hostility is simple: they want to be left alone.
"They do not want anything from you. We come to them, "he said. "They suspect that we do not have good intentions. That's why they resist. "
Anthropologists believe that the inhabitants of this island are from African migrants who settled in Andamans thousands of years ago. North Sentinel is one of the few islands on Andaman Island where people who, in 2018, still had very little contact with the outside world.
Since India gained independence from the British, groups of anthropologists have attempted to study them.
But nobody managed to get through it. On several occasions, said Mr Pandit, the Sentinelese turned their backs on anthropologists and squatted as they defecated.
In 2006, two Indian fishermen who had accidentally failed on their shores were killed. When a military helicopter flew over the island at low altitude, men fired arrows. Nowadays, the Indian authorities do not take any risk. The Navy applies a 3-mile buffer zone around North Sentinel. But the police suspect Mr. Chau of having gone at night with the intention of bypassing the authorities.
We do not know how the Sentinels are called, nor if another group in the world understands their language. When an expedition brought members of another aboriginal tribe to North Sentinel, thinking that they could share linguistic similarities, neither party understood each other.
All we had from further afield, was in 1991, when anthropologists found themselves in water at the height of their size near the shore and offered gifted coconuts to a smiling man. A few years later, however, these "gift" shipments have stopped.
A.K. Singh, former lieutenant governor of Andaman and Nicobar, said friendly encounters were rare. He said that there were two schools of thought on how to govern these islands, which, after all, are part of India.
One end of the spectrum argues that "any contact hurts their interests and leaves them alone," he said. "The other end of the spectrum says who we are to deny them the fruits of development. Why should not their children go to school? They aspire to a more modern way of life.
"There were always conflicts in these views," said Singh.
Regarding what Sentinels want, experts say it is very difficult to know. A few years ago, after a young man from another once hostile tribe, the Jarawa, was treated for a broken leg in a hospital in Andaman, some attitudes in the Jarawa community began to switch.
But not at all. In 2015, a jarawa man was accused of killing a baby with lighter skin, born to a single jarawa woman and apparently a stranger. A tribal chief said that if the baby's body was handed over to the investigators "The world will start shaking and we will all die." The police did not arrest the Jarawa man for the crime.
The same thing could happen now. Indian authorities are questioning whether to sue for murder or even recover the body of Mr. Chau, who, according to the police, could be buried on the beach.
Some police officers worried about where the investigation would lead. If they went to get Mr Chau's body on the island, they might be killed too.
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