Chapter II: Introduction

The Andaman Islands are part of a chain of islands stretching from Cape Negrais in Burma to Achin Head in Sumatra. This line of islands forms a single geographical system, as it were a submarine range of mountains, the highest points rising here and there above the surface of the ocean. Some 80 miles or so from Cape Negrais lies the first of the islands in the chain, Preparis Island, between which and the mainland the sea depth does not exceed 100 fathoms. Southwards of this the submarine ridge sinks to a depth of about 150 fathoms, rising again to form the small group of islands known as the Cocos, some 50 miles from Preparis. Geographically the Cocos may be regarded as part of the Andaman Group. Landfall Island, the most northerly point of the Andamans proper, is only distant from them some 30 miles, and the sea depth between does not exceed 45 fathoms. The Andaman Group itself consists of the Great and Little Andaman with their outlying islets, and occupies a distance approximately north and south of about 210 miles. Eighty miles to the south of the Andamans lie the Nicobar Islands, a scattered archipelago occupying a distance of about 160 miles from north to south. The sea between the Andamans and the Nicobars is over 700 fathoms deep. Deep sea also divides the Nicobars from Sumatra, which is about 110 miles distant from the most southerly point of Great Nicobar.

This line of islands is part of a long fold extending from the eastern end of the Himalayas, which includes the Arakan Yomah Range of Burma and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and finds its continuation in the islands off the west coast of Sumatra [3].

On the west the Andamans are separated from the coast of Madras, 700 miles distant, by the Sea of Bengal. On the east the Andaman Sea, a depression with a depth of over 1000 fathoms, separates the Andamans and Nicobars from the Malay Isthmus and Peninsula. Across the Andaman Sea, less than 100 miles distant from the Andamans, there runs a line of volcanic activity, marked by two small islands, Barren Island in Lat. 12° 15´ N. and Long. 93° 50´ E., and Narkondam in Lat. 13° 26´ N. and Long. 95° 15´ E. [4]

The Cocos, the Andamans and the Nicobars are now part of the Indian Empire. The Cocos Islands are occupied by a station for wireless telegraphy. In the Andaman Islands there is a penal settlement at Port Blair, to which are sent the criminals of India and Burma. The Nicobars are treated as one with the Andamans for administrative purposes.

Until the nineteenth century the Cocos Islands were uninhabited. The Andamans and the Nicobars have for many centuries been inhabited by two entirely different races. The Andamanese belong to that branch of the human species known to anthropologists as the Negrito race. They are short of stature with black skins and frizzy hair. The Nicobarese, on the other hand, resemble the races of Indo-China and Malaya, and have brown skins and lank hair, and are of medium stature.

The Andaman Islands consist of the Great Andaman and the Little Andaman, and a number of smaller islands. The Great Andaman may be regarded as one island, although it is divided by narrow sea water creeks into four areas, often spoken of as separate islands and called North Andaman, Middle Andaman, Baratang and South Andaman. It is a long narrow stretch of land with a much indented coast, surrounded by many smaller islands, of which the most important are Interview Island off the west coast, Ritchie’s Archipelago on the east, Rutland Island at the extreme south, and the outlying North Sentinel Island. The length of the Great Andaman with Rutland Island is nearly 160 miles, while the breadth from sea to sea is nowhere more than 20 miles. The Little Andaman lies to the south of the Great Andaman, about 30 miles distant from Rutland Island, from which it is separated by a shallow strait with a maximum depth of only 21 fathoms. The island is about 26 miles long from north to south and about 16 miles wide.

Viewed from the sea the islands appear as a series of hills, nowhere of any great height, covered from sky-line to high-water mark with dense and lofty forest. The hill-ranges run approximately north and south, in the same direction as the islands themselves, and attain a greater elevation on the east than on the west. The highest point of the North Andaman is Saddle Peak (2402 feet), that of Middle Andaman is Mt Diavolo (1678 feet), while the South Andaman has the Mt Harriett Range (1505 feet), and in Rutland Island there is Mt Foord (1422 feet). There are no streams of any size. The water drains from the hills into tidal creeks running through mangrove swamps, often many miles in length. The coast is broken by a number of magnificent harbours. The shores are fringed with extensive coral reefs, and on these and in the creeks there is abundance of fish and molluscs.

The islands, save for the clearings of the Penal Settlement, are covered with dense tropical forest. There are few mammals, the only two of any size being a species of pig (Sus andamanensis, Blyth) and a civet-cat (Paradoxurus tytlerii, Tytler). The other mammals are a few species of rats, a tree-shrew and some species of bats. Of birds there are many different species, some of them peculiar to the islands. The reptiles include a considerable number of species of snakes, and a few species of lizards, of which the most noteworthy is the large Monitor lizard (Varanus salvator).

The climate is warm and moist, and fairly uniform throughout the year. The mean temperature for the year at Port Blair is about 86° F. (80° F. on the wet bulb thermometer). The lowest temperatures are recorded in January and February, and the highest in March, April, or May. The average lowest temperature in the South Andaman over a period of seven years is 66·7° F., the minimum during that period being 63° F. The average highest temperature in the shade for the same period was 96° F., the maximum being 97°. The average diurnal variation is 10°.

The average rainfall of seven stations in the Penal Settlement of Port Blair, for a period of seven years, was 138 inches per annum, the averages of the different stations varying from 104 to 172 inches. For the same period the average number of rainy days in the year was 177, the minimum being 160 and the maximum 196.

The islands are sufficiently far from the Equator to have a single well-defined rainy season. The greater part of the rain falls during the south-west monsoon, which lasts from the middle of May to the middle of November. The north-east monsoon extends over the other six months of the year, which include the dry and hot seasons.

The average weather can be shown most conveniently by means of a calendar.

January. Cool; little or no rain; wind N.N.E.; nights sometimes foggy.

February. Cool; little or no rain; wind N.N.E.; very clear; light airs.

March. Hot by day, cool nights; little or no rain; wind N.N.E.; light airs, occasional haze; the weather gets hotter as the month passes.

April. Very hot; little or no rain; wind variable, off-shore at night and on-shore by day; calm and hazy.

May. The first half of the month like April; the south-west monsoon sets in about the 15th; the remainder of the month cooler and with wind W.S.W.

June. Fairly cool; heavy rains; wind W.S.W., squally.

July. } } August. } Do. do. do. do. } September. }

October. Variable wind and weather; generally some calm weather; waterspouts may occur.

November. During the first half of the month the wind and weather are very uncertain; a cyclone may occur; after the middle of the month the north-east monsoon sets in.

December. Fairly cool; not much rain; wind N.N.E.

Many of the violent cyclonic storms that sweep across the Sea of Bengal seem to form themselves a little to the south of the Andamans. Cyclones of exceptional violence struck Port Cornwallis in 1844 and Port Blair in 1864 and 1891.

The aborigines of the Andaman Islands have been in their present home for a great many centuries. It is not possible to say with any degree of certainty how or when they first reached the islands. Geological and other evidence would seem to show that the Andamans were united to the mainland along the line of the Arakan Fold in later Tertiary times, but even this is perhaps not quite certain [5]. In any case the period of past land connection seems to be so remote that it had probably ceased to exist at the time when the islands were peopled by the ancestors of the present natives. If the ancestors of the Andamanese reached the islands at the time of a past land connection, they can only have done so from the Arakan region of Burma. On the other hand, if they travelled by sea they must almost certainly have started from the Burmese coast (Pegu or Arakan). The north-east monsoon would drift them thence on to the Andamans. It is conceivable that they might have travelled from Sumatra by way of the Nicobars, but the north-east monsoon would have opposed their progress in this direction, while the south-west monsoon would have driven them to the east of the Andamans [6]. It is hardly possible to imagine them coming from the Malay Peninsula across the wide stretch of the Andaman Sea. The balance of probability is in favour of the view that the Andamans were peopled, either by sea or by land, from the region of Lower Burma.

Of the Negrito race, to which the Andamanese belong, there are two other branches still in existence. The first of these consists of the people who may be conveniently spoken of as the Semang, inhabiting the interior of the Malay Peninsula between 5° and 7° N. Latitude. The other branch of this primitive race is found in the interior of the Philippine Islands. From their present distribution it is clear that the Negritos must at some long past time have wandered over a wide area in south-eastern Asia. The connection between the Andamanese and the Semang can only have been either through Sumatra and the Nicobars, or, more probably, by way of Lower Burma. Communication between the Malay Peninsula and the Philippine Islands must have been either by way of Borneo or Celebes, or else by way of Annam and Cochin China. It is certainly many centuries, and probably many thousands of years, since the three surviving branches of the race were cut off from all communication with each other [7].

In the Malay Peninsula and in the Philippines the Negritos have for a long time been living in contact with other races. They have been driven back from the coasts and fertile valleys into the less accessible districts. There is ample evidence that they have adopted many of the customs of the races around them, and have even adopted to a great extent the language of their alien neighbours. The original Negrito culture and language and even perhaps the original physical type have been modified in these two branches of the race.

In the case of the Andaman Islanders it is possible that they have been entirely isolated in their island home, and have not been affected by contact with other races, but have been free to develop their own culture in adaptation to their own environment. If a hypothesis to this effect were accepted we should see in the Andamanese the direct descendants, in physical character, in language, and in culture, of the original Negrito race. In historical times it is known that the islands have been avoided by mariners navigating the adjacent seas, owing to the fact that the natives attacked all strangers who landed or were wrecked upon their shores. Moreover, the islands offered little inducement to visitors or settlers. The coconut, which is one of the mainstays of life in tropical islands, was not found in the Andamans prior to the first European settlement.

The earliest authentic reference to the Andaman Islands seems to be that of two Arab travellers dating from A.D. 871. In the eighteenth century the Abbé Renaudot translated the account of these travels. Of the Andamans we read, “Au de-là de ces deux Isles on trouve la mer appellée d’Andeman. Les peuples qui habitent sur la coste, mangent de la chair humaine, toute cruë. Ils sont noirs, ils ont les cheveux crespus, le visage et les yeux affreux, les pieds fort grands et presque longs d’une coudée, et ils vont tout nuds. Ils n’ont point de barques, et s’ils en avoient ils ne mangeroient pas tous les passants qu’ils peuvent attraper. Les vaisseaux se trouvant retardez dans leur route par les vents contraires, sont souvent obligez dans ces mers de mouiller à la coste où sont ces Barbares pour y faire de l’eau, lors qu’ils ont consommé celle qu’ils avoient à bord. Ils en attrapent souvent quelques-uns, mais la pluspart se sauvent [8].”

It would seem that the Chinese and Japanese knew the islands in the first millenium A.D., and referred to them by the names Yeng-t’o-mang and Andaban respectively [9]. Marco Polo gives a brief notice of the islands. “Angaman is a very large island, not governed by a king. The inhabitants are idolaters, and are a most brutish and savage race, having heads, eyes, and teeth resembling those of the canine species. Their dispositions are cruel, and every person, not being of their own nation, whom they can lay their hands upon, they kill and eat [10].” Some of Marco Polo’s statements about the Andamans, as that the natives live on rice and milk, and that they have coconuts, and plantains, are incorrect. It is evident that all he knew of the islands was derived from hearsay. The passage quoted is only of importance as showing that the reputation of the Andamanese was such as to cause them to be feared and avoided.

A more trustworthy account is that of Master Caesar Frederike, who passed near the Nicobars in 1566. “From Nicubar to Pegu is, as it were, a row or chain of an infinite number of islands, of which many are inhabited with wild people; and they call those islands the Islands of Andemaon, and they call their people savage or wild, because they eat one another: also, these islands have war one with another, for they have small barques, and with them they take one another, and so eat one another: and if by evil chance any ship be lost on those islands, as many have been, there is not one man of those ships lost there that escapeth uneaten or unslain. These people have not any acquaintance with any other people, neither have they trade with any, but live only of such fruits as those islands yield [11].”

There are numerous references to the Andamans in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and all of them show that the islands were feared and avoided. During these and the previous centuries wrecks must have occurred in considerable numbers, and it is probable, from what is now known of the natives, that the mariners would be immediately slain. Visits were also paid by ships whose water supply had run out, and by Malay pirates. There is evidence that boats, either Malay or Chinese, sometimes visited the islands in search of edible birds’ nests and trepang. In some cases Andamanese were captured and carried off as slaves. It is extremely improbable that such visitors ever succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the islanders.

There is one way in which the life of the Andamanese was affected by the vessels that visited or were wrecked upon their shores, since it was by this means that they learnt the use of iron.

It is impossible now to determine the date at which they became acquainted with the metal. The earliest reference to the subject is in an account of a visit to the Andamans in 1771, where it is shown that the natives were at that time aware of the value of iron [12]. Until the middle of the nineteenth century the only supply of the metal was from wrecks, of which there have always been a fair number.

Until the end of the eighteenth century there was no attempt made to open up communication with the Andaman Islands, although the Nicobar Islands were the scene of several attempts to establish a colony. In 1788, owing to the menace to shipping constituted by the islands and their inhabitants, the East India Company, under Lord Cornwallis, commissioned Archibald Blair to start a settlement, convicts being sent as labourers. The settlement was founded in September, 1789, in the harbour now known as Port Blair, but then called Port Cornwallis. In spite of the hostility of the natives the colony seems to have been successful. In 1792 it was transferred from the first site to the harbour in the North Andaman now known as Port Cornwallis. The transfer was made with the idea of creating a naval base, for which the spot chosen was well adapted. Unfortunately the new site proved to be very unhealthy, and in 1796 the scheme was abandoned, the convicts were transferred to Penang, and the settlers returned to India.

During the next sixty years the islands remained unoccupied save by the aborigines. There were a number of wrecks in different parts of the islands, and in some cases the crews were slain. In 1839 a geologist, Dr Helfer, visited the islands in the hope of finding minerals, and was killed by the natives. In 1844 two transports, the Briton and the Runnymede, were wrecked in a cyclone on Ritchie’s Archipelago, one of the ships being thrown high up over a reef into a mangrove swamp. The crew and soldiers were safely landed, and were eventually rescued with hardly any loss of life. As they were a large party they were safe from the possible attacks of the natives, and they lived on stores rescued from the wrecks.

In view of the number of wrecks that occurred on the islands and the desirability of establishing there some harbour where vessels might safely call for water or shelter from storms, the East India Company again considered the question of colonizing the Andamans. When the Company, at the end of the Indian Mutiny, found themselves with a large number of prisoners on their hands, it was decided to create a new Penal Settlement, and the site of the settlement of 1788 was chosen for this purpose, and renamed Port Blair.

The Penal Settlement was established in March 1858, and has been in existence ever since. The aborigines were hostile from the outset, and gave much trouble by their raids. They made a determined effort to oust the invaders from their country. To establish friendly relations with them an institution known as the Andamanese Homes was founded, to provide free rations and lodging, and medical attendance, to such of them as could be induced to visit the Settlement. Through the efforts of successive officers in charge of these Homes friendly relations were established, first of all with the Aka-Bea tribe in the neighbourhood of Port Blair, then with other tribes of the South Andaman, and at a later date with the inhabitants of the North Andaman and the Little Andaman. At the present day there is only one body of Andamanese still persistently hostile, and these are the so-called J̌a̤rawa of the interior of the South Andaman. These J̌a̤rawa, since about 1870, have made repeated attacks on isolated parties of convicts and forest workers and on the friendly Andamanese. Punitive expeditions have been sent against them on several occasions, and attempts to set up friendly relations with them have been made by leaving presents in their huts, and by capturing some of them and keeping them for a time at Port Blair. At the present time the J̌a̤rawa are as hostile as ever.

Although of one race throughout, the Andaman Islanders are divided into several groups, with differences of language and culture. There are two main divisions, which will be spoken of as the Great Andaman Group and the Little Andaman Group respectively. The Great Andaman Group includes all the natives of the Great Andaman with the exception of those of the interior of the South Andaman who are known as J̌a̤rawa. The Little Andaman Group includes all the inhabitants of the Little Andaman, those of the North Sentinel Island and the J̌a̤rawa of the South Andaman.

These two different divisions exhibit many differences of language and culture. All the languages of the Great Andaman Group are closely related to one another. They have the same grammatical structure, and a large number of roots are the same in all or in several of them. In the same way the language of the J̌a̤rawa, so far as it is known, is very similar to that of the natives of the Little Andaman. On the other hand when the language of the Little Andaman is compared with the Great Andaman languages there is a very striking difference. Of a vocabulary of several hundred words collected in the Little Andaman there were less than a dozen in which the root or stem was clearly the same as that of words in the Great Andaman. While the grammatical structure of the languages of the two groups is fundamentally the same, this can only be shown in a somewhat detailed analysis, and there are many important differences.

With regard to technical culture the same grouping appears. There is a general similarity between all the tribes of the Great Andaman Group, while the J̌a̤rawa and the inhabitants of the Little Andaman have a technical culture of their own that is markedly different from that of the other division.

The natives of the Great Andaman Group are divided into tribes, of which there are ten, each with its own distinctive language or dialect, and with a name. The following is a list of these tribes, passing from north to south:—Aka-Čari, Aka-Ko̱ra, Aka-Bo, Aka-J̌eru, Aka-Kede, Aka-Ko̱l, O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i, A-Pučikwar, Akar-Bale, and Aka-Bea. In each case the name is given in the form in which it is used by the tribe itself. Thus the Aka-Bea speak of the A-Pučikwar as Aka-Boǰig-yab, and refer to the Akar-Bale as Aka-Bala-wa, and there are similar variants of other tribal names.

The natives of the Little Andaman refer to themselves as Önge (men). It is probable that the so-called J̌a̤rawa of the South Andaman have the same word. In a vocabulary obtained by Colebrooke in 1790 from a J̌a̤rawa near Port Blair, the word Mincopie is given as meaning a native of the Andaman Islands. This would seem to be simply the same phrase as the Little Andaman M’önge-bi = I am Önge, or I am a “man.” The word J̌a̤rawa is apparently derived from the Aka-Bea language, but is now used by all the friendly natives (i.e. the natives of the Great Andaman Group) to denote those of the Little Andaman Group. In the official publications dealing with the Andamans, however, the term J̌a̤rawa has come to be applied solely to the hostile natives of the Great Andaman. It is in this sense that the word is used in the present work, the name Önge being reserved for the natives of the Little Andaman. It must be remembered, however, that the so-called J̌a̤rawa probably call themselves Önge, while the Önge of the Little Andaman are called J̌a̤rawa by the natives of the friendly tribes of the Great Andaman. The name Mincopie was at one time common in ethnological literature as a term for the Andaman Islanders.

It is convenient to divide the tribes of the Great Andaman Group into two subdivisions, to be spoken of as the Northern Group (including the first four tribes mentioned above) and the Southern Group (including the other six tribes). Between these two divisions there are a number of differences of culture. They have, for example, different forms of bow, and different kinds of baskets. The differences between them are much slighter than those between the Great Andaman tribes and the natives of the Little Andaman, but they are of sufficient importance to make it necessary to distinguish them from one another.

The different divisions of the Andamanese may for convenience be set out in the form of a table.

I. Great Andaman Group.

A. Northern Group, including the tribes:—

Aka-Čari,
Aka-Ko̱ra,
Aka-Bo,
Aka-J̌eru.

B. Southern Group, including the tribes:—

Aka-Kede,
Aka-Ko̱l,
O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i,
A-Pučikwar,
Akar-Bale,
Aka-Bea.

II. Little Andaman Group.

A. The inhabitants of the Little Andaman (Önge).
B. The J̌a̤rawa of the South Andaman.
C. The inhabitants of the North Sentinel Island.

The distribution of these different groups as it was in 1858 is shown on the map.

There is one important feature of this distribution that requires a few words of explanation, and that is the presence in the South Andaman of the J̌a̤rawa who are allied by language and technical culture to the natives of the Little Andaman. There can be no doubt that the J̌a̤rawa are the descendants of emigrants who at some time in the past made their way across from the Little Andaman and thrust themselves in upon the inhabitants of Rutland Island and the South Andaman, maintaining their footing in the new country by force of arms.

The identity of the flora and fauna of the Little Andaman with those of the Great Andaman and the shallowness of the strait between the islands, suggests that at no very remote period they have been united by a continuous land connection. Whether or not this connection existed at the time when the islands were first peopled, it is at any rate reasonable to suppose that the original ancestors of the present Andamanese had one language and one culture. Once the Little Andaman was peopled, the strait between it and the Great Andaman seems to have acted as an effective barrier, to keep the two divisions of the race apart for many centuries. During the period of this separation each division followed its own line of development, with the result that there arose the considerable differences of language and culture that now exist.

At a much later date than this separation of the Andamanese into two isolated groups, and after the typical differences of language and culture had been developed, a party of natives must have made their way by canoe from the north of the Little Andaman to Rutland Island. They would have found that country occupied by natives of the Great Andaman Group. In spite of this they succeeded in establishing themselves in the South Andaman, and became the progenitors of the present J̌a̤rawa. Owing to the difference of language all communication between the Little Andaman invaders and those already occupying the invaded country would be impossible. (At the present day a native of the Little Andaman cannot make himself understood to a native of one of the Great Andaman tribes.) The result has been that the J̌a̤rawa have lived in a state of constant warfare with their neighbours, and this hostility has lasted down to the present day.

It is only on the above hypothesis that it is possible to explain how it comes about that we find in the South Andaman people with language and technical culture very similar to that of the Little Andaman, and differing from that of the remaining inhabitants of the Great Andaman. It is impossible to say how long it is since this invasion from the Little Andaman took place. At the end of the eighteenth century the J̌a̤rawa were to be found in the neighbourhood of Port Blair. Lieutenant Colebrooke in 1790 came across an individual of this tribe and obtained from him a vocabulary. A comparison of this vocabulary with the language of the Little Andaman shows it to be essentially the same language [13].

A few words must be said on the position of the natives of the North Sentinel Island. Almost nothing is known of these people. What little information is available concerning their weapons and implements seems to point to their belonging to the Little Andaman Division. There is no communication between them and either the Great Andaman or the Little Andaman. It is possible that they have been separated from the other Andamanese as long as those of the Little Andaman have been separated from those of the Great Andaman, and would therefore constitute a third separate division. The South Sentinel Island is uninhabited.

The total area of the Andamans is estimated to be about 2500 square miles. This area is divided as follows:—

Sq. miles.
North Andaman, being the territory of the four tribes 540
Aka-Cari, Aka-Kora, Aka-Bo, and Aka-Jeru
Middle Andaman and Baratang, occupied by four tribes, 790
Aka-Kede, Aka-Kol, Oko-Juwoi and A-Pucikwar
The Archipelago, occupied by the Akar-Bale tribe 140
The South Andaman, occupied by the Aka-Bea and the Jarawa 630
North Sentinel Island 30
Little Andaman 370
----
2500

It is not possible to give accurately the area occupied by each tribe, as the boundaries are difficult to discover. The Aka-Bea is in an exceptional position, as there was no definite boundary between them and the J̌a̤rawa. The two parties of natives lived in the same territory at enmity with each other. It would seem that the Aka-Bea kept on the whole more to the coast, while the J̌a̤rawa lived in the interior.

Leaving aside the Aka-Bea, the largest of the Great Andaman tribes, as regards area of territory, was the Aka-Kede, which possessed over 300 square miles. After this tribe in order of size come the A-Pučikwar, Aka-J̌eru and Aka-Ko̱ra tribes, while the smaller ones are the O̱ko̱-J̌uwo̱i, Aka-Ko̱l, Aka-Bo, Akar-Bale and Aka-Čari, the last being perhaps the smallest of all.

In 1901 an enumeration of the natives of the Great Andaman was attempted in connection with the census of India. Such an enumeration was of course very difficult, and liable to considerable error. The results are given in the following table:—

Name of Tribe Adults Children Total
Males Females Males Females
Aka-Cari 16 15 6 2 39
Aka-Kora 31 32 14 19 96
Aka-Bo 15 16 7 10 48
Aka-Jeru 98 80 26 14 218
Aka-Kede 24 30 3 2 59
Aka-Kol 6 2 3 11
Oko-Juwoi 21 19 7 1 48
A-Pucikwar 31 14 2 3 50
Akar-Bale 5 10 3 1 19
Aka-Bea 14 16 3 4 37
--- --- -- -- ---
Total 261 234 74 56 625

These figures are likely to be more accurate for the southern tribes (the last five on the list) than for the northern tribes. It is probable that, in the North Andaman, some of the persons enumerated were entered under the wrong tribe. For many years the officers of the Andamans did not know of the existence of the Aka-Ko̱ra and Aka-Bo tribes, and members of these tribes have fallen into the habit of describing themselves to Europeans as either Aka-J̌eru or Aka-Čari. My own opinion is that the numbers given for the Aka-J̌eru tribe are too large, while those of the Aka-Ko̱ra and Aka-Bo, and perhaps also the Aka-Kede, are too small.

For the census of 1901 an attempt was made to estimate the numbers of the J̌a̤rawa and the natives of the Little Andaman, any attempt at enumeration being impossible. The estimate given was as follows:—

Little Andaman 672
South Andaman Jarawa 117
Rutland Island Jarawa 351
North Sentinel Island 117
----
Total 1257

This estimate is not of any great value. As regards the Little Andaman, my own information would lead me to estimate their numbers at between 600 and 700, thus agreeing with the estimate above. Concerning the North Sentinel Island nothing is known on which a satisfactory estimate could be based. The figures for the Rutland Island J̌a̤rawa are certainly very much too high. In 1907 I spent some weeks on Rutland Island trying to get into touch with the J̌a̤rawa there. At that time there were certainly not more than 50 all told on the island. I was only able to discover one camp, and that had been deserted just before it was discovered, but had not contained a dozen persons. The Rutland Island J̌a̤rawa have been cut off from the other J̌a̤rawa by the spread of the convict Settlement since about 1885. The majority of the J̌a̤rawa now inhabit the interior and western coast of the South Andaman north of Port Blair.

During the last fifty years the numbers of the Andamanese have been greatly diminished. This has been the result of the European occupation of the islands, and is chiefly due to new diseases that have been introduced amongst them. Syphilis was introduced among the tribes of the South Andaman about 1870, and this has now spread among all the Great Andaman tribes (that is, excluding the hostile J̌a̤rawa). A large number of natives are infected, and the disease is responsible directly and indirectly for a considerable increase in the death-rate. In March, 1877, an epidemic of measles broke out among the Andamanese, introduced with a batch of convicts from Madras, and spread rapidly from one end of the Great Andaman to the other. In six weeks 51 out of 184 cases treated in hospital proved fatal. It is almost certain that the proportion of deaths was much greater in the case of those, the vast majority, to whom no medical aid could be given. A writer on the Andamans [14] has estimated that the mortality from measles and its sequelae was one-half if not two-thirds of the whole population of the Great Andaman. Other diseases which were formerly unknown to the islands seem also to have been introduced, including influenza.

While the death-rate amongst the friendly Andamanese has been enormously increased, the birth-rate has at the same time fallen to almost nothing. This is evident from the proportion of adults to children in the population table given above. In 1907, out of a total of about 500 natives whom I saw at different times, there were not more than a dozen children of less than five years old. A birth is a rare occurrence, and of the children born very few survive infancy.

This decrease of population has not as yet affected the Little Andaman. The natives of this island have had very little contact with the Penal Settlement or with the tribes of the Great Andaman, and have thus escaped the diseases which are mainly responsible for the depopulation of the larger island.

Several attempts have been made to estimate the former population of the Andamans. In the “Census Report” for 1901 the estimate given is 4800 for the whole group. Mr M. V. Portman has given an estimate of 8000. It seemed to me that one of these is too small and the other too large. Judging from what it is possible to learn about the habits of the natives, and the food supply available, I should estimate that the former population of the islands (in 1858) was about 5500 [15]. An estimate for the proportion of the different groups is as follows:—

Estimated former Density per
population. square mile.

North Andaman (four tribes) 1500 2·75
Middle Andaman with Baratang 2250 2·5
and Ritchie’s Archipelago
South Andaman (Aka-Bea and Jarawa) 1200 2·0
Little Andaman and North Sentinel 700 1·75
---- ----
Total 5650 2·25

With regard to the comparative density per square mile of the different groups it may be pointed out that the reason for the smaller density of the South Andaman is the fact that the Aka-Bea and J̌a̤rawa were living there at war with one another, and the territory was therefore probably not so fully occupied as in other parts of the islands where boundaries between neighbouring tribes were well defined. The food supply of the Little Andaman does not seem to be so abundant as that of the Great Andaman in proportion to its area. It must be remembered that length of coast-line is of more importance to the Andamanese than the actual area of their country. The natives of the Little Andaman are not able to harpoon turtle and large fish, which constitute an important element of the food supply of the tribes of the Great Andaman.

If the figures of the above estimate be correct, it will be seen that the population of the North Andaman has been reduced in less than fifty years (1858–1901) to about 27 per cent. of its former volume, while in the same period the population of the Middle Andaman and South Andaman has been reduced to about 18 per cent. As the tribes in the south were the first to come into contact with the Settlement, their numbers have diminished more rapidly than those of the northern tribes. It is probable that in another fifty years the natives of the Great Andaman tribes will be extinct.

The diminution of population has combined with other causes to alter considerably the mode of life of the islanders. What were formerly distinct and often hostile communities are now merged together. The different languages have become corrupt, and some tribes have adopted customs of other tribes and have abandoned their own. Most of the younger men and women of the friendly tribes of the Great Andaman now speak a little Hindustani (Urdu) in a somewhat corrupt form. The friendly natives are under the charge of an officer of the Settlement, known as the Officer in Charge of the Andamanese. A Home and Hospital are provided for them in Port Blair, and natives from all parts, even from the extreme north, go there either to be treated in the Hospital or to stay at the Home. During certain parts of the year some of the natives are employed in collecting trepang (bêche de mer) under the direction of petty officers, who are natives of India or Burma. The trepang, together with wild honey and shells collected by the Andamanese, is sold, and the money is devoted to the service of the Andamanese Department. There is also a grant of money from the Government of India, in return for which the Officer in Charge must, when necessary, provide Andamanese to track and capture any convicts who may run away from the Penal Settlement. The funds thus made available serve to provide the natives with blankets, cloth, iron tools and scrap iron, rice, sugar, tea and tobacco. The result of this system is that there is a free circulation of natives in all parts of the Great Andaman. Whereas, formerly, the natives kept carefully to their own part of the country, they now make long journeys, either in their own canoes, or in Government launches, and members of the northern tribes are to be found at Port Blair and elsewhere in the south, while men and women of the southern tribes are to be found engaged in collecting trepang in the north.

The natives of the Little Andaman have as yet scarcely been affected by these changes. Within recent years, however, some of the natives of the northern part of the Little Andaman have been in the habit of making periodical visits to Rutland Island in their canoes, and occasionally come as far as Port Blair. Their chief reason for visiting the Settlement is to obtain iron for their arrows and adzes, but they have also begun to appreciate sugar and tobacco.

The manners and customs of the Andaman Islanders have formed the subject of a number of writings. By far the most important of these is a work by Mr E. H. Man, who was for some years an officer of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair, and for four years of that time was in charge of the Andamanese Home. Mr Man made a special study of the language of the Aka-Bea tribe and compiled an extensive vocabulary, which, however, has never been published. His observations on the manners and customs of this tribe and others of the South Andaman were published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of the year 1882 (Volume XII), and were reprinted in the form of a book On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. As the reprint is difficult to obtain, the references to Mr Man’s work in the chapters that follow are all to the pages of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Volume XII.

Another writer on the Andamanese is Mr M. V. Portman, who was for some years an officer of the Andaman Commission, and was for a long time in charge of the Andamanese. His Manual of the Andamanese Languages, London, 1887, is full of errors and entirely unreliable. A later work, entitled Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman Group of Tribes, Calcutta, 1898, is of much greater value, and though not entirely free from errors, is on the whole useful and accurate. Mr Portman has also compiled A History of Our Relations with the Andamanese (2 volumes, Calcutta, 1899), which contains a mass of information on the subject with which it deals, but does not add very much to our knowledge of the Andamanese themselves. The British Museum possesses an excellent collection of photographs of the Andamanese taken by Mr Portman.

A good general description of the islands and of their inhabitants by Colonel Sir Richard Temple, who was for many years Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is contained in Volume III of the Census of India, 1901, here referred to as “Census Report” 1901.