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4. QUESTIONS OF CHARACTER


4.1  A distorded image


This is how someone with an intimate knowledge of the Andamanese described their character:

“The Andamanese are a very conservative race; act solely on the ideas transmitted to them from their ancestors, and will not alter them in any way”.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in one of his earlier Sherlock Holmes story published 1890, called the Andamanese "fierce, morose, intractable." The aboriginal villain of the story is led by a British villain. His final moments are described as follows:

...there was a movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck. It straightened itself into a little black man - the smallest I have ever seen - with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair . . . this savage, distorted creature . . . that face was enough to give a man many a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with half animal fury. . . I caught one glimpse of his venomous, menacing eyes . . .

The diabolical dwarf then tried to kill Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson with a poison dart from a small blowpipe just before he was shot down. The description reflects half-informed but fashionable Victorian opinion of the time. The creator of this fictional creature had never met a real live Andamanese aborigine, spinning his gripping yarn purely from what he had heard and read about them. Unfortunately, whatever sources Sir Arthur had consulted, they were misinformed: the real Andamanese had no blowpipes, no poison arrows, nor did they commonly have great misshapen heads. They can chatter with half animal fury, though, if really angry.

In truth, the Andamanese aborigines are not an administrator's dream people, nor were they the best thing that could have happened to a shipwrecked sailor. In all fairness and from the safety of one's armchair, it must be said that the native character, though admittedly of a decidedly darkish hue, was not quite as black as outsiders have always made it out to be. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the outside world gave the Andamanese plenty of reasons for distrust and hostility.

4.2  Hunters and gatheres


What the Andamanese have been as far back as we can follow them is extraordinarily primitive. Without going further into the subject, let us define a primitive society as one that fulfils all of the following four conditions:

- it has only simple technologies

- it is organized on a small scale

 -it is highly homogeneous (i.e. there are few if any specialist roles to be played beyond the basic male/female)

- it lacks a written language.

These points apply fully to the Andamanese and indeed to all Negrito groups.

Rather than marvel at the hostility of the Andamanese, one should give some thought to the innocent friendliness with which most primitive people first allowed outsiders onto their land and into their society. Novelty and curiosity almost always overwhelmed suspicions on early contact. Hostility was the exception rather than the rule, tending to appear only after the visitors had begun to misbehave. The best-known examples of early friendliness are provided by the South Sea islanders. In return for the welcome they had offered, they received  foreign diseases, missionaries, colonial masters and a copra economy. Another example is provided by the Amerindian tribes along the coast of Brazil who were fierce warriors only towards their traditional Amerindian enemies. They welcomed the first Portuguese, French and Dutch visitors with open curiosity and the hope of using them against their enemies. In some cases the Amerindians even helped the visitors pick the right spots for their settlements and fortifications - and were then promptly enslaved to work on the sugar plantations and drawn into wars among the colonizing powers. When the tribes woke up to their situation and turned violent, it was too late. The settlers had settled. The Andamanese did not, of course, know anything of this. They merely reacted unknowingly in the one way that would ensure their continued existence. Even if their method of self-defence broke down after 1858, from the Andamanese point of view the strategy was highly successful while it lasted.


4.3  "Individualistic conservatives"


It is not fashionable today to assign generalized traits of character to entire populations. However, it must remain permissible to do so in the case of tiny, exceptional groups that are sharply differentiated from all others around them. If there are two words that characterize the Andamanese best then they are "individualistic conservatives." They showed an extreme reluctance to change their way of life coupled with a pronounced lack of respect for authority other than a very limited one sanctified by tradition. The traditional Andamanese did only what they felt like doing and what was required by tradition.

All humans of whatever degree of civilization are to some degree afraid of the dark. The Andamanese were no different. For them the night was a time of heightened danger when evil spirits roamed the jungles. The only defence against the dark was the familiar community of the local group centred on the glowing home fire. Every child who has ever been to a scout camp will have an inkling of how the Andamanese felt. It will therefore not come as a surprise to hear that they did not travel, hunt or fight at night. Even hunting bands bedding down for a short night's rest tried, whenever possible, to start a camp fire. For this purpose they always carried a vessel to keep glowing embers in readiness.

Their long-time residence in an archipelago notwithstanding, the Andamanese always remained people of the interior and of the jungle. Not even the shore-dwelling Aryoto groups developed any intimacy with the sea beyond the immediate beach area. Beachcombing and short fishing trips made with barely seaworthy and sail-less outrigger canoes within sight of land was the closest the aborigines ever got to seafaring. To drift out of sight of land was a death sentence. The Onges of Little Andaman constructed the best canoes and had the best seamanship (Seemannskunst) of all Andamanese groups but even they were good only in relation to other Andamanese. When compared to that of their Nicobarese neighbours, Onge seamanship was pathetic, when compared to the world's best early navigators, the Polynesians, it was non-existent. The jungle-dwelling Eremtaga groups on Great Andaman never rose above make-shift rafts with which to cross narrow inlets (Einbuchtungen).

The Onge made fishing and hunting trips as far north as Rutland island over 60 km (37 miles) of open sea. Such trips were possible only because of a number of small islands are placed conveniently like stepping stones on the way. Like all Andamanese, the Onge were terrified of drifting out of sight of land.

The extreme conservatism also affected Andamanese cuisine: surrounded by seas full of edible (essbar) life, seafood contributed surprisingly little to their diet. Dugong and turtles, for example, were a favourite but rare treat. Fish was widely eaten but far less often than it might have been. The sea shells so common all around the islands were eaten only reluctantly when there was a shortage of decent food. This dislike of cockles went so far that any reference to them, in songs for example, was immediately and universally understood as a reference to shortage and famine. Decent food, as far as the Andamanese were concerned, was pork and nothing but pork. The forest-dwelling Eremtagas made hardly any use of the sea's resources besides trying somewhat half-heartedly to catch prawns and fish along their inland creeks. They were even more obsessed than the Aryoto, if that is possible, with catching pig and eating pork. For a people who are thought to have lived for thousands of years on islands surrounded by the sea, this surely is conservatism carried to absurd and self-destructive lengths.

The Onge, once more, were not quite as conservative as that. Their word for 'fish' (cioghe or coghe) also meant food. But even the Onge disliked sea shells and ate them only when there was nothing else.



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