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8. THE ROLE OF WOMAN


Living in what quite possibly was and is the oldest of all living societies, the role of the traditional Andamanese woman does not support those who see a matriarchy at the early roots of human development. As far as we can follow the Andamanese into their past, they have lived in a mild but definitive patriarchy. Women had a great deal of influence and it would have been a brave, if not foolish, chief who ignored their advice. Yet for all their influence, women held an inferior position in their society. It is only in contrast to the often degrading situation of women in many of the higher civilizations around the Bay of Bengal that their position can be called strong. In the end, it was always the Andamanese women who had to carry the heaviest loads during the frequent migrations so that their lords and masters could be free to pursue any game animal that crossed their path.

A woman could not become chief herself but the chief's wife held the same position over the women that her husband held over the men. While her husband acquired his position through force of personality, his wife's was determined through marriage. Women were not chattel, however, and no husband could dispose of his wife or of her property. Divorce was not common but possible and apparently without social stigma if it took place before the first child arrived. It was extremely rare afterwards and probably all but unknown before 1858. It goes much too far, as some early observers have done, to call Andamanese women the slaves and drudges of their men - their simple society did not have much drudging to do. A woman reached her full personality and status only as mother while a man could rise in society. We have an authentic voice of how the men saw their wives. Unfortunately there is no counterpart giving the female position. In 1867, a recently widowed Aka-Bea man called Moriarty by the British had the following to say on the subject:

A wife is a great help to an Andamanese as she does all the home duties, providing the man with shelter, matting, taking care of his food, fetching firewood, water, shellfish, carrying his loads, shaving him, and taking care of him in sickness. The man's duties are, protecting his wife, making canoes, hunting pigs, and spearing fish. Boys will now have to attend to Moriarty's wants.

Equally authentic is the remark of a British administrator who, while bewailing the unwillingness of Andamanese men to settle down to cultivation and a life of industry, noted that their women were more accustomed to work under subjection. But even they would not consent to prepare thatching leaves, make blankets or sew clothes for the British. Whenever the men were drawn into doing work at Port Blair, they liked to fade back into the jungle as quickly as possible. The women generally lasted a little longer but not much longer.

Traditional Andamanese societies knew (and among Jarawa and Sentineli still know) only two major social roles: that of men and women. The division of labor between the sexes was clear-cut: men hunted and women gathered. The construction of huts involved the cooperation of both sexes while each sex had to make its own tools. The men did the communal cooking that went with feasts and the women cooked the daily family meal. Firewood was collected by the women exclusively. There is no way around it: Andaman society fits the patriarchal cliché to an almost embarrassing degree.

Outside daily life, the women played a major role in any peace-making process. After 1858 it did not take the British long to discover that an all-male welcoming party was more likely to be an ambush, whereas the presence of women usually signified genuinely peaceful intentions.

Fighting was male business, making peace the women's task. Local feuds could be ended only with the help of women; males, even if beaten, were quite incapable of admitting defeat or asking for peace. Whenever the women had had enough of male posturing, they would set off to visit the women of the enemy camp to see if they, too, were ready to let bygones be bygones. The Andamanese way of war is described in a later chapter; suffice it to say here that the aim was to kill as many enemy men as possible. Women and children were never a specific target but sometimes they got in the way of a raid and were accidentally killed.

The peace-making ceremony was arranged by the women and had to take place in the village that had made the last attack:

In the village of this group the dancing ground is prepared, and across it is erected what is called a koro-tsop. Posts are put up in a line, to the tops of these is attached a length of strong cane, and from the cane are suspended bundles of shredded palm-leaf (koro). The women of the camp keep a look-out for the approach of the visitors. When they are known to be near the camp, the women sit down on one side of the dancing ground, and the men take up positions in front of the decorated cane. Each man stands with his back against the koro-tsop, with his arms stretched out sideways along the top of it. None of them has any weapons.

The visitors, who are, if we may so put it, the forgiving party, while the home party are those who have committed the last act of hostility, advance into the camp dancing, the step being that of the ordinary dance. The women of the home party mark the time of the dance by clapping their hands on their thighs. I was told that the visitors carry their weapons with them, but when the dance was performed at my request the dancers were without weapons. The visitors dance forward in front of the men standing at the koro-tsop, and then, still dancing all the time, pass backwards and forwards between the standing men, bending their heads as they pass beneath the suspended cane. The dancers make threatening gestures at the men standing at the koro-tsop, and every now and then break into a shrill shout. The men at the koro stand silent and motionless, and are expected to show no sign of fear.

After they have been dancing thus for a little time, the leader of the dancers approaches the man at one end of the koro and, taking him by the shoulders from the front, leaps vigorously up and down to the time of the dance, thus giving the man he holds a good shaking. The leader then passes on to the next man in the row while another of the dancers goes through the same performance with the first man. This is continued until each of the dancers has "shaken" each of the standing men. The dancers then pass under the koro and shake their enemies in the same manner from the back. After a little more dancing the dancers retire, and the women of the visiting group come forward and dance in much the same way that the men have done, each woman giving each of the men of the other group a good shaking. When the women have been through their dance the two parties of men and women sit down and weep together.

The two groups remain camped together for a few days, spending the time in hunting and dancing together, presents are exchanged, as at the ordinary meetings of different groups. The men of the two groups exchange bows with one another.

Women were thought to have a very special relationship with the spirit world. The female genitals were taboo, they were the place wherein resided the same power that made the spirits of the dead so dangerous. The women of both the Onge and the Greater Andamanese hid their genitals with bundles of fibers made of the leaf-stems of a specific palm-tree. Fibers from the very same species of palm were used to make ritual keep-off markers on graves and other places where dangerous spirits were thought to dwell, at the entrances of villages temporarily deserted because of a death and during peace ceremonies. The use of the same material for ritual purpose and to cover female genitals among both Onge and Great Andamanese cannot be coincidence. The custom must be of high antiquity, going back to the time before the Onge on Little Andaman were separated from the Great Andamanese.

The suffering caused especially to women by the death and destruction that came with the arrival of outsiders is thrown into sharp relief by Corbyn's report on a visit to an Andamanese camp in 1863:

An aged woman now came up, a fierce looking virago; she appeared idiotic, and talked loud and angrily, as if cursing. I made the usual salutation which she returned, but after doing so gnashed her teeth close to my hand, and then contemptuously flung it from her, as much as to signify that she had a good will to bite and tear me if she could. She exhibited the same animosity to other Europeans. I concluded that she was insane, and she may possibly have been rendered fierce by losing a son or other near relative in affrays with Europeans.

In his reprint of the same report Portman added the following poignant comment:

Such cases are often seen. She did not approve of strangers, and her husband, child, or some relation had probably been killed or injured by us.


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