Sentinelese appreciate the value of metal, having scavenged it to create tools and weapons, and accepted aluminium cookware left by the National Geographic Society in 1974.[8] There is no evidence of their having knowledge of metallurgy outside of cold forging to make tools such as arrow heads,[22] though Andamanese scholar Vishvajit Pandya notes that Onge narratives often recall voyages by their ancestors to North Sentinel to procure metal.[23] Canoes are used for lagoon-fishing, but long poles rather than paddles or oars propel them.[5][24] They seldom use the canoes for cross-island navigation.[24] Artistic engravings of simple geometric designs and shade contrasts have been seen on their weapons.[5] The women have been seen to dance by slapping both palms on the thighs whilst simultaneously tapping the feet rhythmically in a bent-knee stance.[5]
Similarities and dissimilarities to the Onge people have been noted. They prepare their food similarly.[25] They share common traits in body decoration and material culture.[2] There are also similarities in the design of their canoes; of all the Andamanese tribes, only the Sentinelese and Onge make canoes.[2][b] Similarities with the Jarawas have been also noted: their bows have similar patterns. No such marks are found on Onge bows, and both tribes sleep on the ground, while the Onge sleep on raised platforms.[26] The metal arrowheads and adze blades are quite large and heavier than those of other Andamanese tribes.[27][clarification needed]
Along with the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas, the Onge, the Shompen, and the Nicobarese, the Sentinelese are one of the six native and often reclusive peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.[32] Unlike the others, the Sentinelese appear to have consistently refused any interaction with the outside world. They are hostile to outsiders and have killed people who approached or landed on the island.[34][35]
In 1771, an East India Company hydrographic survey vessel, the Diligent, observed "a multitude of lights ... upon the shore" of North Sentinel Island, which is the island's first recorded mention. The crew did not investigate.[18]
During a late summer monsoon in October 1867, the Indian merchant-vessel Nineveh foundered on the reef off North Sentinel. All the passengers and crew reached the beach safely, but as they proceeded for their breakfast on the third day, they were subject to a sudden assault by a group of naked, short-haired, red-painted islanders with arrows that were probably iron-tipped.[18] The captain, who fled in the ship's boat, was found days later by a brig and the Royal Navy sent a rescue party to the island. Upon arrival, the party discovered that the survivors had managed to repel the attackers with sticks and stones and that they had not reappeared.[18]
The first recorded visit to the island by a colonial officer was by Jeremiah Homfray in 1867. He recorded seeing naked islanders catching fish with bows and arrows, and was informed by the Great Andamanese that they were Jarawas.[30][39][40]
In 1880, in an effort to establish contact with the Sentinelese, Royal Navy officer Maurice Vidal Portman, who was serving as a colonial administrator to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, led an armed group of Europeans along with convict-orderlies and Andamanese trackers[clarification needed] (whom they had already befriended) to North Sentinel Island. On their arrival, the islanders fled into the treeline. After several days of futile search, during which they found abandoned villages and paths, Portman's men captured six people: an elderly man, a woman and four children.[41][42] The man and woman died of illness shortly after their arrival in Port Blair and the children began to fall ill as well. Portman hurriedly sent the children back to North Sentinel Island with a large quantity of gifts in an attempt to establish friendly relations.[18] Portman visited the island again in 1883,[30] 1885 and 1887.[40][clarification needed]
In 1896, a convict escaped from the penal colony on Great Andaman Island on a makeshift raft and drifted across to the North Sentinel beach. His body was discovered by a search party some days later with several arrow-piercings and a cut throat. The party recorded that they did not see any islanders.[18]
In an 1899 speech, Richard Carnac Temple, who served as chief commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands from 1895 to 1904, reported that he had toured North Sentinel island to capture fugitives,[clarification needed] but upon landing discovered that they had been killed by the inhabitants, who retreated in haste upon seeing his party approach.[43] Temple also recorded a case where a Sentinelese apparently drifted off to the Onge and fraternized with them over the course of two years. When Temple and Portman accompanied him to the tribe and attempted to establish friendly contact, they did not recognize him and responded aggressively by shooting arrows at the group. The man refused to remain on the island.[43] Portman cast doubt on the exact timespan the Sentinelese spent with the Onge, and believed that he had probably been raised by the Onge since childhood.[30] Temple concluded the Sentinelese were "a tribe which slays every stranger, however inoffensive, on sight, whether a forgotten member of itself, of another Andamanese tribe, or a complete foreigner".[43]
Other British colonial administrators have visited the island, including Rogers in 1902, but none of the expeditions after 1880 had any ethnographic purpose, probably because of the island's small size and unfavorable location.[18] M.C.C. Bonnington, a British colonial official, visited the island in 1911 and 1932 to conduct a census. On the first occasion, he came across eight men on the beach and another five in two canoes, who retreated into the forest. The party progressed some miles into the island without facing any hostile response and saw a few huts with slanted roofs. Eventually, failing to find anyone, Bonnington and his men left the island.[44] Notably, the Sentinelese were counted as a standalone group for the first time in the 1911 census.[26]
In 1967, a group of 20 people, comprising the governor, armed forces and naval personnel, were led by T. N. Pandit, an Indian anthropologist working for the Anthropological Survey of India, to North Sentinel Island to explore it and befriend the Sentinelese.[18][46][47] This was the first visit to the island by a professional anthropologist.[5] Through binoculars, the group saw several clusters of Sentinelese along the coastline, who retreated into the forest as the team advanced. The team followed their footprints and after about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi), found a group of 18 lean-to huts made from grass and leaves that showed signs of recent occupation as evidenced by the still-burning fires at the corners of the hut. The team also discovered raw honey, skeletal remains of pigs, wild fruits, an adze, a multi-pronged wooden spear, bows, arrows, cane baskets, fishing nets, bamboo pots and wooden buckets. Metal-working was evident. The team failed to establish any contact and withdrew after leaving gifts.[48]
The government was aware that leaving the Sentinelese (and the area) completely isolated and ceasing to claim any control would lead to rampant illegal exploitation of the natural resources by the numerous mercenary outlaws who took refuge in those regions, and probably contribute to the Sentinelese's extinction. Accordingly, in 1970, an official surveying party landed at an isolated spot on the island and erected a stone tablet, atop a disused native hearth, that declared the island part of India.[18]
In early 1974, a National Geographic film crew went to the island with a team of anthropologists (including Pandit), accompanied by armed police, to film a documentary, Man in Search of Man. They planned to spread the operation of gift-giving over three days and attempt to establish friendly contact. When the motorboat broke through the barrier reefs, the locals emerged from the jungle and shot arrows at it. The crew landed at a safe point on the coast and left gifts in the sand, including a miniature plastic car, some coconuts, a live pig, a doll, and aluminum cookware.[49] The Sentinelese followed up by launching another volley of arrows, one of which struck the documentary director in his thigh. The man who wounded the director withdrew to the shade of a tree and laughed proudly while others speared and buried the pig and the doll. They left afterward, taking the coconuts and cookware.[8][50] This expedition also led to the first photograph of the Sentinelese, published by Raghubir Singh in National Geographic magazine, where they were presented as people for whom "arrows speak louder than words".[51]
During the 1970s and 1980s, Pandit undertook several visits to the island, sometimes as an "expert advisor" in tour parties including dignitaries who wished to encounter an aboriginal tribe.[8][18] Beginning in 1981, he regularly led official expeditions with the purpose of establishing friendly contact.[52] Many of these got a friendly reception, with hoards of gifts left for them,[5][clarification needed] but some ended in violent encounters, which were mostly suppressed.[8][49][clarification needed] Some of the expeditions (1987, 1992, et al.) were entirely documented on film.[5] Sometimes the Sentinelese waved and sometimes they turned their backs and assumed a "defecating" posture, which Pandit took as a sign of their not being welcome. On some occasions, they rushed out of the jungle to take the gifts but then attacked the party with arrows.[18] Other gestures in response to contact parties, such as swaying of penises, have been noted.[53] On some of his visits, Pandit brought some Onge to the island to try to communicate with the Sentinelese, but the attempts were usually futile and Pandit reported one instance of angering the Sentinelese.[47][51]
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