Everyone, even children, is his own master; but persons who have been abroad, by virtue of their experience, are respected and have some authority, as also have the aged and wealthy. But there is no one who has power to exercise control over even a single village, save in the way of carrying out popular ideas.
A "primitive form of socialism exists. Chiefs are unknown. Certain individuals, by force of character ... have more influence than others ... but this influence seems to be at best but slight, and each person is obedient to himself alone, or to some unwritten code of public opinion"[171]—really the essence of the whole system.
The position of women is, and always has been, in no way inferior to that of the other sex. They take their full share in the formation of public opinion, discuss publicly with the men matters of general interest to the village, and their opinions receive due attention before a decision is arrived at. In fact, they are consulted on every matter, and the henpecked husband is of no extraordinary rarity in the Nicobars.
In Kar Nicobar, where the villages are divided into groups of several houses, a woman occasionally succeeds her late husband as sub-chief, on account of the knowledge she may possess of the regulations in vogue, the property and customs of her neighbours.
Women take a fair share in the day's work. They do the cooking, and the whole family eats together; the men build the houses, canoes, etc.; both sexes may be seen working in company in the plantations, fishing on the reefs, and paddling the canoes.
It is only the women in Chaura who manufacture pottery; but as the art is a monopoly, they must be looked on as rather privileged than otherwise.
In fine, there is no actual division of labour, but all assist in whatever has to be done, from their earliest years. Although scarcely any obedience seems due from children to their parents, most of the ordinary tasks of life are undertaken by young people of both sexes, and much deference is paid to age, especially when it is combined with wealth.
The domestic animals of the Nicobarese are swine, cats, fowls, and dogs, the latter generally of the pariah variety; but now and again in the southern islands a mongrel chow is met with, a cross between the chow and some animal brought thither by the Chinese junks. All are the descendants of introduced species. They are fed on little else but coconut, and support life on this and the results of their own foraging. Pigeons, parrots, and monkeys are occasionally to be seen in captivity, but the natives have not attempted to systematically utilise the megapode; all the laying-places near the villages are, however, known, and periodically overhauled for eggs.[172]
Weapons, in the strict sense of the word, do not exist now among the Nicobarese; they possess no shields, swords, clubs, or spears for warlike purposes only. The Burmese dáo, their most common implement—obtained from the ship-traders—is used for everyday purposes and for house-building, agriculture, canoe-fitting, etc., while the spears and harpoons used for pig-killing, cattle-hunting, and fishing are nearly all constructed by attaching a suitable haft to the variously shaped heads which are made locally. A fishing spear of native make is of the many-pronged wooden type (Mal., s'rempang) common throughout the East—a bunch of diverging barbed skewers spliced into a haft with lashings of cord or rattan.
The Shom Peṅ manufacture a javelin or dart, which is used indiscriminately for warfare or the chase as occasion may require; it is made of a single piece of heavy wood, and is possibly the same kind of implement as was in general use among the Nicobarese before the introduction of iron heads.[173]