The origin of the Andamaners is a problem to anthropologists. They are small in stature, the men being on an average but little above five feet in height, and the women being still smaller. They are very dark, but have scarcely anything except their color in common with the negro. They have neither the huge projecting jaws and cavernous mouth of the true negro, nor his curiously elongated heel; and though they are so small as almost to merit the name of pigmies, they are perfectly well formed. The hair, when it is allowed to grow, is seen to be thick and bushy, and resembles that of the Papuans; and it is the opinion of many competent judges that the Andamaners are the aborigines of the Papuan race, who have never permitted contact with strangers, and have preserved their own individuality intact.
In habits they are absolutely savage, their arts being limited to the manufacture of canoes and weapons, architecture and agriculture being equally unknown. They possess one of the chief characteristics of savage life in their roving disposition, never remaining long in one spot, a stay of three or four days being considered a long visit to any place. They have no laws, no religion, and no tribal distinctions. Marriage, as we understand the word, is unknown to them; and there seems to be few restrictions of consanguinity, a mother and her daughter being sometimes the wives of the same husband.
Clothing is entirely unknown to them; and when captives have been taken, they have always found clothes to be an incumbrance to them, though they were pleased with gaudy handkerchiefs tied round their heads. The only covering which they care for is one which they share in common with many of the pachydermatous animals, and employ for the same purpose. It is nothing more than a layer of mud, with which the natives plaster themselves in the morning and evening, in order to defend themselves from the attacks of the mosquitoes, sandflies, and other insect plagues.
Until the last few years our knowledge of the Andamaners has been almost nil, in consequence of their hatred of strangers, and the determined opposition which they offer to any foreigners landing on their shores. The very presence of a boat or a ship seems to excite them to frenzy. In Captain Mouatt’s valuable account of these islands is an animated description of a scene which occurred off the coast.
The steamer, on rounding a point, came suddenly upon two groups of savages, who were at first paralyzed by fear at the sudden apparition of the unknown object, with its columns of white steam roaring from the escape-pipe, its smoke, and its plashing paddles. In a few moments they recovered from their surprise, and raised a simultaneous shout of defiance. Two boats’ crews were sent ashore, to the extreme anger of the Mincopies.
“A peculiar natural phenomenon rendered the scene still more striking and impressive as the interval between the two parties, the savage and the civilized, was gradually diminished by the onward motion of the boats. The spray as it rose in clouds from the breakers dashing on the shore, reflecting the rays of the declining sun, magnified considerably the slight figures of the natives, making massive and formidable giants of men who were in reality little more than sable dwarfs. As the cutters neared that part of the shore where they had stationed themselves, and they clearly perceived that we were making preparations to land, their excitement was such that they appeared as if they had suddenly become frantic.
“They seemed to lose that restraint and control which it is the pride of the savage to exhibit in time of danger, and jumped and yelled like so many demons let loose from the bottomless pit, or as if there had been a Bedlam in that locality, and they the most unmanageable of its frantic inmates. Their manner was that of men determined and formidable in the midst of all their excitement. They brandished their bows in our direction; they menaced us with their arrows, said by common report—so often a liar—to be poisoned; exhibiting by every possible contortion of savage pantomime their hostile determination. To use a common vulgar expression of some of the seamen, they seemed to have made up their minds to ‘chaw us all up.’...
“The spear which he flourished incessantly was terminated by a bright, flat, pointed head, which gleamed with flashes of light, as, circling rapidly in the air, it reflected the rays of the sun. Sometimes he would hold it aloft, poising it in his uplifted hand, as if with the intention of hurling it with unerring and deadly aim at the first who dared to approach the shore of his native island. At length, in a paroxysm of well-acted fury, he dashed boldly into the water, boiling and seething round him as it broke in great billows on the beach, and on the rocks by which it was defended, and, fixing an arrow in his bow, he shot it off in the direction of the steamer, as if that were the arch enemy that had provoked his bellicose fury.”
The second party of natives, who turned out to be females, were as frightened as their male friends were angry. After several failures in launching a canoe, they rushed in a body to the jungle and hid themselves from the strangers. They exhibited the usual characteristics of the people, a basket for fish doing duty for clothes, and a patch of red ochre on their heads taking the place of hair. So repulsive were they in their appearance, that the sailors declined to leave mirrors on the shore as presents for them, saying that such hideous creatures ought not to be allowed to look at their own features.
The weapons with which the Mincopie men threatened the strangers are really formidable, and before very long the exploring party learned to hold them in great respect. The bows are sometimes six feet long and enormously powerful,—so powerful in fact that the strongest sailors tried in vain to bend the weapons which the pigmy Mincopies handled with such skilful ease.