Wretched, however, as the Andaman islander may appear, and of little importance as he certainly is in the great social family of the human race, he is, ethnologically speaking, one of its most interesting varieties. From the earliest times he has been a subject of speculation, or rather his presence in that particular part of the world where he is now found: for, since it is the general belief that he is entirely isolated from the two acknowledged negro races, and surrounded by other types of the human family, far different from either, the wonder is how he came to be there.
Perhaps no other two thousand people on earth—for that is about the number of Andaman islanders—have been honoured with a greater amount of speculation in regard to their origin. Some ethnologists assign to them an African origin, and account for their presence upon the Andaman Islands by a singular story: that a Portuguese ship laden with African slaves, and proceeding to the Indian colonies, was wrecked in the Bay of Bengal, and, of course, off the coast of the Andamans: that the crew were murdered by the slaves; who, set free by this circumstance, became the inhabitants of the island. This story is supported by the argument, that the hostility which the natives now so notoriously exhibit, had its origin in a spirit of revenge: that still remembering the cruel treatment received on the “middle passage” at the hands of their Portuguese masters, they have resolved never to be enslaved again; but to retaliate upon the white man, whenever he may fall into their power!
Certainly the circumstances would seem to give some colour to the tale, if it had any foundation; but it has none. Were we to credit it, it would be necessary to throw Ptolemy and the Arab merchants overboard, and Marco Polo to boot. All these have recorded the existence of the Andaman islanders, long before ever a Portuguese keel cleft the waters of the Indian Ocean,—long even before Di Gama doubled the Cape!
But without either the aid of Ptolemy or the testimony of the Arabian explorers, it can be established that the Andaman Islands were inhabited before the era of the Portuguese in India; and by the same race of savages as now dwell upon them.
Another theory is that it was an Arabian slave-ship that was wrecked, and not a Portuguese; and this would place the peopling of the islands at a much earlier period. There is no positive fact, however, to support this theory,—which, like the other, rests only on mere speculation.
The error of these hypotheses lies in their mistaken data; for, although, we have stated that the Andaman islanders are undoubtedly a negro race, they are not that negro race to which the speculation points,—in other words, they are not African negroes. Beyond certain marked features, as the flat nose and thick lips, they have nothing in common with these last. Their hair is more of the kind called “frizzly,” than of the “woolly” texture of that of the Ethiopian negro; and in this respect they assimilate closely to the “Papuan,” or New Guinea “negrillo,” which every one knows is a very different being from the African negro.
Their moral characteristics—such as there has been an opportunity of observing among them—are also an additional proof that they are not of African origin; while these point unmistakably to a kinship with the other side of the Indian Ocean. Even some of their fashions, as we shall presently have occasion to notice, have a like tendency to confirm the belief that the Andaman is a “negrillo,” and not a “negro.” The only obstacle to this belief has hitherto been the fact of their isolated situation: since it is alleged—rather hastily as we shall see—that the whole of the opposite continent of the Burmese and other empires, is peopled by races entirely distinct: that none of the adjacent islands—the Nicobars and Sumatra—have any negro or negrillo inhabitants: and that the Andamaners are thus cut off, as it were, from any possible line of migration which they could have followed in entering the Bay of Bengal. Ethnologists, however, seem to have overlooked the circumstance that this allegation is not strictly true. The Samangs—a tribe inhabiting the mountainous parts of the Malayan peninsula—are also a negro or negrillo race; a fact which at once establishes a link in the chain of a supposed migration from the great Indian archipelago.
This lets the Andaman islander into the Great China Sea; or rather, coming from that sea, it forms the stepping-stone to his present residence in the Bay of Bengal. Who can say that he was not at one time the owner of the Malayan peninsula? How can we account for the strange fact, that figures of Boodh—the Guadma of the Burmese and Siamese—are often seen in India beyond the Ganges, delineated with the curly hair and other characteristic features of the negro?
The theory that the Samang and Andaman islander once ruled the Malay peninsula; that they themselves came from eastward,—from the great islands of the Melanesian group, the centre and source of the negrillo race,—will in some measure account for this singular monumental testimony. The probability, moreover, is always in favour of a migration westward within the tropics. Beyond the tropics, the rule is sometimes reversed.
A coincidence of personal habit, between the Andaman islander and the Melanesian, is also observed. The former dyes his head of a brown or reddish colour,—the very fashion of the Feegee!