Perhaps no other two thousand people on earth—for that is about the number of Andaman islanders—have been honored 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 color 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 Maylayan 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 Maylayan 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 favor 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 color,—the very fashion of the Feegee!
Suppose, then, that the Samang and Andaman islander came down the trades, at a period too remote for even tradition to deal with it: suppose they occupied the Malay peninsula, no matter how long; and that at a much more recent period, they were pushed out of place,—the one returning to the Andaman Islands, the other to the mountains of the Quedah: suppose also that the party pushing them off were Malays,—who had themselves been drifted for hundreds of years down the trades from the far shores of America (for this is our “speculation”): suppose all these circumstances to have taken place, and you will be able to account for two facts that have for a long time puzzled the ethnologist. One is the presence of negroes on the islands of Andaman,—and the other of Malays in the southeastern corner of Asia. We might bring forward many arguments to uphold the probability of these hypotheses, had we space and time. Both, however, compel us to return to the more particular subject of our sketch; and we shall do so after having made a remark, promised above, and which relates to the probability of the Andaman islander being a cannibal. This, then, would lie in the fact of his being a Papuan negro. And yet, again, it is only a seeming; for it might be shown that with the Papuan cannibalism is not a natural instinct. It is only where he has reached a high degree of civilization, as in the case of the Feegee islander. Call the latter a monster if you will; but, as may be learnt from our account of him, he is anything but a savage, in the usual acceptation of the term. In fact, language has no epithet sufficiently vile to characterize such an anomalous animal as he.