15. CRIME, QUARRELS, FEUDS AND WAR

When I heard the above related story I made arrangements to arrest Chap, and as soon as the weather was sufficiently calm for me to send a party up the West coast, I dispatched Jemadar Jafar, and a number of trained Andamanese from the Haddo Home, to make inquiries. They returned on the 1st September with the information that Chap had gone to Tao Ket, a village on the South-west coast of the North Andaman, and gathering about a dozen of his fellow tribesmen around him, had threatened to kill any members of the other tribes who came near. I sent the party back to Tao Ket to arrest Chap. A number of Andamanese from the North Andaman and from Interview Island had previously come in, through fear of Chap and his people, to live at Lekera-Lunta, and these men, with three canoes, Jafar took with him. They had very stormy weather after leaving Lekera-Lunta, and their progress was hindered. On nearing Tao Ket Jafar sent one of the canoes, containing some of the principal men of the North Andaman, about a quarter of a mile ahead of him. These people, on coming to the village, found about 12 male Andamanese there, (among whom was Chap), who fired three arrows at the approaching canoe, hitting no one. On seeing Jafar come up the villagers ceased their fire and sat down quietly in their huts, while Chap ran away into the jungle. This occurred at mid-day, and Jafar took all the people of the village, and all their property and canoes, away to an outlying Island, leaving a man of the same tribe, named Ballo, whom he had brought with him from Port Blair, in the village to watch for Chap. According to the Andamanese custom, the latter, who had been watching Jafar's movements from the jungle, when he saw him go off to the Island, returned to Tao Ket during the night. Ballo, as previously arranged with Jafar, lighted a fire on the shore as soon as Chap arrived, and Jafar seeing this sent across a canoe with some friendly Andamanese from the South [Great] Andaman Tribes, who arrested Chap and brought him away to the Island. He made little resistance and did not attempt to escape on the way down to Port Blair, where he arrived on the 23rd. I at once held an enquiry into the case and found that the facts differed considerably from the one-sided version of the story I had been given in the previous July by the Interview Islanders.

Chap, after leaving my house in April, had been living with the Interview Islanders, and had formed an illicit connection with the widow of that tribe. To this the other members of the tribe objected, and Kep, the Chief of Interview Island, on several occasions reproached Chap for his conduct. In May the party were encamped on the West coast of the Middle Andaman, and a further quarrel on the same subject between Kep and Chap occurred. The latter got very angry, fired off several arrows indiscriminately among the collected Andamanese, careless of whom he wounded, and then, having hit no one, ran down to the canoe on the shore, snatched a spear from one of them and hurled it at Kep, inflicting a sever flesh wound on the back of the right shoulder. Some slight skirmish seems then to have taken place, in which Chap was wounded by an arrow in the right eye. All the Andamanese then, with the exception of Bui, ran away into the jungle, and Chap, after setting fire to the Trepang-curing shed, went off to his own country. Some weeks afterwards Kep died from the effects of the neglected wound, which might have been healed had he been brought in at once to the hospital, and his friends were anxious to kill Chap in revenge.

On the above facts being reported to the Chief Commissioner he was pleased to direct that, as Kep had been only wounded by Chap, and had died from the effects of the neglected wound; as Chap had been wounded himself in the row, and had since then only stood on his defense against the Interview Islanders who wished to kill him and his friends; and as no hostility had been shown to the government, and Chap readily surrendered to Jafar and came into Port Blair without attempting to escape or giving any trouble, he would be sufficiently punished by a flogging of 30 stripes and five years' detention in the Settlement, during which period he would have to work daily at the Homes. The flogging was accordingly inflicted in the presence of Andamanese from the North Andaman, Interview Island and the Southern tribes, on the 27th September 1895, and Chap has since been detained at work in the Homes.

Occasionally, males (very rarely females) would run amuck in a wild rampage of killing and destruction. Such outbursts left the Andamanese helpless with terror but no one would try to cut short the rampage by shooting down the madman. At any display of serious anger, the women and children took off into the jungle. If the cause of the disturbance was a particularly formidable or dangerous person or in the case of someone running amuck, the men would flee, too. In normal circumstances, Andamanese avoided face-to-face confrontations; even genuinely angry men were secretly grateful for the intervention of a higher authority, if only to let them break off their dramatic performance without loss of face. The slightest show of authority, be it that of the local headman or of an outside power, could normally bring an unpleasant scene to an end at once.

Women quarreled among themselves, too, with much verbal and occasional physical violence. There would be loud swearing with the destruction of each others' crockery, physical fights with fists and sticks flying. The women did not have bows and arrows, so that there was little danger of serious injury. Men wisely kept out of such altercations which were usually settled through the intervention of a widely respected older woman.

Fights between the sexes almost always featured a husband and wife team as the chief participants. The wronged party was considered to have the right to punish the guilty by administering a more or less severe beating. If the punishment meted out was widely considered too severe in relation to the crime, trouble could be expected from the relatives and friends of the punished party. The institution of marriage among the Andamanese, as in other human societies, was a finely-tuned system of checks and balances, sadly prone to breakdown at times.

Flaws of individual character that did not hurt anybody directly such as shirking of duties, lack of respect towards elders, meanness or bad temper, were disapproved of by society but not punished directly. Young, unmarried persons would have their attention drawn to their shortcomings. No one would dare to mention such matters to a married adult person. If the misbehavior did not disappear after a while, the guilty parties could find themselves quietly pushed to the edge of polite society and their status painfully diminished.

If ritual prohibitions were broken, the insulted spirits took their revenge in the form of bad weather or ill-health. Refusal to participate in traditional rituals would have been quite unthinkable in the old days but a few rebellious youths are known to have refused to undergo the hardships connected with the traditional initiation rites. Medicine men were credited with the power to make evil magic, to make other people sick and even to kill them. Such magic had to be handled with extreme care by its practitioners since any suspected of the practice would have to face the wrath of those who thought they had been injured. Black magic was regarded as reprehensible but, as with murder, it was left to individuals or their families and friends, to take whatever form of revenge they thought fit. Society as a whole could not and did not act.

The Andamanese prior to 1858 had a reputation for fearlessness and courage. On closer contact with them, the outsiders soon found the bravery and utter recklessness displayed to have been based mostly on ignorance: the Andamanese could not, in the early days, imagine an enemy more powerful than themselves, nor weapons more deadly than their own bows and arrows. Only after the first bullets from firearms had whistled around their ears and torn into their friends, did they realize their error. Those Andamanese who had seen firearms in action were terrified of them. They adopted the same attitude to any bearer of firearms that they had always had towards their local enemies: they were very careful and attacked only if absolutely certain of overwhelming superiority or surprise.

Quarrels between groups, rather than individuals, were common and caused mostly by poaching or insults. If a fight broke out at a meeting and without a strong leader to suppress the tumult, the whole could quickly escalate into a bloody battle between groups, with the wounded and dead having to be hurriedly evacuated by the women. The feud that followed such an incident could last for years. While it lasted, it played itself out in raids and counter-raids. Night attacks have been recorded but the favorite time of attack was daybreak when the enemy was still asleep or then the time of the evening meal.



There was a peace-making dance but no special war dance, nor indeed anything resembling a war cry. The peace dance was shown to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown in 1906-08 and later described by him in detail.