15. CRIME, QUARRELS, FEUDS AND WAR

It is likely that a war dance had existed in the islands during a remote past. Warriors setting off on a raid joined in an ordinary dance, decorated in a special way with red and white clay and wearing ornaments of pandanus leaves, netting or shells, holding in their hands plumes of shredded wood. During the early years of the 20th century, such shredded wood was often used by anybody at ordinary dances but it is thought that the plumes formerly must have been limited to use in special war dances. Similar plumes do seem to have been associated with death since they were also worn by murderers hiding in the jungle and were used as markers for a village temporarily deserted because of a death. When the warriors set off on their raiding mission, they all wore such plumes tucked into the back of their belts. They also rubbed their arrows on the plumes in the belief that this would make them shoot well and straight.

No weapons other than the hunting equipment of bows and arrows were used on raids. The Andamanese do not and did not know defensive shields or breastplates. Although they admired the few of their fellow warriors who had the brains to think up cunning tricks of war, local warfare tended to be extremely simple hit and run affairs. It was all hit and run, hunting expeditions with extra excitement added by the prey's ability to shoot back.

During a typical raid, a handful of men would stealthily approach the enemy village, deploy quietly near it and then, at a signal from their leader, launch a sudden attack. The aim was simple: killing as many men as possible. Although rarely more than one or two were killed, the more adult males a raider had killed, the louder his boasting later. The raids lasted only a few minutes and still less if surprise was not achieved, resistance was encountered or if one of their number was hurt or killed. Taken by surprise, the attacked could do little but flee into the safety of the jungle and wait there for the attackers to withdraw. Withdrawal was no military operation but merely a run back into the jungle. If an attacker was caught or found wounded by the defenders, he would be killed immediately. Occasionally, children were captured by the raiders; they were treated kindly in the hope that they would become members of the captor's local group. Although not the specific target of the attack, women and children were of course at risk, Whenever a woman or a child happened to get killed in such circumstances, this was not thought sufficient cause for boasting. It could also prolong the feud.

Feuds between local groups might last for a few months with peace made after a few attacks. Alternatively, the raids and counter-raids might go on for years. Peace-making was woman's business: if women or children had been killed during a raid, the women would let the feud goon for years out of ill-feeling and revenge, often leaving the men willing and indeed eager to make peace but unable to do so.

There was a rather more deep-seated enmity between Aryoto (shore-dwelling) and Eremtaga (jungle-dwelling) Great Andamanese groups, whether of the same tribe or of different tribes. Their feuds were not so much personal quarrels that had gone out of control but were rather more in the nature of flare-ups in a permanent atmosphere of ill-feeling and tension. Unfortunately, we know very little about Eremtaga groups. Garbled versions of some of the fights reached the British authorities through exclusively Aryoto storytellers, weeks or months after the event. Many more clashes between the two groups must have taken place of which no word has ever reached the outside world. One of the few known clashes took place in 1877 between Eremtagas and Aryotos, both of the Aka Kede tribe. It ended with the death of four men, two women and two girls - a much bloodier result than that of clashes between Aryotos. Fights between Eremtaga and Aryoto did not end with a peace dance; it was always a case of the parties walking away to lick their wounds and to fight another day.

What we have said so far in this chapter relates mostly to the Great Andamanese. What about the Onge, the Jarawas and Sentinelis? Not much need be said about the Sentineli: isolated on their little island, they have no neighbors, hostile or otherwise, and we know nothing whatever about internal quarrels among them.

The Jarawas are a different matter: until very recently they have been by far the most warlike of all surviving Andamanese groups. Involved in a war to the death for centuries with their Aka Bea neighbors, as far as the Jarawas were concerned nothing changed when their traditional enemies succumbed to disease and a series of outside powers took up the Aka Bea role. It made little difference to them whether they had to fight the British, the Japanese or the Indian settlers. Until 1974 there has never been a truce, only a few lulls in the fighting. Well-meant, though ill-conceived and badly executed, official Indian contacts aimed at establishing "friendship" with the Jarawa have led to the desired friendship but also to a crisis in 1998 that will almost certainly mean the end of the Jarawa within the next few years or at most decades (see chapter 1 for details).

This leaves us with the Onge. They did not make a sharp distinction between Eremtaga (in Onge: Engeakwe) and Aryoto (in Onge: Embelakwe) nor were the two groups hostile to each other. Onge aggression seems to have been outwardly directed, with much energy invested in hunting expeditions as far as the southern tip of Rutland Island. They seem to have had little taste for internal fighting. At least, very little has been reported in this way from the Onge beyond a certain amount of dislike between some local groups.

If a dispute arose among Onge, for example about the distribution of game a successful hunt had brought home, a camp could break into factions who then glowered at each other in dignified silence. They did not keep this up for long and after a tearful reconciliation all was well again.

As regards outward relations, we have already heard stories of violent incidents on Onge beaches during the last decades of the 19th century. Clearly, the Onge could fight if it suited them and in the old days they were nearly as hostile to outsiders - or anyway to outsiders they did not know - as their Great Andamanese cousins.



The Andamanese fight against outsiders after 1858 must be the subject of a separate chapter. The widespread hostility towards anyone not of their own group and to all strangers was a state of mind, shared to a greater or lesser degree by all and deeply ingrained. Notwithstanding differences in detail between the various groups, whenever the sail of a strange ship appeared on the horizon or a canoe with strangers approached the local beach, all right-thinking traditional Andamanese immediately reached for their weapons and prepared for the reception. Occasional reports of friendly behavior towards strangers are merely the exception to confirm the rule.