In the Andamans and Nicobars Part 19

When a death occurs, the corpse is buried with a method and ceremonies differing somewhat according as to whether it be adult or child;[102]

and after some months, during which the encampment in which the death took place is deserted, the body is exhumed, and the bones cleaned and made into souvenirs, which are distributed to relatives and friends.

Numerous superst.i.tions are extant among them, and there is credence in wizardry.

No form of worship is to be found; but there exists a belief in a spiritual being, called _Puluga_, the Creator; and in evil spirits, _erem-chaugala_, the spirit of the woods; and _Juruwinda_, the spirit of the sea, the first of whom causes sickness and earthquakes, the latter cramp; both are demoniacal. There are also a host of minor devils, who are self-created; none of the demons are under the control of _Puluga_.[103]

They make no attempt at trading in the natural products of their islands, and manufacture nothing but the weapons, personal ornaments, implements, and utensils required for their own use. They have some knowledge of pottery, though not of the wheel, and make rude pots, which they ornament with patterns of wavy lines before baking.

No true musical instruments exist, but a rude sounding-board is constructed, on which they accompany songs by beating with the foot.[104]

The weapons used in hunting and fishing are bows and spears, and there are both hand and large seine nets for taking fish. For food there are pigs, musang, dugong, porpoise, fish, turtle and their eggs, molluscs, larvae (a delicacy), fruit, honey, and roots. Food is cooked and eaten as hot as possible: of the production of fire they, at least in modern times, have no knowledge: this accounts for the great care taken in preserving fire at their camping places, and when travelling.

The coast people are extremely expert swimmers and divers, but the interior tribes naturally not so, as their mode of life is somewhat different.

The natives are now known to be divided into twelve tribes, if groups that in many cases number at present less than fifty individuals can be so called. Beyond their speech there is little otherwise to distinguish them from each other, except in the case of the onges and Jarawas, who differ somewhat from the rest, but are in many ways both alike.

The enmity that the Andamanese had ever shown to all strangers was by some believed to have been greatly due to the treatment they had received from early Chinese and Malay traders, or _beche-de-mer_ collectors; but, prior to 1858, extreme jealousy and distrust prevailed among adjacent tribes, and even amongst scattered communities of the same tribe, and it was not till 1879 that members of all the Andaman tribes (except onges and Jarawas) were able to meet on friendly terms at the Homes of the Settlement.

Friendly relations have lately been arrived at with most of the inhabitants of Little Andaman (_i.e._ the onges), but the Jarawas, who inhabit the North Sentinel, Rutland Island, and South Andaman, have proved to be quite irreconcilable, and their att.i.tude often explains the total disappearance that sometimes follows escapes of the convicts.

They are generally feared by all their native neighbours and, with the boldness of ignorance, do not hesitate still to attack even superior numbers of Europeans, as an instance that occurred during the late census operations shows.

At Port Campbell a body of natives were seen who were p.r.o.nounced to be Jarawas, and, as it was considered to be a suitable opportunity to attempt to establish friendly relations with them, the census party made for the sh.o.r.e, in a boat manned by Andamanese, taking with them a quant.i.ty of presents, a rifle, and some boards and cushions to serve as shields in case of hostilities, and an Andamanese woman, whose shrill cries it was hoped might prove to the savages pacific intentions. The crew, as usual, took their bows and arrows, but carefully concealed them, and, as the boat approached the sh.o.r.e, all waved handkerchiefs and large pieces of red cloth, much appreciated by the other Andamanese, while the woman loudly and unceasingly screamed friendly messages. But it was soon apparent that the Jarawas meant fighting, for they sent their women and children away to a distance, and then three of the men, armed with bows and arrows, and with threatening cries and gestures, waded out towards the boat, 100 yards distant, through the shallow water intervening. The three advanced in line, at intervals of about fifteen paces, and placed themselves so that the centre man could rake the boat and the others shoot into it from either side.

No arms were shown from the boat, but friendly signs persevered with, until the man on the right flank, who was the leader, when well within bow-shot, raised his weapon, and as it was seen that he was evidently in the act of discharging it, which would have been the signal for the others to follow suit, the rifle in the boat was fired at him, wounding him in the thigh. This caused him to spin round and make off towards the beach, followed by his supports. After running for a short distance, he fell, and, while his two companions pluckily picked him up and carried him into the jungle, some of the others, who had been looking on from the beach, yelled to the women, with the result that they were seen to return as hurriedly as possible. As the men on the beach evidently considered themselves in perfect safety, although only some 300 yards distant, a second bullet was fired into the sand near them, much to their astonishment and consternation, as they then and there fled into the adjacent jungle with shouts of alarm. The party in the boat thereupon returned to the launch and steamed out of the harbour.

It was suspected that these same men were responsible for the unprovoked murder of a petty officer of an oil-collecting gang, which had recently taken place near one of the Jarawa districts.

The population of the islands has been computed from time to time--from the 6000 at the period of the founding of the Settlement--in variously diminishing numbers down to the present day, when it is placed at about 1900.[105]

The case affords a striking example of the effect of contact between civilised and savage man, for only those tribes of the Andamanese that are still hostile or who have little or no intercourse with the Government Settlement, have preserved any respectable number of individuals in their ranks.

Of these, the Jarawas, although not distantly located from the Settlement, receive all advances with inveterate implacability, while the onges of Little Andaman, who were until 1884 almost totally unvisited, are further off, and enjoy an insular position.

These two tribes between them represent by estimation some 1250 of the total inhabitants of the islands. The numbers in the various other tribes are now very small, but possibly were never as large as those of the two mentioned.

Everywhere is noticeable an enormous disproportion between the numbers of adults and children--a feature, in view of the fewness of the former, that argues badly for a much longer continuance of the race. Concerning the fact, some of the natives say that it is not due to sickness, but that children are very seldom born; others state that the first, or first and second children are dead, and that the one present is the sole survivor. Undoubtedly, however, the infant mortality that exists is due to the presence of syphilis, which occurs in some of its most virulent forms amongst these people, and not to maternal neglect, as the mothers display the greatest affection for their children.

"The Andaman Penal System is the result of the constant attention of the Government which created it, and is the outcome of the measures of practical men, devised to meet the difficulties with which they have found themselves face to face, and reduced to order and rule by some of the keenest intellects that have worked in India for many years past. It is no paper const.i.tution drawn up to suit any particular theories. There have always been the convicts in their thousands, and there have been the climate, and the necessity for treating the convicts in the way best calculated to benefit them, and for so employing them as to bring down their cost to the taxpayer to the lowest limits compatible with climatic conditions and beneficial treatment. Trusted agents of the Government have pondered these things on the spot in the light of an ever-increasing experience, and their ideas and suggestions have pa.s.sed under the criticisms of highly experienced administrators, and have in the end produced the system which is now carried out.

"Repeatedly tinkered and patched and recast and remodelled though it has been, the Andaman System is still inchoate--still on its trial as it were. It could not well be otherwise, for in dealing with the criminal we are attempting to solve a mighty problem as old as criminality itself, and are plunged, perforce, into a controversy as contentious now as it was centuries upon centuries ago.

"From the best estimates to hand, we may take it that the permanent convict strength of the Settlement may be placed at about 12,000, of whom about 800 are women, and the rule is that only life convicts are sent from India, and life and long-term convicts from Burma. The people received, therefore, are the murderers who have for some reason escaped the death penalty, and the perpetrators of the more heinous offences against person and property--the men of brutal violence, the highwaymen, the robbers, the habitual thieves, and the receivers of stolen goods, the worst of the swindlers, forgers, cheats, coiners, and such like--in fact the most unrestrained temperaments of a continent. These considerations show the scale of the work, and the nature of the task.

"The convict comes to the Andamans a creature who, by his life or his acts, has shown himself to be so unfitted for human society that he has been cast out of it for life, or for a long term of years. Received thus, he is first subjected for six months to a most severe discipline--hard, rigid, uncompromising. He is taught what it is like to be forced to bend his uncontrolled nature to the iron yoke of a _regime_, not of hard toil, but of soul-crushing monotony. From the stern Cellular Jail he is next transferred to one of the a.s.sociated jails, to the comparative blessing of hard labour, in company with others, but still under a strict discipline. He works and feeds with others in gangs, and there is a certain variety in the tasks demanded, but he still sleeps in his separate cell. Here he stays for a year and a half, and then for the next three years he is a slave, as the word is ordinarily understood, locked up with other slaves in barracks at night, but working in the open at any kind of task that the needs of the Settlement may require of him, according to his capacity--an unpaid, unrewarded labourer, but well fed, housed, clothed, and cared for, and always under watch and guard. During the following five years he is still a labouring convict, but the severity of his life is eased down a little for him. He is now eligible for the petty posts of supervision, and for the less irksome and less slave-like forms of labour, and he gets a little--a very little--allowance, to buy a few small luxuries, or to place in the Savings Bank against future necessities. Having thus served ten long probationary years, he is eligible, if he has any capacity, to take a ticket-of-leave and become what is locally known as a self-supporter.

"The convict is now in a sense 'free.' He earns his living in his own chosen way; he lives in a village, in his own house; he farms a little land; he keeps cattle; he can move about unwatched; he can send for his wife and children, or, the far more frequent course, he can marry a convict woman, who, under her own regulations, is eligible for marriage. He can thus become _pater familias_, with a little h.o.a.rd of his own earning, and differing outwardly in no way from the ordinary villager or properly conducted member of human society. In reality, however, he differs so greatly, that he misses all those things that 'free' men prize so highly. He has no civil rights under the ordinary law, and all the affairs of his life are dealt with by the executive authority. He must live where he is told; and generally conduct his life as he is told; he may move about beyond his village and his fields by permission only; he cannot leave the Settlement; he may not be idle, under pain of a forced return to convict labour. In this state he remains ten or fifteen years, according to the crimes that have sent him here, until the happy day comes when the order for absolute release is placed in his hands and he goes free as other men.

"As in the other portions of his life in transportation, even in the condition of self-supporter the convict pa.s.ses through two distinct stages. In the first stage he is a.s.sisted at the beginning with house, food, and tools, and then by exemption from rent, taxes, fees, and other cesses payable by the free towards the common benefit. In the second stage he receives no a.s.sistance whatever, but finds the whole of his means of livelihood, and is charged with every public payment which would be exacted from him in his own country.

"The women are dealt with on the same lines, but more gently, as becomes the gentler s.e.x. For the first three years the convict woman works in the Female Jail as a mere slave, fed, housed, clothed, and cared for. Then for two years she is treated to the same easing down of severity as is granted to the men, and after a total of five years she is eligible for marriage and domestic service. a.s.suming that she marries, she joins her husband in his village, where she leads the ordinary life of an Indian woman, but subject to the same disabilities as her husband until she has completed fifteen years in transportation, when she may go free with him whithersoever he may go.

"Now through all this long education to useful citizenship there run continuous threads of practice in self-help and self-restraint, and of inducement to profit by the practice. The length of the convict's stay in the Cellular Jail depends entirely on his conduct in it, and so it remains throughout his career, up to the point of self-support. Efforts to behave well, and submission to control, mean promotion upwards from grade to grade in due course. Every serious lapse means the r.e.t.a.r.ding of promotion, or actual retrogression. And when he has obtained his ticket-of-leave, it is to his own effort, his own thrift, his own steadiness, that he has solely to look for that little h.o.a.rd which is to be so much to him when he goes back to his native land--no pauper, no mere jail-bird, no unwelcome burden on his relatives, but a self-respecting citizen, with a little capital of his own earning, for years habituated to provide for himself in an orderly way, and thoroughly broken to harness as it were.

"It does not require much imagination to contrast the difference in the personality of the same human being as he reaches and leaves Port Blair. He that arrived an outcast, void of restraint, and unfit for a.s.sociation with his kind on equal terms, goes forth a useful citizen, broken to restraint, and not only fitted for human society, but well used to submit to the conventions by which alone that society can be maintained. And men so reformed are not sent back to India by ones and twos, but by scores every year. Every one of the life convicts sent home is such a man. The incorrigible are kept till death, and the slow to learn are kept until they mend their ways, while those only that have good in them, and are capable of reform, are returned to the society they once disgraced.

"The difference between transportation to Port Blair and imprisonment in a jail lies in this very matter. While the Port Blair returned convict is a man fitted to, and habituated to, support himself, the prisoner released from a jail is not only a pauper but has became pauperised. That is, he has become unaccustomed to find for himself, and this disability has grown upon him with the length of his imprisonment. On this important ground alone, one cannot help hoping that some day it may be found feasible to extend the Andaman System to long-term prisoners from India.

"Besides the direct personal education that the Port Blair convict receives, he is taught various lessons of general importance in indirect ways. There is the value of justice, for instance. For though his life is absolutely controlled by executive officers, everything that happens to him is the result of a quasi-judicial procedure. No punishment can be inflicted without a proceeding, without registration, or without record of the evidence on which it is awarded. There is a regular course of appeal, and a further untrammelled appeal to the Head of the Administration himself.

Thus, though the punishments in such a place as Port Blair must on occasion a.s.sume a form of deterrent severity, there is as much security of justice in award as elsewhere.

"Then there is the system of local marriage. This is no concubinage, no temporary or irregular alliance. Every inquiry is made and every step is taken that is necessary to render convict marriages legal, according to the customary personal law of the contracting parties. Long is the waiting in many cases between proposal and completion, and many are the disappointments when the conditions are found to bar completion. Once married, the husband and wife are made to clearly realise their condition, and must depart together or not at all.

"The children, of course, are a very serious question, but the best is done for them,--their health is so well cared for, that in Port Blair, probably alone in all the East, it is the rule to successfully rear the whole of a young family; primary education is here compulsory, again probably alone in all the East; and technical training is free to all. Their inheritance of temperament and their early a.s.sociations are the points of anxiety regarding them, but these matters may be fairly said to be beyond control.[106]

"The Savings Bank has already been mentioned as a factor in the education of the convict. How great has been the effect of this beneficent inst.i.tution will be seen from the fact that it was started twenty-seven years ago with 54 accounts, and is now, and has for years past been, the largest local bank of the kind in India. It has now over 2300 open convict accounts, and has had 12,000 accounts opened during its existence. This means, that for years, more than one fourth of the whole body of the convicts have kept their savings in it, thus showing how well they have taken to heart the lessons of thrift and of faith in the honesty of the Government.

"But far be it from concealing the fact that there is a seamy side to life in Port Blair. It could not be otherwise; and it would be easy enough to paint a lurid picture of its inhabitants,--easy enough to preach a scathing condemnation of the envy, hatred, and malice, the uncharitableness, the evil-speaking, lying and slandering, the murder and the cruel death, of the amazing immorality, the callous depravity, the downright unabashed wickedness, that are so constantly forced upon the view. But such is not to the purpose. Human faults are easily seen and easily denounced, for such things lie on the surface. The difficult thing always is to perceive aright the good that there is in bad men, and bring that out, and that is the object that the Government is aiming at in the system just explained.

"Any one observing the work of the English in the East may possibly be struck with the idea that the reason for the acknowledged capacity of the race for colonial enterprise and the maintenance of empire is the ability and the willingness of the average Englishman to put his hand to any kind of work that may come his way, without any special training, from framing suitable laws and regulations and creating suitable organisations to making roads and ditches, building houses, and clearing land and ploughing it. Here in Port Blair, the officers entrusted with the creation, organisation, and maintenance of the Penal Settlement, have, without any special training for the work, and without any special guidance and teaching, managed with the worst possible material to work upon--life and long-term convicts from every part of India and Burma--to create in little more than forty years, upon primeval forest and swamp, situated in an enervating, and until mastered, a deadly climate, a community supporting itself in regard to many of its complicated wants.

"They began with the dense forests, the fetid swamps, and the pestilential coral banks of tropical islands, and have made out of them many square miles of gra.s.s and arable lands, supporting over fifty villages besides convict stations. Miles upon miles of swamp have been reclaimed, the coral banks have been controlled, and a place with regard to which the words climate and pestilence were almost synonymous has been turned into one favourably spoken of as to its healthiness. The Settlement now grows its own vegetables, tea,[107] coffee, cocoa, tapioca, and arrowroot; some of its ordinary food grains, and most of its fodder. It supplies itself with the greater part of its animal food, and all its fuel and salt. In other lines of work, it makes its own boats, and provides from its own resources the bulk of the materials for its buildings, which are constructed and erected locally. Amongst the materials produced are all the timber, stone, bricks, lime, and mortar, and most of the iron and metal work are made up there from raw material. In the matter of convict clothing, all that is necessary to be purchased elsewhere are the roughest of cotton hanks and wool in the first and rawest condition, every other operation being performed on the spot. It provides much of its own leather.

"In achieving the results, the officers have had first to learn for themselves as best they could how to turn out the work to hand, and then to teach what they had learnt to the most unpromising pupils that can be imagined,--only about 3 per cent. of the convicts sent there having been previously employed on the work required of them in Port Blair. And they have been hampered all along by the necessities of convict discipline, by the constant release of their men, and their punishment for misconduct. It is under such conditions that the Corps of Artificers and the other convicts have had to be utilised. Nevertheless, the roads and drains, the buildings and boats, the embankments and reservoirs, are as good and durable as are the same cla.s.s of structures elsewhere. The manufactures are sufficient for their purpose, and there are among the taught those who are now skilled in the use of many kinds of machinery. Cultivation is generally fair, and some of it very good.

The general sanitation--but here there are peculiar advantages--is literally second to none."[108]

First of all the industries of the Andamans is that of timber, and to accelerate and increase it a Steam Tramway has been inst.i.tuted, and there are now some 14 miles of line connecting the forests with the sh.o.r.es of Port Blair. As a further adjunct, Steam Saw-mills were erected in 1896, and a Forest Department, that employs 500 to 600 men daily under its own officers, not only supplies the Settlement with the whole of its requirements in timber from the local forests, but also exports timber and forest produce to various places in India and Europe. Of these latter exports, rattans and gurjan oil are the chief; other natural products of the islands are trepang--_beche-de-mer_--tortoisesh.e.l.l and edible birds' nests, but they are only collected in small quant.i.ties.

The princ.i.p.al cultivations in which convicts and ex-convicts are engaged are paddy, sugar-cane, Indian corn, and turmeric; coconuts have during the past thirty-five years been extensively planted, and besides the agricultural products previously mentioned, vegetables and fruits of various kinds are grown.

The larger industries in which the penal community is engaged in have already been alluded to, but there are many minor employments, the products from which also go towards making the Settlement self-supporting. Amongst these are to be found the manufacture of all kinds of furniture, cane chairs, baskets, many varieties of bamboo-work and ornamental wood-carving, woven articles, from serviettes to saddle-girths and blankets, pottery, rope and mats, silver, tin, bra.s.s and iron work, shoemaking, rickshaw and cart building, besides the production of such materials as lime, bricks, and tiles.

Port Blair is in communication three, and often four times a month, with Calcutta, Madras, and Rangoon, by the vessels of the Asiatic Steam Navigation Company. The distances between the Settlement and the ports named are 796, 780, and 387 miles respectively.

CHAPTER II

THE NICOBAR ISLANDS AND THEIR ABORIGINES

The Nicobar Islands and their Aborigines--The Islands--Coral Banks--Nankauri Harbour--Population--Geology--Earthquakes-- Climate--Flora--History--The Shom Pe[.n]: their Derivation, Appearance, Houses, Gardens, Cooking-vessel, Domestic Animals, Manufactures, Trade, Clothing, Headmen, Position of Women, Disposition, Diseases.

The Nicobars lie 80 miles south of the Andaman group and 110 miles from Sumatra proper, and const.i.tute a chain of islands 160 miles long, lying in a N.N.W. 1/2 W. direction, with a branch forking out from their centre N. by E. The area of the group is about 600 square miles, and it consists of some twenty islands, of which the princ.i.p.al are, Kar Nicobar, Batti Malv, Tilanchong, Chaura, Teressa, Bompoka, Kamorta, Trinkat, Nankauri, Kachal, Little Nicobar, and Great Nicobar.

Besides these, there are several small satellite islands: Great Nicobar possesses Kondul and Kabra; Little Nicobar, Milo and Menchal, with Treis, Trak, and Meroe further off; and lastly, near the south extremity of Tilanchong, there is the rocky islet named "Isle of Man."[109] There are villages on Kondul and Milo, but Batti Malv and Tilanchong are uninhabited.