American Is Killed by Bow and Arrow on Remote Indian Island
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
NEW DELHI — John Allen Chau had to know that what he was about to do was extremely dangerous.
Mr. Chau, thought to be in his 20s, was floating in a kayak off a remote island in the Andaman Sea. He was about to set foot on one of the most sealed-off parts of India, an island inhabited by a small, highly enigmatic tribe whose members have killed outsiders for simply stepping on their shore.
Fishermen warned him not to go. Few outsiders had ever been there. And Indian government regulations clearly prohibited any interaction with people on the island, called North Sentinel.
But Mr. Chau pushed ahead in his kayak, which he had packed with a Bible. After that, it is a bit of a mystery what happened.
But the police say one thing is clear: Mr. Chau did not survive.
On Wednesday, the Indian authorities said that Mr. Chau had been shot with bows and arrows by tribesmen when he got on shore and that his body was still on the island. Fishermen who helped take Mr. Chau to North Sentinel told the police that they had seen tribesmen dragging his body on the beach.
It was a “misplaced adventure,’’ said Dependra Pathak, the police chief in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. “He certainly knew it was off limits.’’
Mr. Pathak said Mr. Chau, believed to be 26 or 27 and from Washington State, may have been trying to convert the islanders to Christianity. Right before he left in his kayak, Mr. Chau gave the fishermen a long note. In it, police officials said, he had written that Jesus had bestowed him with the strength to go to the most forbidden places on Earth.
The Andaman and nearby Nicobar Islands are beautiful, palm-fringed specks ringed by coral in the Indian Ocean. The government controls access very carefully; of the more than 500 islands, many areas are off limits.
On Nov. 14, Mr. Chau hired a fishing boat in Port Blair, the main city in the Andamans, to take him to North Sentinel. He waited until darkness to set off, police officials said, so he would not be detected by the authorities.
T. N. Pandit, an anthropologist who visited North Sentinel several times between 1967 and 1991, said the Sentinelese people — who officially number around 50 and who hunt with spears and arrows fashioned from scraps of metal that wash up on their shores — were more hostile to outsiders than other indigenous communities living in the Andamans.
Once, when Mr. Pandit’s expedition offered a pig to the Sentinelese, two members of the tribe walked to the edge of the beach, “speared it” and buried it in the sand.
During another encounter, Mr. Pandit was separated from his colleagues and left alone in the water. A young tribesman on the beach pulled out a knife and “made a sign as if he was carving out my body.”
“He threatened; I understood,” Mr. Pandit said. “Contact was different with the Sentinelese,” he added, noting that the Jarawa, another tribe, “invited us to come ashore and sang songs.”
Being left alone was very important for the Sentinelese, said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, a group that protects the rights of indigenous tribal peoples around the world.
“This tragedy should never have been allowed to happen,” Mr. Corry said in a statement, adding that the Indian government must protect the tribe from “further invaders.”
Gift-giving expeditions to the Sentinelese stopped in 1996 . The Indian Navy now enforces a buffer zone to keep people away. In 2006, the Sentinelese killed two fisherman who had accidentally drifted on shore .
According to the fishermen who helped Mr. Chau, they motored for several hours from Port Blair to North Sentinel. Mr. Chau waited until the next morning, at daybreak, to try to get ashore.
He put his kayak in the water less than half a mile out and paddled toward the island.
The fishermen said that tribesmen had shot arrows at him and that he had retreated. He apparently tried several more times to reach the island over the next two days, the police say, offering gifts such as a small soccer ball, fishing line and scissors. But on the morning of Nov. 17, the fishermen said they saw the islanders with his body.
The seven people who helped Mr. Chau reach the island have been arrested and charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder and with violating rules protecting aboriginal tribes.
Another case has been registered against “unknown persons” for killing Mr. Chau. But in the past, the authorities have said that it is virtually impossible to prosecute members of the protected tribes because of the area’s inaccessibility and the Indian government’s decision not to interfere in their lives.
In a blog post from several years ago, Mr. Chau said he had coached soccer, worked for AmeriCorps and that he was “an explorer at heart.” The Indian police said he had visited the Andamans at least three times.
When asked what was the top of his must-do list, Mr. Chau had written on the blog: “Going back to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India is on the top — there’s so much to see and do there!”
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Beautiful looking tropical island, but it's definitely off my bucket list.
I wonder what they evolved to use for arrowheads.
Looks like they advanced well past the iron age in their use of metal washed up on their shores.
Give them a few silicon chips. Then watch them shortly launch nukes.
LOL
With the one exception of using salvage metal for arrow tips they are still by all other definitions a stone age society
I was having fun.
For tipped arrow they use metal from shipwrecks, otherwise it's a pointy wooden shaft. They are seriously about as close to being a stone age society as possible. My reads indicate they have not mastered making fire (they harvest their fire from lightning strikes)
It's off everyone's bucket list. It's protected and no one, other than the native people, are supposed to be there.
Lol apparently not.
Darwin award winner/loser.
They take their border patrol seriously.
Maybe we can set aside some land along the border for them to immigrate to. They sound very territorial so they can keep out the illegal invaders.
Sure as long as we're all ok with them dying out almost immediately
Delusional.
Missionary Zeal...
Did God call Chau to convert all the Sentinel Islanders?
"Grandma says she hopes that when I become a man
I'll become a missionairer like her elder brother Dan...
Who was ete by the cannibals that live on Ceylon Isle
Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile"...
Author Unknown - Painted on an old plate dated 1869.
I'm guessing the memo never reached the islanders
I bet Sentinal Islanders had preachers come to finger their kids before...
Preachers are kinda like aliens. Wherever they go kids get anally probed.
I just read a brief history of this island and it doesn't appear anyone has ever successfully contacted the islanders so I don't think you're correct
Maybe the Sentinal Islanders heard what happened elsewhere when christian missionaries showed up and did not want their children molested. Or, maybe it was aliens. Or, maybe they just think christians are aliens...
Going from what I read that's doubtful
Sorry if I offended anyone but history is replete with stories of indigenous Peoples being decimated by caravans of christian soldiers intent upon converting them at sword and gun point. Half the people around here cannot acknowledge the fact that the brown Spanish speaking people they spend so much time demonizing are the bulk of what is left of the original native Americans who were systematically denied any rights and systematically marginalized for a few hundred years while they were being pushed and driven out of the American Midwest, West and Southwest. Oh, nevermind. Happy Thanksgiving...
No offence taken and I agree with everything at 6.1.5. I'm just obsessive about accuracy and the Sentilese have been hostile for all of recorded history and it is theorized based on genetic analysis that they've lived as they do, in isolation for the better part of the last 60,000 years.
the hypothesis that most mating pairs are related in a closed culture and become more violent thru the generations is very interesting and quite revealing when observing a particular subculture with only a fraction of that type of documented historical interbreeding in the southeastern part of the US.
I wonder if deep down in their cultural legends if there are remembrances of homo erectus? They were supposedly pretty bad dudes and dudettes.
I suppose anything is possible. but given they died out around a 140,000 years ago (according to fossil records) I would be surprised
Though not dating back as far, I think of the Native American legends that have been borne out by some of the earth sciences.
True, this curiosity goes further back in time, but is interesting. No doubt the question will remain unanswered for me.
Me the first time I read this:
Me the second time I read it:
oops. I guess this primitive tribe had heard what happens to indigenous people when thumpers come calling.
No, they pretty much react the same way to anyone landing
I hope the Mormons and the Nazarenes get the message before they knock on my door next month.
Wait, you gave me an idea. Convince India to grant the door to door thumper cults here an exemption to convert those tribesmen, but only during the last week of December.
Would it be wrong of me to send the natives knife sharpeners and night vision/infrared binoculars?
Lol I'd hate to be the postman having to deliver anything to the islander. The job probably has a high turnover rate, one delivery and a new guy has to be hired.
Maybe they use owls to deliver the mail, like on Harry Potter.
That would be amazing but alas given what I've read they're far more likely to simply eat the owls
I think you are right about that.
Apparently this bible thumping ignorant moron had a death wish...what part of DO NOT GO THERE OFF LIMITS did this idiot not understand.
lucky for him they didn't have any hammers and nails
[Deleted]
Dumbass.
This moron should win the Darwin award by default. Apparently, he didn't think to look for jets while he was walking on a runway. He must have also been deaf because most people would hear a jet approaching. Did he think that he had discovered the worlds widest sidewalk?
G'nite all
Morning all
I side with the people on the island
To be fair to the people on the island, their place is still safer than parts of Chicago.
To be fair to the people on the island their place is still safer than the rest of the planet
LMAO haven't seen that one before
so far there's no volunteers from the evangelical community to go retrieve him. sad
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nosacredcows/2018/11/christian-group-wants-native-tribe-brought-to-justice-for-death-of-missionary/?fbclid=IwAR3znYen8ucWmX27dEHMO1Wv719miXqIJQaiyvtISt4Uank1ng-h1poZX48
issue that group bows, arrows, and handcuffs
I wonder how long it would take them to learn how to use a crossbow that washed up on the beach?
As far as I'm concerned, there is no justice to be meted out. He knew he was sticking his head in the lion's mouth, and he got bitten. It's unfortunate for him and his family, but he was well aware of the risks.
I hope everyone watches the embedded vid.
Now for folks who can recall a recent article here depicting ancient cave art with "human" or some other branch, does the posturing of these folks on the beach remind you of the "dancing" postures in the cave art?
Those folks in the cave art, weren't dancing.
Now, look at the knuckleheads in the boats holding gifts in the air.
hmmmm? Hands up in the air. Gee, sign of aggression. Notice the folks on the beach become more violent at that act?
Kind of comical, that these smart people don't understand basic behavior traits.
I vote to put these idiots on a raft in the Indian ocean and watch what happens to them. They just can't get it through their thick skulls that people don't want their idiotic religion and that there are people who aren't like them.
That's why I don't belong to any specific religious organization....
If we all did, we would all be dead thanks to dogma....
I thank god every day that I don't....
Of all the major religions the two most deadly are Christianity and Muslimites...
The only two I know that have sects that require there adherents to kill those they do not agree with.... yet claim that they love everyone and their highest object is to love one another.
Everyone is entitled to their ideals of faith, but when they require that I impose my faith on others it is no longer a religion with followers/adherents, it is a government with citizens/subjects. All hail the king! The king is dead....
Jesus came to be a servant, not a king....
They can thump their heads with bibles all they want, someday they will figure out why it doesn't fit....
Leave them alone, it is clear they do not want contact for whatever reason, and that is their right.... a perfect example of the rights of man as granted by the great architect of the universe, (and embodied so well in our DoI) in actual living practice...
Darwin award winner fore shore!
NWM, out of curiosity, where is it stated Christians are required to kill those they disagree with?
It's not a part of the New Testament, although it was part of Mosaic Law for the Hebrews.
That hasn't stopped religious leaders from enacting and enforcing laws against heresy and blasphemy that include the death penalty.
That is my recollection too.
I also recall, that Messiah, who was manifest as Jesus to Christians, gave his life, replacing the old law and was a payment for mankinds sins.
Unless I have some form of amnesia, Jesus gave no commands for any human to kill another human. So, in my mind, anyone so called Christian who follows or invokes any of those old law death commands falls under one of the following categories:
False Prophet
Hypocrite
Offspring of vipers
False Teacher
...and plenty of other flowery terms
Anyone proclaiming otherwise is not following scriptural doctrine. JMO, as I have never seen anything attributed Jesus telling us the old law was still in effect. He quoted principles, but that was it.
Those so called Christians enforcing the old law are ust that; so called.
In my little world anyhow.
In the Bible, that book that was commanded to be written by one King James, and sworn before all that is holy, (himself) that it is not only the complete word of god, but the book that we all will follow if we want to call ourselves Christians.... (heck even the pope got the word)
That means the rule book, (old testament) is part and parcel to the christian religion, is the basis for many to reject Jesus's teachings of love and forgiveness on the basis that the only way the gospel of Jesus has any real meaning is through the teachings and laws of the old testament....
It is the old testament and it's laws that required Jesus to be born and sacrificed to save the rest of us..... (conveniently ignored by those that wish to imbue us with the dogmas of old)
Yes, by order of King James, Christianity is a religion that promotes killing to preserve it's dogmatic rites....
So then we are on the same page brother....
They can recite it over and over, but they just don't get it....
LOL. Yep, indeed.
No they don't and is another form of extremism.
My fave part was this
I'm sorry but that's impossible, Mr Chao is already dead.
I feel bad for laughing at that.
unwanted proselytizing is a world wide problem
Addendum to the above I just read another articles that police in association with anthropologists are trying to figure out how to retrieve the body. I really hope they just decide against doing so.
I agree. It is easy to go from bad to worse at this point.
No sense risking more lives.
Especially the lives of the islanders after so much isolation imagine how susceptible they must be to our diseases.
I can understand why they value protecting their culture and are not eager to embrace ethnic diversity there.