Chapter: 9: A Traditional Society (original) (raw)

9. The Andamanese

A Traditional Society

by George Weber

This chapter deals with Great Andamanese society as it was – or is
thought to have been – before the fateful year of 1858, of Onge
society as it was before the no less fateful 1950s and of Sentineli
and Jarawa society as it is thought to be today still. In short: with
traditional Andamanese society. As far as the Great Andamanese are
concerned, information on life during the old days reached outside
investigators only through the uncertain filter of old peoples’
dimming memories. They remembered and retold the talk of their
parents at the campfires of their youth. Old peoples’ ramblings
though they be, they can still shed light on a society of ancient
traditions.

Rather less remote are the memories of the old days among the
Onge. Since the two societies were sampled half a century to a
century apart and by totally different sets of researchers – British
colonial administrators there, Indian anthropologists here – is is
difficult indeed to reconcile the two sets of accounts and to
establish which differences are real and which merely apparent.

Social life among traditional Andamanese centred on
something called, for want of a better word, the local group. This
was a village community, albeit a highly nomadic one. It was in their
local group that the Andamanese found peace and a secure place in the
world, this was where they felt at home. Membership of a tribe had no
practical importance; traditional Andamanese had few if any peaceful
dealings with people from outside their own immediate neighbourhood.
In most cultures, the family fulfils the emotional and physical
functions that in Andamanese society were taken up by the local
group. Children were readily adopted away from their parents, descent
by blood did not interest anyone much and clans were quite unknown.
Children were not expected to show more respect to their parents,
real or adopted, than they had to show to all older people. It was
age that demanded respect above all else.

Local groups were essentially nomadic, Aryoto somewhat more so
than Eremtaga. The groups moved from place to place, wherever the
most abundant seasonal food supply could be found, spending only the
rainy season in the main camps. Rarely staying at one place outside
the main camp for longer than a few weeks, each group remained
strictly within its own tiny hunting territory. Any trespassing, let
alone poaching, on the land of a neighbouring group would have led to
immediate and serious problems. Just how ancient the local groups,
their regular trails and campsites could be is shown by the kitchen
midden that dot the Andamanese countryside. These are heaps of
domestic refuse accumulated when a local group occupied the same site
for a period of time year after year for countless generations. The
midden are our only source of reliable information about the pre-1858
Andamanese and we shall look more closely at their evidence when we
deal with the prehistory of the islands.

Midden were not just piles of domestic refuse that became useful
platforms on which to build camps when they had reached a certain
size. Their size also reflected the hunting and gathering prowess of
the owning group and as such were a source of local pride, serving as
a unmistakable markers to the surrounding hunting territory. The
symbolic value of a large midden was further strengthened by a link
to the group’s ancestors by the custom, especially among Onge, to
bury their dead or some bones from them under their communal huts,
i.e. in the midden. Local pride in their kitchen-midden faded among
the Great Andamanese after the 1860s and among Onge after the 1920s
with the introduction of the dog. Dogs allowed even the most inept
hunter to catch more than enough pigs and made the bow and arrow
almost redundant. We find here that helping a primitive group become
more efficient can destroy pride in its achievements, undermining the
self-confidence necessary for long-term survival.

The size of local groups has been estimated at between 30 and 50
men, women and children. Each was made up of a few families
consisting of father, mother and their unmarried children at the core
with unmarried older spinsters and bachelors, widows and widowers and
the occasional waif and stray on the fringe. The average group owned
a territory of around 40 sq.km (16 sq. miles) while the average tribe
consisted of 10 local groups. People were free to leave their own
group to take up residence with another and this seems to have been
quite a common occurrence. Newly-weds could take up residence
wherever they wished: at the local group of the bride or the
bridegroom or with any other local group that would accept them. Such
movement between friendly local groups was easy but it was normally
limited to neighbouring groups. Emigration outside the neighbourhood
may have taken place in the old days but must have been rare. A
crossing from Aryoto to Eremtaga or across tribal borders would have
been unthinkable.

The traditional Andamanese aborigine had a very limited
geographical horizon. Members of one group were unaware of the
existence of other groups living as little as 30 km (20 miles) away.
The ignorance of the traditional Andamanese (apart from the Onge) of
their island geography was profound: they knew and cared only about
their own hunting grounds and those of their neighbours. The
Andamanese seem to have been quite unconscious of being one people
and there was no fellow-feeling towards other Andamanese. Quite the
contrary, in fact. If a member of one tribe found himself
accidentally adrift in his canoe, fetching up on the beach of another
tribe, his goose would as surely be cooked as if he had been a
shipwrecked British sailor: he would be killed. A feeling of
belonging together would only come to the Andamanese after the
outsiders and their diseases had cut the ground from under all of
them.

The local groups did not have their own names but instead were
known by the area they occupied. This could be a major land feature,
a hill, a rock, a creek, an island or the name of the main camp-site.
For example, a local group of the Aka-Bale tribe living on the island
of Teb-juru was known as the Teb-juru-wa, with –wa meaning
“people”. The northern equivalent of wa was koloko
but the system of naming local groups was the same. A local group of
the northern Aka-Bo tribe that lived on a creek (buliu)
called Terant was known, with irresistible logic,
Terant-buliu-koloko. Of 58 place names that could be translated, 39
referred to trees and plants, 12 to topographic features and 7 to
socio-cultural aspects. In the old days, it would have been very rare
to come across a person from an unknown local group so that the names
of local groups became useful only after 1858 when people started to
move around and had to identify themselves to strangers.

Several communities at peace with each other and connected by ties
of friendship and matrimony, whose members knew and trusted each
other and whose ancestors over many generations had done likewise,
formed a higher-level grouping, the sept. Social contacts within a
sept were frequent and close. Groups met for feasting, dancing and
the exchange of gifts, while children were often adopted out to other
local groups within the sept where their biological parents could
visit them.

The traditional Andamanese had a carefully graded standard scale
of friendly-to-hostile attitudes towards others:

It was more tradition, an established and known position in
society, rather than personal spontaneous likes and dislikes that
determined conduct towards others. Not to be known and without
somebody well-known to introduce him or her, could place any stranger
in mortal danger. With their friendliness-rating like an impersonal
computer program at the back of traditional Andamanese minds,
shipwrecked sailors never stood a chance. Among Jarawa the same
schematic way of treating strangers is still very much alive today.
We have mentioned in a previous chapter how Indian anthropologists
through patient efforts and much gift-giving had over the years
established a sort of friendship with two Jarawa groups. Although
these groups were “tamed” to a degree, any stranger who had the bad
luck to chance upon them would be placed in a very dangerous
position, especially if he did not immediately offer lots of
presents. New faces were safe only if accompanied by someone
familiar. Policemen had accompanied parties of anthropologists and
some became well-known and liked by the Jarawa. In the 1980s and
1990s, after retirement, a few of these guardians of law and order
established lucrative businesses bringing tourists to the Jarawa to
shake hands and be photographed. Such illegal practices dramatically
increase the risk of disease among the Jarawa and will undoubtedly
hasten the demise of these groups. Even the rare Western tourists,
despite their alien appearance and light skin colour, are readily
accepted by the Jarawa as long as the beturbanned ex-policeman come
along and as long as presents are handed out.

Among groups in close touch with outsiders, the standard
friendliness-rating did not long survive 1858. We cannot say whether
the Greater Andamanese of the later 19th century “really” liked their
British masters, especially since there were only a few exceptional
individuals among the British and virtually none among the convicts
who took an informed and sympathetic interest in the aboriginal
population. The Andamanese no doubt respected and greatly feared
their colonial masters, their guns and superior technology.
Doubtlessly they also disliked the ordinary British sailor and
soldier for the incurable habit of pilfering anything moveable from
any Andamanese village visited. As regards the mostly Indian or
Burmese convicts that made up the main population of the islands, the
Andamanese developed a new standard friendliness-rating.

The revised standard friendliness scale of the Greater Andamanese
after 1858:

The remarkable ceremonial of greeting and the copious tears shed
has attracted attention and comment from many observers. The
Andamanese did not and still do not lightly show their social
emotions. There were no special words for ordinary greetings like the
English “hello” or “how-do-you-do.” When two Andamanese met who had
not seen each other for a while, they first stared wordlessly at each
other for minutes. So long could this initial silent staring last
that some outside observers who saw the beginning of the ceremony but
not its continuation came away with the impression that the
Andamanese had no speech. The deadlock was broken when the younger of
the two made a casual remark. This opened the doors to an excited
exchange of news and gossip. If the two were related, the older would
sit down and the younger sit on his lap, then the two would cuddle
and huddle while weeping profusely. If they had not seen each other
for a long time, the weeping could go on for hours. In the eyes of
outside observers, the embracing and caressing could seem amorous but
in fact the ceremony had no erotic significance whatsoever. Kisses
were not part of the repertoire of caresses; only children received
kisses as a sign of affection. Greater Andamanese greeting ceremonies
were loudly demonstrative, their weeping often turning into howls
that could be heard, as was intended, far and wide. The Onge were
less exuberant and were satisfied with the of a few quiet tears and
with caressing each other. If there were many people, greeting
returning hunters that had been absent longer than expected or
meeting unusual visitors, etiquette required that the large mass of
people should not cry until several hours after the arrival. When the
howling started, it could go on all night. When more than a few
people met, the initial staring was dispensed with. The following
description of a larger ceremony dates to 1870:

Crying signifies with them reconciliation with enemies,
or joy at meeting an old friend or acquaintance from whom they
have been parted. Should two tribes [septs or local
groups] meet, the newcomers have to commence, and the women
have the priority in weeping; subsequently the men take it up,
whilst it becomes the duty of the hosts to reciprocate in the same
manner; first the females weeping and afterwards the males,
occasionally the performance cannot be completed in one night,
especially should the parties have been long separated, it may
even be continued through several successive days. After the
crying has been completed, dancing begins.

Crying for grief or for joy was known in traditional Andamanese
society as in any other human society. The peculiar Andamanese
greeting ceremony, beside its ritual and social significance, was the
expression of a sudden overwhelming feeling of affection. The
ceremony itself had the function of affirming and strengthening the
social bond of friendship between individuals and groups.

The hunting ground (which among Aryoto groups also included
fishing grounds) was the local group’s most valuable, indeed its
only, possession. It was held in common. The territory provided its
members with all the essentials of life. Not surprisingly since the
group’s survival depended on it, the rights to the land were fiercely
defended. So strong was the claim to the ancestral hunting grounds
that as late as the early 20th century permission to hunt had to be
sought from the owning group even if one frail old survivor was all
that was left of it. In happier days, each member of the local group
had the right to hunt and gather on the land held by his or her local
group. Most borders between territories had been fixed from time
immemorial; they were immutable and known to all. Trespassing and
poaching could lead to bloody and sometimes long-lasting feuds
between neighbours. As we have seen, the relationship between the
richer Aryoto and the poorer Eremtaga was at best an uneasy one
because the latter could not always resist the temptation the
formers’ richer territories presented. Generally speaking, borders
separating Aryoto and Eremtaga groups were less well-defined than
others and seem to have still been in the long drawn-out process of
being sorted out through feuds and agreements – until 1858 made it
all irrelevant. Local groups had carved up practically all the
territory of the Andaman archipelago among themselves, only a few
areas like Saddle Peak were avoided by all. In some places
long-forgotten border disputes left traces of what must have been
negotiated peace accords: there were areas over which two groups
could hunt, others where one group had the hunting and another the
gathering rights while at still other places two groups could hunt
and gather at different times of the year.

The economic life of the traditional local group has been called a
sort of communism and yet it was based on the notion of private
property. With so few possessions to go round, the concept of private
property did not acquire the overwhelming importance that it has in
wealthier societies. There was no accumulation of property and
practically no difference in wealth between individuals. In such
circumstances theft was naturally rare but when one had been
committed, it was a serious matter. Private property in traditional
Andamanese society was limited to the portable items that each person
had made for himself or herself, i.e. bow and arrows, harpoons, pots,
nets, ropes and the like. A canoe was made in cooperation by several
men under the direction of the owner who would later be obliged in
return to help his helpers make their own canoes. In a village, each
family erected and kept in repair their own hut. Communal huts were
built in cooperation by several families while each family would then
live in and be responsible for the upkeep of its own section.

During a successful hunt, the man whose arrow or harpoon had
struck the quarry first was its owner. The person who found a beehive
only became the owner if he or she climbed up the tree and brought
the honeycombs down. The same principle applied to whatever a person
could kill, catch, dig up or gather within the tribe’s hunting
grounds. The lucky owner of any foodstuff was expected to share with
those who had little or nothing. While a married man could keep the
best parts of his catch for himself and his family, bachelors were
expected to distribute most of theirs to the older people. The result
was a relatively even spread of the available food through the local
group. Generosity towards the members of one’s own local group and to
friends outside was highly valued. Private property was also
respected within the family, neither husband nor wife being free to
dispose of the partner’s private property.

A more abstract ownership and even something like copyright was
also known. Any member of the local group could notify the others
that a tree within the group’s territory was to be reserved for him
because he wished to make a canoe out of its trunk; such claims were
respected by the others for years if the owner did not get round to
his project immediately. Some men were also reported to have
possession of certain fruit trees from which nobody could take fruit
without permission and from which the owner expected his share of the
picking. Such rights seem somehow alien in the context of traditional
Andamanese culture. We do not know whether women could own trees nor
do we know how and when the men’s rights originated.

The Andamanese copyright was remarkable: songs were specially
composed for large gatherings and those that had been successful with
the fickle public would on request be repeated at later gatherings.
All rights to such stone-age hit songs were reserved by the composer
and no one except him (rarely her) was allowed to sing it. If anyone
else tried without permission, it would have been regarded as theft.
Andamanese songs were highly monotonous and very similar to each
other musically. The creative work was in the words.

There was no concept of trade in our sense. In everyday life, a
system of gift giving took the place of trade, leading to the mutual
obligations that were a mainstay of traditional Andamanese society.
Not only on special occasions but even during the daily life of a
local group, presents were constantly exchanged. All moveable goods,
including canoes and even the skulls of ancestors, could be given
away. No one was free to refuse a gift offered. It would also have
been the height of bad manners to have refused someone an article
that had been requested. However, for every gift received something
of roughly equal usefulness or value had to be given in return. Items
could pass quite rapidly from person to person and, at least after
1858, could cross tribal borders. A person carrying an ancestral
skull around the neck need not necessarily have any idea who the
original owner of the skull had been or where the object had come
from. The Andamanese saw the exchange of gifts as a moral obligation,
as a means to spread friendly feelings and to keep friendships and
alliances in good working order. That they could also have a
practical value was of secondary importance to them. Eremtaga groups
without access to the sea could acquire turtle shells or turtle fat
while iron looted from shipwrecks was spread far and wide over the
archipelago.

Gift giving was not always a simple matter, however, and since
Murphy’s law worked in Andamanese as well as in any other human
society, things that could go wrong did go wrong. When the return
gift did not come up to the sometimes inflated expectations of the
original giver, quarrels and feuds could arise.

It was not until the 1880s that the Greater Andamanese had learnt
to sell items such as bows and arrows to outsiders in return for
money with which they could buy the items they craved but could not
make themselves, such as sugar, tobacco or tea. At the same time some
also began to perform traditional dances or sold locks of their hair
for money. Nevertheless, the Greater Andamanese never really
understood the concept of money and trade. All too often their
commercial naivety was shamelessly taken advantage of but this did
not seem to upset them. In 1867 the authorities tried to stop the
exploitation by forbidding trade between outsiders and Andamanese.
Prohibition did not work and business was back to normal soon. The
Onge of the 1950s were playing the commercial game more astutely: one
scientist who was trying to acquire two canoes for museum collections
complained bitterly about the ruthless bargaining he was subjected
to. There is a strong suspicion that the Onge may have traded,
perhaps for centuries, with Chinese and others, diving for valuable
sea shells in return for alcohol and opium. The outsiders would have
regarded this as payment for the Onge’s work while the Onge
themselves would have regarded it as an exchange of gifts. Compared
to the other Andamanese groups, a long tradition of contact and trade
with the outside world would go some way to explain the Onge’s
adaptability towards British and later Indian outsiders, their
greater commercial sense, their consistent peaceful attitude after
the initial period of hostility as well as their more adventurous
attitude towards the sea.

The possibility that at least some Great Andamanese groups
practiced what is known as “silent trade” has been mooted and there
is indeed some indirect evidence but no definitive proof. It should
be noted that a society of complete hunter-gatherers is largely
self-sufficient and is not under any great pressure to trade with the
outside world. Traditional Andamanese are known to have been greedy
for iron for a long time but their survival did not depend on the
metal. If they could not get it, they had alternative traditional
technologies to fall back on.

The daily routine in the succession of temporary camps that was
traditional Andamanese life was dominated by the women. The men were
too often away on hunting trips during the day to play an active part
in camp life. The weather had to be inclement indeed to keep them
from going out to hunt and in really bad weather not much could be
done around the camp anyway. Not to put too fine a point on it, the
Andamanese male traditionally shirked work in camp.

Visiting friends in other local groups was a major source of
pleasure for traditional Andamanese. Visits by a single person or a
whole family could take place at any time of the year but tended to
concentrate on the months of the year between December and May when
the weather was calm and stable. Married couples naturally wished to
visit the local group in which one partner was born but in which they
had chosen not to live. Parents of children adopted away also were
keen to pay a visit and to see how their children were getting on.
Hospitality towards friends was an important duty so that such
visitors were sure to receive an enthusiastic welcome and the best
food available.

More formal social gatherings, called jeg, were organized
by influential individuals who decided on a time and place and who
sent out the invitations by messenger. The host group was responsible
for housing and feeding the guests. For the first few hours after
their arrival, all would feel a little shy and awkward, a feeling not
unknown at similar gatherings in more advanced civilizations.
Visitors and guests then exchanged gifts such as clay for body
painting, bows and arrows, baskets etc. This was a delicate moment
when the diplomatic abilities of the presiding chief could be tested
to their limits. If a quarrel broke out it would diminish respect for
the man in charge if he could not quietly and discreetly defuse the
situation. With the highly excitable Andamanese temperament and a
tendency to take offence at the slightest provocation, any gathering
was potentially explosive. Larger meetings often were called to put
the official seal on the reconciliation after an old quarrel had been
settled. A chief could gain much additional influence and respect
from running a successful meeting but he could also ruin his position
if something went seriously wrong. Some meetings of reconciliation
ended as the starting point of a new feud.

We have seen that the Andamanese were individualists and not
inclined to take orders from a person they did not respect. No one
commanded and no one obeyed. It all had to be voluntary or required
by tradition, there being nothing like a structure of government.
Chiefs existed but had no power to enforce their will on anyone; they
were only men of influence. A chief reached his position through
strength of character; heredity played no role whatever. A headman
had to rely exclusively on respect and reputation to keep his
followers in line and loyal. Decisions were taken by all grown-up
older men with the older women given a considerable voice as well.
Younger people were expected to show respect towards their elders and
their opinions counted for less but they were free to voice them and
were listened to. The final decision was taken by general consent
among the older members of the group. It was the headman alone,
however, who directed the movements of hunting parties and who made
all decisions that had to be taken quickly on the spot. He was also
in charge of the meetings and festivities. Some headmen, again
exclusively by strength of character, rose to be heads of a whole
sept and even of a group of septs. None could acquire headship over
an entire tribe, however, if that tribe was split into Aryoto and
Eremtaga sections since none of these groups would accept a headman
from the other section. The power a high-level headman could yield
was limited by his personality as much as it had been at a lower
level. Tradition prevented women from becoming chiefs, however strong
their character but the wife of a headman enjoyed the same position
relative to the women that her husband had with the men.

The British, military men and colonial administrators to whom a
strictly hierarchical regime was second nature, understandably took a
dim view of this unfamiliar, formless, almost democratic
non-government. After looking in vain for chiefs with the sort of
authority a chief was expected to have over his subjects, they solved
their administrative problem by creating a system of chieftainships
and by appointing intelligent and trustworthy natives to the position
of “rajas” as intermediaries between natives and colonial
authorities. The Indian title of raja (king) was rather preposterous
for such local appointees but it caught on. The Andamanese did not
readily accept the authority of the new rajas but followed them of
their own free will if they could gain their respect. Most rajas
were, in fact and unsurprisingly, the traditional local headmen.

The Andamanese system of social ranking was based very strongly on
age. Old people, men and women, had to be shown respect. They
received the best pieces of any hunting success of younger men and
they made all the important decision affecting the group. It was also
they who made and unmade chiefs. Old men took the most beautiful of
the younger women as wives as we have already seen – with entirely
predictable effects on the birth rate. In many way traditional
Andamanese society functioned as a gerontocracy. Considering the
relatively heavy burden that the old put on the young, it is
surprising how little grumbling there was among the victims of the
system even when traditional society was disintegrating in the second
half of the 19th century. We know nothing about the thoughts of young
people during the old days but we can safely assume that they took it
for granted, consoling themselves with the thought that in the
fullness of time they would reach the same privileged position. The
duty that one person owed another was not so much governed by the
degree of relatedness or marriage as by relative age. What duties a
child owed to his parents or a man and woman to his or her older
siblings differed little from what the same persons owed to any other
person of comparable relative age. Relationships between child and
parents had, of course, a somewhat different quality from other
relationships but the peculiar system of adoptions shows that this
difference at least from age six upwards should not be
over-estimated. Most societies, primitive or advanced, have high
respect for the old but few have carried the principle to such
lengths.

While social status was very closely connected with age, there
were other ways to gain a better position in society. Hunting prowess
was high on the list for men but generosity and kindness towards
members of the local group and other friends (but never to outsiders)
was also highly esteemed in both sexes. A person with a violent
temper, on the other hand, was feared but not respected. A chief
bursting out in a fit of bad temper would make everyone run for cover
– but he diminished his own authority which he would later find
difficult to re-establish.

The grip of tradition was tight in the Andamans but it was their
own tradition, they were happy with it. Everybody was left with a
considerable margin of individual freedom and the work that had to be
done was done communally and was rarely arduous. There was no harsh
compulsion, just the gentle if insistent tug of tradition. The hunt
was as much pleasure, the gathering as much social event as they were
work and necessity. Many well-meaning outside officials working with
the Andamanese pitied the “poor creatures” and patronized them in
their “wretched and miserable condition.” They felt duty-bound to
improve them, by force if necessary, thereby involuntarily hastening
the extinction of the race. For their own part, the Andamanese tried
to avoid being drawn into alien ways of life. All those groups who
did not or could not keep their distance are now either extinct or
heading that way. The traditional Andamanese, embedded in their
largely undisturbed society, did not see their condition as wretched.
It is hard to blame the Andamanese when they refused a life, however
civilized, of paid drudgery in fields, plantations or factories. Even
worse, in many ways, was the option of receiving free government
handouts with nothing left to do. The Andamanese were (and the Jarawa
and Sentineli certainly still are today even if we cannot ask them)
quite satisfied with the lifestyle that had been good enough for
their ancestors for untold millennia. It was not paradise but it was
home. Only with the onslaught of epidemics and the disintegration of
their society did the word “wretched” begin to fit reality.

One sad and revealing Indian photograph dated to around 1980 shows
a number of Onge plantation workers sitting on felled logs during a
break in their work. No less sad and revealing is a British
description of the Andamanese playing the amusing fools at a social
event of fashionable colonial society at Port Blair 1885:

Several Andamanese lads have been taught to wait at
table, and proved both useful and handy at such duties, behaving
with most becoming gravity, as if, indeed, they had been to the
manner born! It is a somewhat absurd sight to see these jet-black
imps dressed in white, with their arms crossed and head thrown
back, standing like statues behind their masters’ chairs, watchful
to fulfil any service required. When a dance had been given in the
settlement it has been amusing to watch them in the balconies
endeavouring to vie with their masters’ performances in valse
[waltz], polka, and galop: I have seen them, after taking
note of the step, select their partners (all boys) and set to
work, thinking evidently that it is part of the sport for each
couple to cannon against another!

The same author then closes his book about the Andamanese with the
following observation:

But though the Andamanese can thus in a measure enter
into and enjoy civilised employments and amusements, the instincts
of savage life, with its unrestrained freedom of action, generally
prove in the end too strong for them, and they are carried, by an
apparently irresistible impulse, back to their jungle homes, where
they resume their aboriginal customs and habits.