Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Laurena volbebom Here. The inhabitants of North Sentinel Island are one of the few peoples on Earth almost entirely uncontacted by outside society, and they seem to want to keep it that way. For centuries, the island's indigenous people, known as the Sentinels, have rejected most attempts by the outside world to infiltrate their tropical home in the Bay of Bengal. It's a fairly small island, only about twenty three square
miles that's around sixty square kilometers. We don't even have a good idea of how many people live there. Estimates vary between fifty and five hundred. The few glimpses of life on North Sentinel Island paint an intriguing picture of an untouched society of hunter gatherers who live in simple structures, gather island fruit, spearfish from dugout canoes, and cook over fires.
What's amazing is that this society thrives less than twenty miles or about thirty kilometers from neighboring islands where indigenous cultures have integrated with the outside world, not always with happy results. An Indian anthropologist by the name of Madamala Chattapadhyai was the first woman to visit the isolated group in the nineteen nineties, but has vowed never to go back.
In an interview with the National Geographic magazine, she said, they've been living on the island for centuries without any problem. Their troubles started after they came into contact with outsiders. The tribes of the islands do not need outsiders to protect them. What they need is to be left alone. Case in point. In twenty eighteen, Norse Sentinel Island made the news when a young American missionary named John Alan Chow was killed on the island after repeatedly ignoring Sentinely's
warnings to stay away. Choo was only the latest in a line of unwelcome outsiders, including fishermen, merchants, escape convicts, and filmmakers whose intrusions onto the island were met with an angry volley of arrows. North Sentinel is part of a large island chain called the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, currently a territory of the Indian Union. There are one hundred and eighty four islands in this tropical archipelago located out in the northeast Indian Ocean between me and Maar
and India. Only about thirty of the islands in the chain are inhabited. In the seventeen hundreds, the islands were explored by Dutch, Austrian and British merchant ships looking for the best trade routes to the spice rich Indian subcontinent. In seventeen seventy one, a ship from the British East India Company was the first spot signs of life on
North Sentinel Island, cooking fires flickering in the night. The first permanent European settlers arrived in the Andemen and Nicobar Islands in the eighteen fifties, when the British built a penal colony on Great Andaman Island to house colonial prisoners from British ruled India. In eighteen ninety six, a prisoner tried to escape on a raft and washed up on the shore of North Sentinel. A search party found him
a few days later, dead from multiple arrows. The prisoner's death confirmed previous reports from shipwrecked Indian merchants of unfriendly greetings the island and its inhabitants remained unperturbed for another half century. They were known to fire arrows at any fishing vessel or naval ship that got too close to
its beaches. But in nineteen sixty seven, the Anthropological Survey of India sent a team of twenty people, including police and Indian authorities to attempt to make peaceful contact with Sentinel Lease. However, instead of being greeted with the anticipated hostility, the team landed their boat on an empty beach with no people in sight. That first trip to the small island,
the anthropologists saw no central Leese at all. According to one of the leaders of the expedition, the Sentinel Liese must have seen the outsiders coming and gone into hiding. The team followed footprints into the jungle until they came to a clearing with eighteen nicely built, leaned two huts. Each home had a well tended fire in front of it, and hastily abandoned meals of roasted fish and fruits. They estimated that forty to fifty people lived in the village.
The anthropologists left gifts for the Sentinel lies coconuts, which don't grow on the island, iron rods, and plastic utensils, but when they made further attempts at returned visits in the nineteen seventies and eighties, their contact party was repelled each time. In the early nineteen nineties, the Anthropological Survey of India made another attempt to establish contact with Sentinel Lees. The outreach team included the first female anthropologist to join
the endeavor, the aforementioned Madamala Chettapadyai. She specialized in the indigenous tribes of South Andaman Island, but had never been to North Sentinel. Both Chettapadyai and her parents were required to sign waivers from Indian officials, acknowledging the danger of the expedition. When the team arrived offshore, the usual complement of armed men appeared, but instead of gesturing angrily and firing their weapons, the Sentinal Onliese calmly walked toward the shoreline.
Chettapadyai told the National Geographic we started floating coconuts over to them. To our surprise, some of the sentinal onlies came into the water to collect the coconuts. Perhaps it was the presence of a woman, but for some reason, the sentineallyiese let down their guard. Some of the men waded out to their boat and examined it. They happily
accepted all of the coconuts. They even allowed some of the outsiders to walk around the beach and interact with sentinely as women, teenagers, and children, but they were not allowed to enter the jungle or see the village. Encouraged by this interaction, the anthropologists returned a few months later with a much larger team, but the situation quickly soured. The Sentinel Lees weren't satisfied with collecting floated coconuts, so
they boarded the ship and took the whole bag. One Sentinel liese man even tried to grab one of the police officer's rifles, though he probably didn't know what it was, and the officer forcefully took it back. Chattapadyay said the man got angry and whipped out his knife. He gestured to us to leave immediately, and we left. Since nineteen ninety six, Indian law has made it illegal for fishermen, tourists, researchers, or other civilians to approach or Land on North Sentinel Island.
In two thousand and six, two fishermen from me and mar made an emergency landing on the island and were killed. Their bodies buried in the sand. But that wasn't going to stop John Alan Chow a twenty six year old evangelical Christian missionary and adventure blogger who hired local fishermen to take him there in November of twenty eighteen. Choo was part of an international movement of young adventurers who yearned to bring Christianity to the unreached corners of the globe.
He was a well trained outdoorsman and received several rounds of vaccinations to ensure that he didn't bring any outside diseases to the Sentinelees. He chronicled his missionary trip in a diary and came prepared to deal with any contingencies of contact with hostile residents, including dental forceps for removing arrows. When Chow first waded up to the island, he brought a large fish as a gift. He wrote in his diary, I hollered, my name is John, I love you, and
Jesus loves you. The Sentinelies responded with arrows. Chow came back and dodged even more arrows, including one shot from a young boy that pierced Chow's water Proof Bible, A. Chow wrote that night, if you want me to actually get shot or even killed with an arrow, then so be it. I think I could be more useful alive, though, But to you God, I give all the glory of whatever happens. I don't want to die, but tragically, that
is what happened. According to the fisherman who smuggled Chow to the island, they saw the Sentinel Liese drag his body to the beach and bury it. The Indian government was unable to recover his remains. In twenty twenty one, the Anthropological Survey of India issued a document recommending a
hands off eyes on policy toward North Sentinel Island. Instead of trying to visit, they say the government should offer protection to the Sentinel Liz's Eden from the Four Tees, travel, tour, transport and trade, which is advice both wise and kind, considering that the Sentinel Ease have made it pretty clear that that's what they'd prefer. Today's episode is based in the article why North Sentinel Island is off limits to all visitors on how stuffworks dot com, written by Dave Ruse.
Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot com, and it was produced by Tyler Klang. Before more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.