Short Stuff: North Sentinel Island

One of the last uncontacted people in the world live in the Bay of Bengal and they have made it clear they don’t want you to visit. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:08Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh here, Chuck here, that's it, and this is short stuff.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kept thinking we had covered this, but I don't think we covered it this specifically. And what made me think of this was the other day I saw a video that was a drone flying over North Sentinel Island. Yeah, and these, this uncontacted tribe looking up, obviously, and they were pretty high up. They weren't buzzing them, I will say that. But I was also like, and I was heartened to find the Instagram comments were mainly like, please leave them alone, largely. But North Sentinel Island is part of a larger island chain called the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, about 700 miles off of India.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  And it is noteworthy because anywhere between 50 and 500 of these Sentinel, Sentinelis people live there completely uncontacted, even though they're like maybe 20 miles away from island. That are have incorporated some modern spoils.

• 2:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they live essentially in the same manner as Neolithic hunter gatherers. They're they're don't wear clothes. They're they walk around naked as the day they were born. They spearfish. They use dugout canoes that aren't particularly seaworthy. And they don't like visitors at all. Essentially, there's been one one event of contact with them that you could even remotely consider peaceful. I guess it would definitely be a piece.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but every other contact with them has either been repelled by a volley of arrows or has resulted in the person's death. I should say and or resulted in the person's death from that volley of arrows. And that's why, like those Instagram comments were saying, like, leave these people alone. They've clearly told the modern world, leave us alone.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, in other words, these people are your heroes.

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, kind of. Naked, the naked part especially.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, really think a lot, a lot of these folks, I gotta get me a bow and arrow. In the 18th century is when they were first discovered with Dutch, Austrian and British merchant ships looking for better trade routes. And the first European settlers arrived there in the 1850s when Britain built a penal colony on an island about 30 miles from North Sentinel Island. And kind of not too long after that, I guess it was about 40 years or so. There was a prisoner who tried to escape on a raft from that penal colony washed up on shore of North Sentinel and they found him, you know, dead by arrow or arrows, rather.

• 3:51Josh Clark?

  Yes, and that confirmed those sightings from the 1770s that there were definitely people living on this island. You don't like, there's no natural arrows that you can fall on top of. That's just how it goes. I'm sorry.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  You fall on a sword. Everyone knows that. You don't fall on an arrow.

• 4:10Josh Clark?

  Right, but even still, if you do fall on an arrow, somebody made that arrow. So it definitely suggested human in human habitation of the island. And it also showed, yeah, they probably don't want people showing up, even accidentally like that prisoner did.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, he was like, I got out of there. I washed up on this island. Amazing.

• 4:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Ooh, that's a really good arrow sound.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Message for you, sir. In 1967, the anthropological survey of India sent a team of 20 people to try and make peaceful contact with them. And, you know, they were well-known at this point for, like, any ship that comes by, they're gonna get arrowed at, at least, as a warning, you know, probably not killing anyone from the shore to a ship, but that message again, saying, please don't come here. And they went ashore, and they basically had gone into hiding. They saw their huts, they saw that they had fires going, and abandoned their meals. I am quite sure that they were, you know, the sentinelis were sitting there watching them from wherever they had perched.

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Kind of going through their stuff. And so they left them some gifts. They left them coconuts, because they didn't have coconuts. They left them iron rods and sporks.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plastic utensils, which is so bizarre.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't get that part.

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  It's like, hey, why don't you learn how to litter? That'll make you modern.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, is this the best thing we can offer you that you haven't seen yet?

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  You mentioned that they had fires going. I read somewhere that they are thought to not actually know how to make fire, and that they keep embers tended from lightning strikes, or fires created naturally from lightning strikes.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Phew, "Quest for Fire," remember that one?

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was a good one.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 6:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and let's go watch "Quest for Fire."

• 6:03Speaker 02

  All right, I'll be right back.

• 6:18Josh Clark?

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• 8:38Speaker 02

  Ray Don Chung.

• 8:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and what was the guy's name?

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Oh, uh.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, the guy.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Sonny Bonner.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Wasn't it, uh, Quest for Fire, what's his face?

• 8:51Josh Clark?

  Hellboy.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Hellboy, yeah.

• 8:53Josh Clark?

  Ron Livingston.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 8:56Josh Clark?

  Ron Popiel.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I can't think. People are screaming at us right now. He's a feisty guy.

• 9:02Josh Clark?

  Like, in real life?

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:04Josh Clark?

  He was great in Drive. You remember that movie?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love Drive.

• 9:10Josh Clark?

  Great movie. I think I've told you before, I did a double feature of Drive and Neon Demon, and my brain was just melting.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Wow, Ron Perlman, everybody.

• 9:19Josh Clark?

  Thank you. Rhea Perlman.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  I wonder if they're related?

• 9:23Josh Clark?

  Maybe. They look very similar.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  All right, so where did we leave off? They came back after their one semi-successful, you know, offering of coconuts and things like that. And in the early 1990s, they said, hey, let's take another stab at this. And let's bring a woman this time, which turned out to be a really good idea, it seems like.

• 9:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because this was the one encounter that you could truly call peaceful, because they actually did encounter the Sentinelese this time. And it totally makes sense that the presence of a woman would have made it a peaceful encounter, because I could see that if the Sentinelese followed typical patriarchal structures, they don't take women on raiding parties. So the presence of a woman would suggest that this wasn't a raiding party. And they let their guard down, for one reason or another, I think that's the likeliest reason, they let their guard down. And the way that the anthropological society got them to basically interact with them was to float coconuts to them from the boat. And I guess from that first gift of coconuts in the 60s, the Sentinelese were very happy to see those things again.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Oh, man. It's been decades. You teased this with coconuts. These things are amazing.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  My grandfather told me about these.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. So they did not fire any arrows. They floated the coconuts. Some of the Sentinelese came into the water, collected those things up. And they waded out to the boat even, examined the boat, and allowed some of the outsiders even to walk around on the beach and interact with the women, teenagers, and children who they brought out, which was, I mean, this was a rousing success that just should have stopped there.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it should have. I guess, well, it kind of did, didn't it? I mean, after that, after that, India passed a law that said no one could contact the Sentinel East.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  As far as the official Indian government goes, but that didn't stop a certain someone from going.

• 11:24Josh Clark?

  No, oh, actually, no, it didn't. In 2006, some fishermen from Myanmar had to make an emergency landing and they were killed. Their bodies were buried in the sand of North Sentinel Island. But the more famous death on North Sentinel Island came much more recently. I think it was in 2018 that a 26-year-old missionary and adventurer named John Allen Chow died from arrow wounds on North Sentinel Island. And this is not the first time he showed up on North Sentinel Island.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  No, he was trying to spread the word of God. He was chronicling all of this in his diary. And he knew what he was in for. He, you know, to his credit, he got all the vaccinations to make sure that he didn't get them sick and stuff like that. And he brought dental forceps, apparently, in case he got arrowed, because he knew that was a possibility. He made a few different trips. He had this, you know, local fishermen kind of take him out and back. The first time he waded up, he brought a fish as a gift and said, "My name is John. I love you, and Jesus loves you." And it was shoo, shoo, shoo, arrows. They did not get him. He came back. They arrowed at him again, did not get him again.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And I guess "Fool Me Twice" wasn't in John Allen Chow's repertoire, because he came back a third time and was arrowed for good.

• 12:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the fishermen he bribed to take him out there, bribed is the word, because they were knowingly breaking the law by helping him contact the North Sentinel East. They reported that they saw his body being dragged along the sand by the Sentinel East and that they buried it. And

• 13:09Speaker 02

  They buried all these guys.

• 13:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which I find interesting, because

• 13:13Speaker 02

  It's respect, you know?

• 13:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But John Allen Chow's remains are still there today, as are the two fishermen who had to make an emergency landing, the fishermen from Myanmar, because part of not contacting the Sentineles is not raiding North Sentinel Island, trying to bring the people who killed those guys to justice and/or even recover the remains. So they're there for who knows how long.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Probably for good. I also failed to mention that in his second of the three trips, when he was arrowed at, and I believe this was in his diaries, a young boy actually shot an arrow through his waterproof Bible that he was holding up. And if that sort of symbolic message wasn't enough to keep him away, then nothing would have.

• 14:00Josh Clark?

  No, yeah, because he came back. But yeah, he's on one side, especially among evangelicals, he's viewed as literally a martyr. On other sides, probably people on Instagram, he's viewed as an interloper who should not have been where he was, essentially.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And of course, I don't think any loss of life like that is okay. But I just think people should heed the warnings. Like, they don't want to be contacted. So just don't contact them.

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Leave the North Sentineles alone.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:34Josh Clark?

  Short stuff is out.

• 14:38Speaker 03

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• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.