North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, which includes South Sentinel Island, in the Bay of Bengal. It is home to the Sentinelese who, often violently, reject any contact with the outside world, and are among the last people worldwide to remain virtually untouched by modern civilization. As such, only limited information about the island is known.

Nominally, the island belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.[8] In practice, Indian authorities recognise the islanders' desire to be left alone and restrict their role to remote monitoring. Thus the island can be considered a sovereign entity under Indian protection.

History

The Onge were aware of North Sentinel Island's existence and their traditional name for it is Chia daaKwokweyeh. They also have strong cultural similarities with what little has been remotely observed amongst the Sentinelese. However, Onge who were brought there by the British during the 19th century could not understand the language, so a significant period of separation is likely.

Chola dynasty

Rajendra Chola I (1014 to 1044 CE), one of the Tamil Chola dynasty kings, conquered the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to use them as a strategic naval base to launch a naval expedition against the Sriwijaya Empire (a Buddhist empire based in the island of Sumatra, Indonesia). They called the islands Tinmaittivu ("Valour/Truth/Strength islands" in Tamil).

Maratha empire

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a whole provided a temporary maritime base for ships of the Maratha Empire in the 17th century. The Maratha navy's admiral Kanhoji Angreestablished naval supremacy with a base in the islands and is credited with attaching those islands to India.

British visits

British surveyor John Ritchie, observed "a multitude of lights" from an East India Company hydrographic survey vessel, the Diligent, as it passed by the island in 1771. Homfray, an administrator, travelled to the island in March 1867.Toward the end of the same year's summer monsoon season, the Nineveh, an Indian merchant ship, was wrecked on a reef near the island. The 106 surviving passengers and crewmen landed on the beach in the ship's boat and fended off attacks by the Sentinelese. They were eventually found by a Royal Navy rescue party.An expedition led by Maurice Vidal Portman, a government administrator who hoped to research the natives and their customs, accomplished a successful landing on North Sentinel Island in January 1880. The group found a network of pathways and several small, abandoned villages. After several days, six Sentinelese (an elderly couple and four children) were captured and taken to Port Blair. The colonial officer in charge of the operation wrote that the entire group, "sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents". A second landing was made by Portman on 27 August 1883 after the eruption of Krakatoa was mistaken for gunfire and interpreted as the distress signalof a ship. A search party landed on the island and left gifts before returning to Port Blair. Portman visited the island several more times between January 1885 and January 1887.

Modern period

Indian exploratory parties under orders to establish friendly relations with the Sentinelese made brief landings on the island every few years beginning in 1967. In 1975, Leopold III of Belgium, on a tour of the Andamans, was brought by local dignitaries for an overnight cruise to the waters off North Sentinel Island.The cargo ship MV Rusleyran aground on coastal reefs in mid-1977, and the MV Primrose did so in August 1981. The Sentinelese are known to have scavenged both wrecks for iron. Settlers from Port Blair also visited the sites to recover the cargo. In 1991, salvage operators were authorised to dismantle the ships.After the Primrose grounded on the North Sentinel Island reef on 2 August 1981, crewmen several days later noticed that small dark-skinned men carrying spears and arrows were building boats on the beach. The captain of Primrose radioed for an urgent drop of firearms so his crew could defend themselves. They did not receive any because a large storm stopped other ships from reaching them. However, the heavy seas also prevented the islanders from approaching the ship. One week later, the crewmen were rescued by a helicopter under contract to the Indian Oil And Natural Gas Corporation(ONGC).The first peaceful contact with the Sentinelese was made by Triloknath Pandit, a director of the Anthropological Survey of India, and his colleagues on 4 January 1991.Indian visits to the island ceased in 1997.The Sentinelese survived the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and its after-effects, including the tsunami and the uplifting of the island. Three days after the earthquake, an Indian government helicopter observed several islanders, who shot arrows and threw stones at the hovering aircraft.Although the tsunami disturbed the fishing grounds, the Sentinelese appear to have adapted.On 26 January 2006, two fishermen, Sunder Raj, age 48, and Pandit Tiwari, age 52, were killed by Sentinelese when their boat accidentally drifted too close to the island when they were fishing for mud crabs.

Don't make it there . They will not make us friends.

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