UNKNOWN TRIBE DISCOVERED.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 153, 29 June 1903, Page 5

UNKNOWN TRIBE DISCOVERED.

LIKE A PAGE FROM FENNIMORE COOPER. An event which bulks largely In the administration report of the Andaman Islands for the year 1901-2 is ■ the discovery in the interior of a tribe, hitherto unknown, of Jarawas. Ever since the foundation of the settlement, not a single year has passed without the loss of some lives in account of the annual raids organised by this tribe. The main object of these raids seems to iiave been to steal iron for spears, arrows, and adzes, and not for food and water, as had been long supposed. But the tribe was never located in its proper haunts, deep in the primeval forests which cover the South Andamans. This has now been done (says the "Times of India"), and the description of the operations against the Jarawas reads very like a page out of the novels of Fennimore Cooper. "One has to know the Andamanese jungle," writes Sir Richard Temple, the Chief Commissioner, "its darkness and denseness, the ever present danger in threading it from a coal - black enemy, noiseless of tread and armed with noiseless arrows, and the insect pests that inhabit it, to fully appreciate the skill and courage and endurance shown by the party composing the expeditions. One has also to know the narrow tortuous straits through the islands, their uneven depth and the strength of the tides through them, to quite understand what is involved in navigating them at night." The operations were conducted without loss of life on our side, save for the death of the LEADER OF THE EXPEDITION, Mr Vaux, an officer of the Andaman Commission, to whose ability and zeal the Chief Commissioner repeatedly bears cordial testimony in the report. In rushing a Jarawa camp at nightfall Mr Vaux, in his •anxiety to prevent the tribesmen being needlessly shot down by the friendly Andamanese who accompanied him, did not wait as usual for the latter to rush into the camp first. He was stooping down in a hut grappling with two Jarawas when his foot disturbed the smouldering embers of a fire, which blazed up, exposing him to the view of a man in another hut, who shot two arrows at him and ran away. These were the only arrows shot in the affair, but one of them, a barbed iron-headed arrow, entered Mr Vaux on the left side between the ribs with great force, killing him almost immediately. European iron implements were found in the camp, confirming the conclusion that the object of the Jarawa raids was implements or iron for implements. Two women and six children, who were left behind by the Jarawas, accompanied the party on their return march' cheerfully, and as a measure of policy were returned later on to the tribe with suitable presents, after being shown about the settlement, and given ocular proof of the power of the rifle at the ranges. The captives exhibited no fear of the Europeans in the party, and behaved with perfect confidence with the officials. The Jarawas are said to be, on the whole, a larger, stronger, and more intelligent people than the coast tribes. They have distinct implements of their own. Their chief haunt appears to be at a point six miles west of Po.- , : Meadows and some eighteen inL'es from Javang, in the jungle between the mouth of Shoal Bay and Port Anson. Nothing more has been heard of the Jarawas since the expedition, and it is hoped that they will now leave the settlement alone