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Short Stuff: North Sentinel Island · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh here, Chuck here,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: that's it, and this is short stuff.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: I kept thinking we had covered this, but I don't
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: think we covered it this specifically. And what made me
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: think of this was the other day I saw a
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: video that was a drone flying over North Sentinel Island. Yeah,
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: and these you know, this uncontacted tribe looking up obviously,
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: and they were pretty high up. They weren't buzzing them,
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I will say that. But I was also like, and
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: I was heartened to find the Instagram comments were mainly
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: like please leave them alone largely, but North Sentinel Island
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: is part of a larger island chain called the Andaman
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: and Nicobar Islands and the Bay of Bengal, about seven
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: hundred miles off of India. And it is noteworthy because
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: anywhere between fifty and five hundred of these Sentinel Theese
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: people live there completely uncontacted, even though they're like maybe
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: twenty miles away from islands that are have incorporated some
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: modern spoils.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they live essentially in the same manner as
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Neolithic cunter gatherers. Don't wear clothes, They walk around naked
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: as the day they were born, They spearfish, they use
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: dugout canoes that aren't particularly seaworthy, and they don't like
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: visitors at all. Essentially, there's been one one event of
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: contact with them that you could even remotely consider peaceful.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I guess it would definitely be a piece. Yeah, Yeah,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: But every other contact with them has either been repelled
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: by a volley of arrows or has resulted in the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: person's death, I should say, and or resulted in the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: person's death from that volley of arrows. And that's why,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: like those Instagram comments were saying, like, leave these people alone.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: They've clearly told the modern world leave us alone.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In other words, these people are your heroes.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like the naked part especially. Yeah.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I really think a lot of these folks. I got
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: to get me a bow and arrow.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: In the eighteenth century is when they were first discovered
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: with Dutch, Austrian and British merchant ships looking for better
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: trade routes, and the first European settlers arrived there in
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: the eighteen fifties, when Britain built a penal colony on
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: an island about thirty miles from North Sentinel Island and
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: kind of not too long after that, I guess it
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: was about forty years or so, there was a prisoner
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: who tried to escape on a raft from that penal
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: colony washed up on shore of North Sentinel and they
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: found him dead by arrow or arrows rather.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, And that confirmed those sightings from the seventeen seventies
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: that there were definitely people living on this island. You don't, like,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: there's no natural arrows that you can fall on top of.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: That's just how it goes. I'm sorry, I don't know
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the roard.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows that you don't fall on an arrow.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Right, but even still, if you do fall on an arrow,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: somebody made that arrow. So it definitely suggested human in
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: human habitation of the island. And it also showed, yeah,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: they probably don't want people showing up even accidentally like
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: that prisoner did.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like I got out of there, I
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: washed up on this island, so amazing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, ooh, that's a really good arrow sound.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Message for you, sir.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty seven, the Anthropological Survey of India sent
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: a team of twenty people to try and make peaceful
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: contact with them. And you know, they were well known
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: at this point for like any ship that comes by,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: they're going to get arrowed at at least as a warning,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: you know, probably not killing anyone from the shore to
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: a ship, but that message again saying please don't come here.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And they went ashore, and.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: They basically had gone into hiding. They saw their huts,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: they saw that they had fires going, and abandoned their meals.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: I am quite sure that they were, you know, the
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: sentinel knees were sitting there watching them from wherever they
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: had perched.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Sure, kind of.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Going through their stuff, and so they left them some gifts.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: They left them coconuts because they didn't have coconuts. They
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: left them iron rods and.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Sporks.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, plastic utensils, which is so bizarre.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't get that part.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey, why don't you learn how to litter?
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: That'll make you modern?
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like, is this the best thing we can offer
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: you that you haven't seen yet.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: You mentioned that they had fires going. I read somewhere
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that they are thought to not actually know how to
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: make fire, and that they keep embers tended from lightning
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: strikes or fires created naturally from lightning strikes.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Quest for fire, remember that one.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a good one. Should we take a break, Yeah,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and let's go watch Quests for Fire, right, be right back.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Right on Chong.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, what was the guy's name?
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Uhh, yeah, the guy Sonny Bono.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Wasn't it a question fire?
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: What's his face?
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: The hell boy?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Hell boy?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Ron, No, oh, I can't think people are screaming at
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: us right now.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: He's a feisty guy.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: In real life.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: He was great in Drive. You remember that movie?
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love Drive, great movie. I think I've told
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you before. I did a double feature of Drive and
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Neon Demon in my brain was melting.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Wow, Ron Perlman, everybody.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you? Yeah, Ria Perlman.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, wonder if they're related.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe they look very similar.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: All right, so where did we leave off?
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: They came back after their their one semi successful you know,
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: offering of coconuts and things like that, and in the
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: early nineteen nineties they said, hey, let's take another stab
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: at this and let's bring a woman this time, which
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: turned out to be a really good idea.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: It seems like, yeah, because this was the one encounter
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: that you could truly call peaceful, because they actually did
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: encounter the Sentineleese this time, and it totally makes sense
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: that the presence of a woman would have made it
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a peaceful encounter, because I could see that if the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Sentinelese followed typical patriarchal structures, they don't take women on
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: raiding parties. So the presence of a woman would suggest
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: that this wasn't a rating party. And they let their
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: guard down for one reason, or I think that's the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: likeliest reason. They let their guard down. And the way
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: that the Anthropological Society got them to basically interact with
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: them was to float coconuts to them from the boat.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And I guess from that first gift of coconuts in
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the sixties, the Sentinel'ese were very happy to see those
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: things again.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: Oh man, it's been decades. You tease this with coconuts.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: These things are amazing.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: My grandfather told me about these.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Basically, so they did not fire any arrows. They floated
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: the coconuts. Some of the Sentineliese came into the water,
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: collected those things up, and they waded out to the boat,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: even examined the boat, and allowed some of the outsiders
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: even to walk around on the beach and interact with
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: the women teenagers and children who they brought out, which
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: was I mean, this was a rousing success that just
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: should have stopped there.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it should have. I guess, well it kind of did,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: didn't it. I mean that after that, India passed the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: law that said no one to contact the Sentinel, least.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: As far as the official Indian government goes. But that
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: didn't stop a certain someone from going.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: No. Oh, actually no it didn't. In two thousand and six,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: some fishermen from me and mar had to make an
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: emergency landing and they were killed. Their bodies were buried
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: in the sand of North Sentinel Island. But the more
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: famous death on North Sentinel Island came much more recently.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I think it was in twenty eighteen that a twenty
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  Speaker 1: six year old missionary and adventurer named John Allan Chow
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  Speaker 1: died from arrow wounds on North Sentinel Island. And this
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: was not the first time he showed up on North
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Sentinel Island.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: No, he was trying to spread the word of God.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: He was chronicling all of this in his diary, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: he knew what he was in for. He you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: to his credit, he got all the vaccinations to make
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: sure that he didn't get them sick and stuff like that,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: and he brought dental forceps apparently in case he got arrowed,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: because he knew that was a possibility. He made a
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: few different trips. He had this you know, local fisherman
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: kind of take him out and back. The first time
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: he waited up, he brought a fish as a gift
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: and said, my name is John, I love you and
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Jesus loves you, and it was harrows.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: They did not get him.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: He came back, they arrowed at him again, did not
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: get him again. And I guess fool me twice wasn't
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: in John Allen Chowles's repertoire because he came back a
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: third time and was arrowed for good.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The fisherman he bribed to take him out there,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and bribed as the word because they were knowingly breaking
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the law by helping him. Contact the North Sentinelese they
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: reported that they saw his body being dragged along the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: sand by the sentinelsee, and that they buried it. And
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: they buried all these guys, yeah, which I find interesting because.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It's respect, you know.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But John Allen chows remains are still there today,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: as are the two fishermen who had to make an
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: emergency landing the fishermen from me and mar because part
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of not contacting the Sentinellees is not raiding nor Sentinel Island,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: trying to bring the people who killed those guys to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: justice and or even recover the remains. So they're there
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: for well, who knows how long.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Probably for good. I also failed to mention that in
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: his second of the three trips, when he is arrowed at,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: and I believe this was in his diaries, a young
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: boy actually shot an arrow through his waterproof bible that
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: he was holding up. And if that sort of symbolic
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: message wasn't enough to keep them away, then nothing would happen.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: No, Yeah, because he came back. But yeah, he's on
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: one side, especially among evangelicals, he's viewed as literally a martyr.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: On other sides, probably people on Instagram, he's viewed as
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: an interloper who should not have been where he was, Julie.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course I don't think any loss of
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: life like that is okay. But I just think people
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: should heed the warnings like they don't want to be contacted.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so just don't contact.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Them, leave the North sent and the leaves alone. Yeah,
• 11:18
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• 11:22
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• 11:25
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