64 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 09/10.19
Pathak wrote that he had directed the
coast guard to fly over North Sentinel and
a second group of officers to sail past in a
patrol boat. Neither saw any sign of Chau.
The evidence of the American’s death came
from statements by five fishermen who first
reported him missing. The men said that
they had dropped him off close to shore on
November 16. Returning a day later, they
saw “a dead person being buried at the
shore which from the silhouette of the body,
clothing and circumstances appeared to be
the body of John Allen Chau.” Pathak had
arrested all five fishermen, plus two more
men from Port Blair, all of whom, he wrote,
helped Chau travel to North Sentinel de-
spite knowing “fully well about the illegality
of the action and the hostile attitude of the
Sentinelese tribesmen to the outsiders.” Intheir defense, the fishermen stated that “the
deceased ... without any pressure or undue
influence from any corner, had volunteered
to visit North Sentinel Island for preaching
Christianity to the aboriginal tribe.”
Pathak headlined his release URGENT.
Still, he was probably surprised by its im-
pact. Within a day, journalists around the
world were mesmerizing the public with
the story of how a 26-year-old Ameri-
can missionary had been killed by a Stone
Age tribe on a remote island. Thousands
of commentators weighed in, with a near
unanimous verdict. The idea that people
still lived seminaked in the forest, sus-
tained by what they could hunt with bows
and spears, was enchanting. The idea that
missionaries were still venturing into the
jungle to convert them was outrageous and
probably racist. Stephen Corry, director ofthe indigenous-advocacy group Survival
International, warned that whole popula-
tions of remote people “are being wiped out
by violence from outsiders who steal their
land and resources, and by diseases like the
flu and measles to which they have no resis-
tance.” Chau might have infected them even
in death. No wonder the Sentinelese, Corry
said, had “shown again and again that they
want to be left alone.”
In a stream of tweets, takes, and TV seg-
ments over the months that followed, Chau
was characterized at best as a dumbass back-
packer and at worst as a Christian suprema-
cist indifferent to genocide. His ignoring
the tribe’s wish to be left alone and the risks
he posed to them were attributed to impe-
rialist arrogance. His attempt to “save” the
Sentinelese was ascribed to delusion and
brainwashing. In a post on
his Instagram page, his family
expressed forgiveness for his
killers, saying that Chau “had
nothing but love for the Sen-
tinelese,” while in the family’s
only other public comment,
his father, Patrick, seemed to
support comparisons between
his son and suicidal jihadis,
telling The Guardian that
“extreme Christianity” led
his son to his “not unexpected
end.” Twitter reckoned that
Chau deserved to die. Others
found humor in his demise.
Four thousand Google review-
ers wrote spoof travel posts
about North Sentinel, praising
the island’s beauty but ques-
tioning the cuisine (“my right
leg was ... still a bit raw”) and
service (“we kept being inter-
rupted by arrows”). In late
December, comedian Frankie Boyle wrapped
up his prime-time show on the BBC with a
monologue imagining a Sentinelese warrior
splitting Chau’s penis in half, speculating
that his rib cage was now being used as “a
monkey’s xylophone,” and suggesting that
John Allen Chau would achieve immortality
as “the patron saint of daft cunts.”
Lost in this festival of scorn was much
sense of the young man who journeyed to the
edge of the world only to die there. Who was
John Chau? What was he looking for? What
did he find?Journal entry
November 14, 2018
Port Blair
I’ve been in a safehouse in Port Blair since
returning from Hut Bay, Little Andaman,
for the past 11 days! I hadn’t seen any full PREVIOUSPAGE:^JAKUB^MICHANKOW/GETTYPART ONE
On November 21, 2018, Dependra
Pathak, director general of police in the
Andamans and Nicobars, an archipelago of
paradise islands in the middle of the Indian
Ocean, issued a press release headed “Death
of US National.” Pathak, a short, mustached
man with the paunch of 28 years’ service in
the Indian police, wrote that his office in
the island capital of Port Blair had received
an e-mail two days earlier from the U.S.
consulate in Chennai, 850 miles away on the
mainland. The consulate, Pathak said, had
been contacted by an American woman, the
mother of “one Mr. John Allen Chau ... about
her son’s visit to North Sentinel Island and
attack by the tribesmen.” Upon receiving the
e-mail, “a missing report was immediately
registered” and a “detailed enquiry was
initiated.” Within hours, Pathak’s detectives
reported back that Chau “allegedly got
killed at North Sentinel Island during his
misplaced adventure in the highly restricted
area while trying to interact with the
uncontacted people who have a history of
vigorous rejection towards outsiders.”
What Pathak did not say, because Port
Blair’s small press corps already knew, was
that, aside from Chau, almost no outsider
had ever set foot on North Sentinel. That in
itself did not make the island unusual. The
Andamans and Nicobars are a lost world,
836 islands of mangroves, rainforests, and
crescent-moon beaches stretching for 480
miles where the Bay of Bengal meets the
Andaman Sea in the warm waters between
India, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia.
Only 31 islands are inhabited. Living along-
side Indian settlers are six protected indige-
nous tribes that for thousands of years have
existed apart from the rest of humanity,
spearing fish and turtles and shooting wild
pigs with bows and arrows. This includes the
people of North Sentinel, whose reputation
for killing anyone who lands on their tiny is-
land ensures that they are the world’s most
isolated people.
Almost nothing is known about the Sen-
tinelese. From their appearance, they are
African. The theory is that, like three other
black tribes on the Andamans, they are de-
scended from people who migrated from the
Cradle of Humankind in Africa tens of thou-
sands of years ago. Some of them settled on
a mountain range that once connected to
Myanmar. Around 10,000 B.C., when the ice
caps melted and the sea rose, those moun-
tains became islands, sealing the tribes off
from the world. For anthropologists, the
existence of black hunter-gatherers in Asia
is a wonder. For the religious, it’s a miracle:
Adam and Eve, living as God created them.
THOUSANDS OF COMMENTATORS
WEIGHED IN, WITH A NEAR
UNANIMOUS VERDICT. THE IDEA
THAT PEOPLE STILL LIVED SEMI-
NAKED IN THE FOREST, SUSTAINED
BY WHAT THEY COULD HUNT
WITH BOWS AND SPEARS, WAS
ENCHANTING. THE IDEA THAT
MISSIONARIES WERE STILL
VENTURING INTO THE JUNGLE TO
CONVERT THEM WAS OUTRAGEOUS
AND PROBABLY RACIST.