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Speaker 1: at gramley dot com slash Podcast. Welcome to Unexplained Extra

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Speaker 1: with me Richard McClain smith, where for the weeks in

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Speaker 1: between episodes, we look at the stories that for one

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Speaker 1: reason or other didn't make it into the show. In

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Speaker 1: last week's episode, Always Already we found ourselves journeying deep

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Speaker 1: into the Amazonian rainforest with the Maya Runa tribe and

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Speaker 1: acclaimed photojournalist Lauren McIntyre. McIntyre had traveled into the forest

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Speaker 1: in the hope of making contact with the tribe, only

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Speaker 1: to find himself hopelessly lost and unable to return to

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Speaker 1: his camp. Only after an epic three weeks living side

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Speaker 1: by side with the Maya Runa, during which he believed

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Speaker 1: he might be communicating telepathically with their chief, did McIntyre

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Speaker 1: finally succeed in finding a way out. Sum That McIntyre

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Speaker 1: had taken it on himself to locate the tribe in

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Speaker 1: the first place might smack of a certain kind of

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Speaker 1: arrogance that speaks to a bygone age of colonial self importance. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: McIntyre's ambition to be the first to photograph these people

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Speaker 1: took precedent over the tribe's evident desire to avoid all

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Speaker 1: contact with outsiders, Though MacIntyre had never intended to intrude

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Speaker 1: in their lives quite to the degree in which he

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Speaker 1: claimed to have done. The notion of wanting to make

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Speaker 1: contact with such a self isolating community remains an immensely

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Speaker 1: complicated one for the Maya Runa. As it transpired when

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Speaker 1: they were first contacted in nineteen sixty nine, after living

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Speaker 1: in relative isolation since nineteen ten, they were grateful for it.

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Speaker 1: The word Maya Runa translates to people of the river.

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Speaker 1: After getting embroiled in skirmishes with the Peruvian government, they

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Speaker 1: had been forced to leave the riverside lands where they

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Speaker 1: thrived and moved deeper into the jungle. Through a combination

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Speaker 1: of napalm and machine guns, the Peruvian government, with the

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Speaker 1: support of the US Army's Southern Command, had sought to

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Speaker 1: annihilate the tribe. When they were finally located by Harriet

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Speaker 1: Field and Hattie Neeland in August nineteen sixty nine, they

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Speaker 1: were tired of running. After subsequent negotiations were set up

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Speaker 1: with the Peruvian government, the tribe were able to return

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Speaker 1: to their homeland. Although it was contact with outsiders that

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Speaker 1: threatened their existence in the first place and still does,

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Speaker 1: it is also arguable that this later contact is what

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Speaker 1: has kept them alive. In the main. However, the clash

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Speaker 1: of a more dominant in culture against one lesso rarely

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Speaker 1: tends to end well. Often, even just the language used

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Speaker 1: when discussing the idea of it can be quite revealing.

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Speaker 1: In November twenty seventeen, self professed adventurer Benedict Allen faced

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Speaker 1: criticism after he allegedly went missing in Papa, New Guinea

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Speaker 1: while searching for the Yifo tribe. Much like the Mayoruna

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, the Yifo also tried to maintain

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Speaker 1: little contact with the outside world. Some media outlets, however,

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Speaker 1: reveled in what they saw to be Allan's plucky, adventurous spirit,

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Speaker 1: describing the Jaifo as a lost tribe who were little

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Speaker 1: more than dangerous headhunters. Such communities are also often described

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Speaker 1: as having been discovered, as if they were rare precious

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Speaker 1: metals with no agency of their own. Such groups are

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Speaker 1: also often referred to as being remote or worse, uncivilized,

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Speaker 1: as if there being anywhere other than closed to an

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Speaker 1: urban center classifies them as being external to civilization, and

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Speaker 1: yet remoteness is only ever a case of perspective. As

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Speaker 1: Lauren McIntyre came to understand for the Mayoruna, at least

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Speaker 1: in the time he was making contact with them, the

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Speaker 1: concept of remoteness would be completely incomprehensible if, like them,

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Speaker 1: you consider yourself to always be a part of nature,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to separate from it. To ever be remote

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Speaker 1: in the purest sense is an impossibility, since nature is

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Speaker 1: both everywhere and always. For self isolating communities and cultures,

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Speaker 1: such as the Mayoruna, there is good reason to want

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Speaker 1: to avoid contact with outsiders. Indeed, history is littered with

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Speaker 1: the blood and lost ideas of those people whose cultures

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Speaker 1: were deemed inferior and weaker than others, and the damage

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Speaker 1: can occur in many ways, from the contracting of a

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Speaker 1: disease that a community had not previously experienced, to becoming

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Speaker 1: the victims of deliberate genocide campaigns, and there are more

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Speaker 1: subtle ways too. The extinction of a different culture or

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Speaker 1: community when it clashes with another is rare in the

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Speaker 1: modern age. However, a culture considered less worthy by a

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Speaker 1: more dominant one will at best run the risk of

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Speaker 1: becoming significantly diluted over time, while at worst could be

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Speaker 1: systematically erased. Though it is not strictly in the same sense,

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Speaker 1: and I can't claim to have any idea what it's

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Speaker 1: like to experience that level of erasure. I couldn't help

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Speaker 1: but be struck by something related to this when trying

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Speaker 1: to write the last episode. It occurred whenever I attempted

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Speaker 1: to search something online related to the natural world. If

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Speaker 1: I typed glade, for example, the first thing I'd see

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Speaker 1: was not something about a majestic forest opening of dappled

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Speaker 1: light and fresh dew drops, but a domestic cleaning product

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Speaker 1: specifically designed to mimic the smell of the outdoors. When

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Speaker 1: trying to find anything with the word Amazon in it,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't information about the largest and most biodiverse tract

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Speaker 1: of rainforest on the planet that I found first, but

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Speaker 1: links related to the world's largest e commerce company. And

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Speaker 1: when I searched the word jaguar, the Mayoruna's own ancient god,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't information on the majestic felines of the wild

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Speaker 1: that I came across, but information about a certain type

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Speaker 1: of car. Finding this happening again and again, it was

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Speaker 1: hard to resist the sensation that a different world was

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Speaker 1: being mapped out around me and slowly but surely laid

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Speaker 1: over the one I thought I knew. This experience brought

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Speaker 1: to mind a wonderful book called The Lost words written

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Speaker 1: by Robert MacFarlane and exquisitely illustrated by Jackie Morris, inspired

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Speaker 1: in part by this very idea of vanishing worlds, or

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Speaker 1: rather our seemingly blase acceptance of it when it occurs,

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Speaker 1: even right in front of our eyes. At first we

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Speaker 1: lose the word, then its meaning, and in some cases,

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Speaker 1: finally the very thing itself can vanish too. It is

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Speaker 1: hard to know exactly what to make of all this.

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Speaker 1: Is it something natural or something to be resisted, Although

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Speaker 1: it feels sad on one level that to think one

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Speaker 1: day the word jaguar might only bring to mind the

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Speaker 1: model of a car. Much more so to think that

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Speaker 1: in forgetting its name, we forget to care about it,

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Speaker 1: while on another level, the animal was never ours to

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Speaker 1: name in the first place. To day, sadly, tribes like

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Speaker 1: the Mayoruna are likely to only be able to survive

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Speaker 1: in isolation for as long as the land they occupy

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Speaker 1: is deemed of little value to others. This is one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons given for the continued survival of a

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Speaker 1: small community of people living on North Sentinel Island, which

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Speaker 1: forms part of the Andaman Islands that lie between the

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Speaker 1: Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Though it isn't

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Speaker 1: known how the tribe refers to itself, outsiders have labeled

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Speaker 1: the group the Sentinels in order to protect them from

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Speaker 1: the corrupting influence of outsiders. Their island homeland, which falls

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Speaker 1: under the jurisdiction of the Indian government, has been declared

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Speaker 1: an island reserve. All travel is prohibited within a three

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Speaker 1: mile radius, while the area is also patrolled twenty four

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Speaker 1: hours a day, and this patrol is not only for

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Speaker 1: the tribe's protection. Like many self isolating tribes, the Sentinels

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Speaker 1: are fiercely and unequivocally protective of their territory. In November

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, despite knowing this, twenty six year old missionary

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Speaker 1: John Alan Chow traveled to the island intent on converting

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Speaker 1: the people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There was

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Speaker 1: only one way it was going to end. Are you

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Speaker 1: always taking care of your family? Do you often take

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Speaker 1: care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to

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Speaker 1: take care of yourself. To make time for you you

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Speaker 1: deserve it. TELEDOC gives you access to a licensed therapist

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Speaker 1: to help you get back to feeling your best, to

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Speaker 1: a licensed therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointments are

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Speaker 1: available seven days a week from seven am to nine

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Speaker 1: feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely, or you might

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Speaker 1: podcast today to get started. That's t e LA d

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Speaker 1: C dot com slash Unexplained podcast. Very little is known

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Speaker 1: about the Sentinels, with some estimates suggesting their specific ancestry

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Speaker 1: could date back anywhere between thirty to sixty thousand years.

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Speaker 1: Current population estimates have been anything from forty to four hundred.

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Speaker 1: In twelve to ninety six, explorer Marco Polo saw fit

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Speaker 1: to describe the general population of the Andaman Islands as

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Speaker 1: a most brutish and savage race, having heads, eyes, and

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Speaker 1: teeth like those of dogs. They are very cruel and

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Speaker 1: kill and eat every foreigner whom they can lay their

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Speaker 1: hands upon, he wrote. However, in what is often par

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Speaker 1: for the course when describing others, it is thought that

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Speaker 1: Polo never saw or interacted with these people himself, and

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Speaker 1: merely based the estment on rumor alone. For many years,

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Speaker 1: the Andaman Islands were largely ignored by others until the

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, when they fell under the colonial rule of

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Speaker 1: the British Empire and were used in part as a

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Speaker 1: penal colony. When the first British Superintendent was dispatched to

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Speaker 1: the Andamans in eighteen fifty eight, he instructed that the

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Speaker 1: indigenous population be treated with the greatest forbearance and humanity

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Speaker 1: by the British, insisting that their intentions towards the people

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Speaker 1: of the islands were of the most friendly character. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: this message didn't get across since, unsurprisingly, when the British

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Speaker 1: attempted to take ownership of the islands, they met with

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Speaker 1: some fierce resistance. However, this was soon quelled when after

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Speaker 1: one skirmish in which fifteen hundred Islanders attempted to scare

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Speaker 1: off their foe, they were massacre by the guns of

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Speaker 1: a British warship. Prior to the arrival of the British,

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Speaker 1: the Andaman Islands indigenous population was thought to be around

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Speaker 1: five thousand. By the time they relinquished control ninety years later,

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Speaker 1: it was estimated to have dropped to round four hundred

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Speaker 1: and sixty. As Adam Goodheart wrote in the American Scholar

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Speaker 1: magazine in two thousand, the history of the period can

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Speaker 1: be summarized as a series of epidemics. As the local

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Speaker 1: population were one by one introduced to pneumonia, syphilis, ophthalmia, measles, mumps,

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Speaker 1: Russian influenza, and gonorrhea. We can only speculate as to

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Speaker 1: how sexually transmitted diseases made their way into the population.

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Speaker 1: As for the Sentinels specifically, though there had been rumors

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Speaker 1: of a tribe of people living on North Sentinel Island,

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Speaker 1: due to its relevant size and inconvenient location, it had

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Speaker 1: been deemed unimportant. Then in eighteen seventy nine, one young colonialist,

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Speaker 1: recently appointed to the position of Officer in charge of

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Speaker 1: the Andamanese decided to take a closer look. Nineteen year

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Speaker 1: old Maurice Vidal Portman, the grandson of a viscount, set

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Speaker 1: off for the island shortly after his appointment with a

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Speaker 1: team of armed escorts and trackers from other Andaman tribes.

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Speaker 1: When they arrived, however, they found the place completely deserted,

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Speaker 1: save for a few tracks and a series of small

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Speaker 1: villages that appeared to have been recently abandoned. Having given

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Speaker 1: up on their search, they chanced upon an elderly couple

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Speaker 1: and four children walking back to their village. Portman had

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Speaker 1: them abducted on the spot and taken back to his

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Speaker 1: home in Port Blair, the Andaman Islands capital town, to

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Speaker 1: observe their behavior. Almost immediately, the islanders grew sick, and

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Speaker 1: within weeks the elderly couple died, and so it was

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Speaker 1: that Portman's amateur anthropological ambitions came to a swift end.

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Speaker 1: Children were returned to the island soon after. After this

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Speaker 1: brief encounter, the Sentinel Leaves had virtually no contact with

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Speaker 1: outsiders until nineteen ninety one, when Indian government anthropologists finally

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Speaker 1: succeeded in completing a non fatal engagement with them. After

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Speaker 1: years of trying to establish a relationship. Their attempts were

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Speaker 1: effectively abandoned in two thousand and three, when it was

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Speaker 1: decided instead to enact a policy of no contact with

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Speaker 1: the group. In two thousand and six, two Indian fishermen

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Speaker 1: drifted too close to North Sentinel, Ireland and were promptly

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Speaker 1: captured and killed by the Sentinel Leagues. Twelve years later,

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Speaker 1: missionary John Alan Chow arrived to make his own attempt

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Speaker 1: at contact. Chow, a missionary for the Missouri based organization

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Speaker 1: All Nations in the United States, did not make his

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Speaker 1: trip lightly. In fact, he had been training for it

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Speaker 1: for three years, attending a missionary boot camp which included

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Speaker 1: undertaking role play exercises of how to deal with hostile

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Speaker 1: potential converts. Chow was enthralled to the Great Commission Jesus's

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Speaker 1: supposed injunction that Christians must spread the Gospel to all people.

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Speaker 1: Being such a committed follower of this doctrine, Chow became

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Speaker 1: fascinated by the idea of helping to convert the to

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Speaker 1: the Lees, whom he described as possibly representing Satan's last

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Speaker 1: stronghold on earth. Having made his way to the Andamans

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Speaker 1: on November fourteenth, two and eighteen, he took the next

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Speaker 1: step and succeeded in paying some local fishermen to sneak

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Speaker 1: him past the patrol boats and drop anchor close enough

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Speaker 1: for him to kayak to the island. The next morning,

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Speaker 1: he assembled his initial contact response kit, which included picture

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Speaker 1: cards for communicating and dental forceps in case he might

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Speaker 1: have to remove any arrows, the sentinels weapon of choice,

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Speaker 1: as well as some gifts which he hoped to share

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Speaker 1: with the islanders. Then, after stripping to his underwear to

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Speaker 1: appear less threatening, he got into his kayak and paddled

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Speaker 1: toward the shore. As he drew closer, he was able

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Speaker 1: to make out a small hut and some wooden canoes

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Speaker 1: pulled up on to the beach. Suddenly, a series of

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Speaker 1: high pitched voices rang out, followed by the appearance of

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Speaker 1: a handful of islanders with faces painted yellow, rushing down

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Speaker 1: to the water line. My name is John, shouted the

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Speaker 1: missionary from his kayak. I love you and Jesus loves you.

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Speaker 1: It was only then that John noticed the bow and

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Speaker 1: arrows in their hands, watching aghast as one of the

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Speaker 1: group raised one up and took aim. John hurriedly flung

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Speaker 1: them some fish as a gift, and then paddled away

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Speaker 1: as fast as he could. Later that day, he made

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Speaker 1: a second attempt, and this time succeeded in landing on

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Speaker 1: the island before being spotted. Cautiously, he approached the hut

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Speaker 1: on foot, this time being careful not to get within

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Speaker 1: shooting range. Calling out to them again. The islanders suddenly emerged,

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Speaker 1: whooping and shouting for him to back off. Ignoring them,

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Speaker 1: John drew closer as he attempted to parrot their words

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Speaker 1: back to them. When they laughed scornfully in response, John

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Speaker 1: assumed the words were insults and they were laughing at

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Speaker 1: his ignorance. Undeterred, John reverted to singing songs of worship,

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Speaker 1: and after a while the islanders appeared to grow used

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Speaker 1: to his presence. In response, John's voice grew in confidence.

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Speaker 1: He held up his Bible and began to preach the gospel.

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Speaker 1: Just then he felt something hit hard against the good book,

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Speaker 1: turning it round. He looked on in horror at the

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Speaker 1: sight of an arrow now sticking out of it. Holding

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Speaker 1: his nerves as best he could, John slowly pulled it

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Speaker 1: out and then offered it back to the boy who

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Speaker 1: had fired it, and made his retreat. When he turned back, however,

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Speaker 1: his kayak had gone. With no other option, John dived

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Speaker 1: straight into the ocean and swam back to the fishing boat.

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Speaker 1: That night, John wrote in his diary about how scared

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Speaker 1: he was, fearful that the beautiful sunset that was occurring

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Speaker 1: before him, as he wrote, might be the last he

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Speaker 1: ever saw. In his final entry, he asked God to

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Speaker 1: forgive any of the people on the island who might

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Speaker 1: try to kill him, especially if they succeeded. Shortly after

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Speaker 1: first light the following day, he took another kayak back

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Speaker 1: to the island. Later that morning, as the fisherman waited

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Speaker 1: for John to return, they saw movement on the beach.

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Speaker 1: It appeared the tribes people were burying something in the sand.

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Speaker 1: John allan Chow was never seen alive again. If you

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Speaker 1: enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help support us,

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Speaker 1: are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me,

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Speaker 1: Richard mc lane Smith. Please subscribe and rate the show

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