Police identify area where US ‘missionary’ killed by remote tribe after islanders were spotted burying body – but they don’t know how to get it back
John Allen Chau had reportedly visited the prohibited North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean to preach Christianity to the tribe
COPS have located the area on a remote Indian island were tribespeople were seen burying the corpse of an American Christian missionary.
John Allen Chau, 26, was shot dead with an arrow during his quest to contact North Sentinel islanders.
Officials are now trying to recover his body.
Investigators studied four or five North Sentinel islanders from a distance of about 500 meters (1,600 feet) from a boat for several hours on Friday.
Dependra Pathak, the director-general of police of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where North Sentinel is located, said: "We have more or less identified the site and the area in general."
Friday's visit was the second boat expedition of the week by a team of police and officials from the forest department, tribal welfare department and coast guard.
The officials took two of the seven people arrested for helping Chau get close to the island in an effort to determine his route and the circumstances of his death.
The fishermen who had taken Chau to the shore saw the tribespeople dragging and burying his body on the morning of November 17.
Mr Pathak said investigators have asked experts to educate them on the "group's conduct and behaviour, particularly in this kind of violent behaviour" before they attempt to recover the body.
Officials typically don't travel to the North Sentinel area, where people live as their ancestors did thousands of years ago.
Adventurers have been warned that contact with the tribe could kill them due to the tribe having a lack of immunity against outsider's viruses and infections.
The only contacts, occasional 'gift giving' visits in which bananas and coconuts were passed by small teams of officials and scholars who remained in the surf, were years ago.
Indian ships monitor the waters around the island, trying to ensure that outsiders do not go near the Sentinelese, who have repeatedly made clear they want to be left alone.
Chau went to "share the love of Jesus" said Mary Ho, international executive leader of All Nations.
She said: "He wanted to have a long-term relationship, and if possible, to be accepted by them and live amongst them."
Primitive ways of endangered tribe
THE Sentinelese are one of five endangered tribes on the chain of islands.
The hunter-gatherers wear leaves, fibre strings and waist belts and eat wild pigs, fish and fruit.
They carry bows and arrows and spears, live in communal huts — and wave their willies at passing boats.
They are thought to have arrived from North Africa 60,000 years ago.
On his first day on the island, a young boy tried to hit him with an arrow.
Chau swam back to the fishing boat he had arranged to wait for him offshore. The arrow hit a Bible he was carrying.
"Why did a little kid have to shoot me today?" he wrote in his notes, which he left with the fishermen before swimming back the next morning. "His high-pitched voice still lingers in my head."
Police say Chau knew that the Sentinelese resisted all contact by outsiders, firing arrows and spears at passing helicopters and killing fishermen who drift onto their shore.
His notes, which were reported Thursday in Indian newspapers and confirmed by police, make clear he knew he might be killed.
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE," wrote Chau, who appeared to want to bring Christianity to the islanders.
"Would it be wiser to leave and let someone else to continue. No I don't think so."
Jatin Narwal, Superintendent of Police at Port Blair, told TNM that John was last seen alive on November 16.
ALL ALONE Who are the Sentinelese?
THE Sentinelese tribe are an indigenous tribe who have thrived on North Sentinal Island, one of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, for up to 55,000 years.
They have zero contact with the outside world and are actively hostile to anyone who approaches their land.
The small forested island of North Sentinel, which is a similar size to Manhattan, is even off limits to the Indian navy in a bid to protect the tribe of about 150 from being wiped out by disease.
The tribe got international attention after the 2004 tsunami, when a member of the tribe was pictured on a beach, firing arrows at a helicopter inspecting their welfare.
In 2006, two Indian fishermen, who had moored their boat near the island to sleep after fishing near there, were killed when their boat broke loose and drifted onto the shore.
Campaigns by non-profit and local organisations have led the Indian government to abandon plans to contact the Sentinelese.
Survival International, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of tribal people, works to ensure that no further attempts are made to contact the tribe.
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ISLAND ORGIES The Sentinelese were once observed engaging in group sex by an expedition
THE remote tribe have had virtually no contact with the outside world but the little they have had has been bizarre.
Most of the contact has been violent with the last people known to visit the island being a pair of fisherman whose boat drifted into shore after they moored up nearby in 2006.
The two men were found dead on the beach the following morning.
But one instance decades ago was altogether more baffling as the tribe engaged in group sex on the beach.
Indian anthropologist, Triloknath Pandit, observed the baffling scene on March 29, 1970.
He wrote: "They all began shouting some incomprehensible words. We shouted back and gestured to indicate that we wanted to be friends. The tension did not ease.
"At this moment, a strange thing happened – a woman paired off with a warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as it were.
"Thus did the militant group diminish.
"This continued for quite some time and when the tempo of this frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the shade of the jungle."
He added: "He lived in Alabama, US. He is some kind of paramedic. He was on a misplaced adventure in prohibited area to meet uncontacted persons.
"People thought he is a missionary because he had mentioned his position on god and that he was a believer on social media or somewhere online.
"But in a strict sense, he was not a missionary. He was an adventurer. His intention was to meet the aborigines."
A source told AFP: "He tried to reach the Sentinel island on November 14 but could not make it. Two days later he went well prepared. He left the dinghy midway and took a canoe all by himself to the island.
"He was attacked by arrows but he continued walking. The fishermen saw the tribals tying a rope around his neck and dragging his body.
“They were scared and fled but returned next morning to find his body on the sea shore.”
His body, spotted the following day by the fishermen on their return, has not yet been retrieved, the official added, although the fishermen who took him there have been arrested.
Among the incredulous responses to Chau's story, vile trolls have left hundreds of spoof TripAdvisor-style reviews about the island.
One wrote: “I only ever went here once, and never made it back. Very passionate locals who are straight to the 'point'."
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