‘Why are they so angry’: US man John Allen Chau, killed by remote Sentinel Island tribe, was trying to convert them to Christianity
- Notes by John Allen Chau, shot dead with arrows last week on India’s North Sentinel Island, show he hoped to ‘establish the kingdom of Jesus on the island’
- Chau’s notes reveal bafflement at ‘aggressive’ responses from the tribe when he had ‘been so nice to them’
A young American adventurer who was killed with arrows by a tribe of remote hunter-gatherers on an Indian Ocean island was trying to bring Christianity to the tribe, according to notes written by the would-be missionary.
North Sentinel Island, which is out of bounds for visitors, is home to the Sentinelese community, believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world.
The American, identified as 27-year-old John Allen Chau of Alabama, was killed last week after being illegally ferried to the island by fishermen, according to Dependra Pathak, the director general of police in Andaman and Nicobar, an Indian territory.
A source with access to handwritten notes that Chau gave to the fishermen to pass on to a friend said that Chau described taking scissors, safety pins and a football as gifts to the tribe.
In his notes, the source said, Chau wrote that some members of the tribe were good to him while others were very aggressive.