Nicobarese swords and knives?

[colin henshaw]

Originally Posted by ausjulius

nicrobar islanders are unrelated to the people in the andiman islands.. the nicrobars are splint into two groups of people - a stone age hunter-gatherer nomadic people who live in the jungle and a tribal iron-age culture that inhabits the coasts. the iron-age people have taken to the modern world with missionary activity in the latter part of the 19th century but the nomad people still stay as they always have. the nicrobarses speak nicrobarese a language related to Cambodian and its family of languages but culturally they appear similar to the malaysian people..
i have seen images of them with some machetes and knives but they look like products from india.. they definitely made their own arms and in the 18th and 19th century traders form ache were very active there.
but I've never seen any images of their swords, spears knives and other native weapons. the nicrobarese knew of metal working and made large dugout canoes to raid shits that passed their islands

This thread caught my attention as I could not remember having seen weapons from the Nicobar Islands before now. As you mention they are a quite separate people from the Andamanese.

The old British Museum catalogue has a small section on the Nicobar Islands (extract attached). I visited the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford a few days ago... they only have on display an iron spearhead and a child's bow. Also shown was a carved wooden "scare-devil" which would have held a wooden spear (images attached). Excuse the poor photo quality... taken through the glass.

There are a few ethnographical monographs on the Nicobar Islands, but I don't have them. Should I find any further information on this subject, I will post it.

[ausjulius]

says they dont use bows.. and the meseum shows a bow (and plenty of photos).. wouldnt trust that acocunt at all hahah

[Tim Simmons]

made large dugout canoes to raid shits that passed their islands, or just unpleasant types.