Note 8 — Chapter I · THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION

The camps of the natives of the Great Andaman may be distinguished as being of three kinds. Of the first kind are what may be spoken of as permanent encampments. Certainly every group of the forest-dwellers, and probably every group of the coast-dwellers had its permanent encampment, which was, so to speak, the headquarters of the group. At this spot there would be erected either a communal hut, or a carefully built village. Communal huts have in recent times fallen into disuse, as the natives now wander about the islands much more freely than was their wont. I did not see a single one in the Great Andaman during my visit, though I was told of one that was falling to ruins in the interior of the Middle Andaman. One such communal hut was photographed in 1895 by M. L. Lapicque, at a spot called Lekera-l’un-ta8. It was perhaps the last that the natives of the Great Andaman erected. What the communal hut was like it is possible to discover both from the statements of the natives and also from the fact that they are still to the present day used by the natives of the Little Andaman and by the J̌a̤rawa. The hut was roughly circular in form and might be as big as 60 feet in diameter and 20 or 30 feet high at the centre. The shape was somewhat that of a beehive. Two concentric circles, one of tall posts near the centre and the other of shorter posts near the circumference, were connected by horizontal and sloping roof-timbers, and on these were laid and fastened a number of mats of palm-leaves. These mats reached, as a rule, as far as the ground, a small doorway being left on one side.