Note 2 — Chapter III · RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL BELIEFS

All the legends relate to events that are supposed to have happened in the past, and deal with the doings of the ancestors of the Andamanese. In the North Andaman the ancestors are sometimes called Lau t’er-kuro, i.e. the big spirits, “big” being used in the sense of our word “chief.” Another term for them is N’a-mai-koloko, from n’ or nio = they, aka-mai = father, and koloko = people, so that the phrase literally means “the father people,” or the ancestors. In the South Andaman the ancestors are sometimes called Čauga tabaŋa, which is the equivalent of Lau t’er-kuro. Mr Man seems to have misunderstood the exact meaning of this term. He writes: “Lači Lora-lola, the chief of the survivors from the Deluge2, gave, at his death, the name of Čauga tabaŋa to their descendants.… The Čauga tabaŋa are described as fine tall men with large beards, and they are said to have been long lived, but, in other respects and in their mode of living they did not differ from the present inhabitants. The name seems to have been borne till comparatively recent times, as a few still living are said to remember having seen the last of the so-called Čauga tabaŋa3.”