Nicobarese

The Nicobarese, who call themselves Holchu, meaning friend, are the Austroasiatic-speaking islanders of the Nicobar archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, where each island keeps its own dialect of the Nicobarese language and the speech of Car Nicobar serves as a common tongue. Their ancestors settled the islands thousands of years ago, alongside the even earlier Shompen people of Great Nicobar. A Chola inscription of 1050 records the archipelago as Nakkavaram, the year the Cholas of south India brought the islands under their power.

In the year 1337 the islanders lived in round, raised huts, tending coconut and pandanus groves, pigs and fishing canoes under spirit cults served by shamans.

European rule arrived only in 1754, when the Danish East India Company founded a colony run from Tranquebar, though malaria and Moravian mission failures forced repeated abandonments between 1784 and 1834.