Reading about John Allen Chau, the young American evangelist who was killed by tribesmen on a forbidden island, my first response was, Didn’t he see The Wicker Man? But the more I learned, the more I rooted for the isolated tribe, who are “arguably the most enigmatic people on our planet,” and descended from the first modern humans to leave Africa.

North Sentinel, one of India’s Andaman Islands, is off-limits to everyone, even the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, who protect it from afar. The tribe who lives there has killed or tried to kill nearly everyone who dared to come ashore, most recently (until now) a fisherman in 2006. On a mission to spread Christianity, Chau achieved his dream of visiting the island, only to be slain for his trouble.

The population of North Sentinel is estimated at somewhere between 50 and 1oo. In the late 19th century, a British naval officer kidnapped several of the islanders, at the time describing them as painfully timid.

He took them back to his house on a bigger island, where the British ran a prison, and watched the adults grow sick and die. After returning the children to the island, he ended his experiment, calling it a failure.

“We cannot be said to have done anything more than increase their general terror of, and hostility to, all comers,” Mr. Portman wrote in his 1899 book.

“Over the next century, few outsiders ever returned. Just about anyone who dared to visit was greeted by flying arrows. In the 1970s, the director of a National Geographic documentary took one in the leg.”

Another isolated tribe that shared the island, the Jarawa, responded more positively to outside contact. Within 20 years of contact with anthropologists, the Jarawa began to roam the neighboring settlements, begging and dancing for money. Activists regarded contact missions as a kind of cultural destruction, and the Indian government eventually agreed, adopting a strict no-contact policy to protect the inhabitants of North Sentinel.

Is it paternalistic of India to protect the island from outside contact? Is it aiding in the tribe’s extinction? Or is it a rare instance of a government doing the right thing? To me, the answer is obvious. John Allen Chau was a nutcase who is being hailed as a martyr by his Christian buddies, but he got what he deserved. Evidently, Jesus agreed!

There is more amazing footage of North Sentinel here. Without wishing to be all National Geographic, life on the island looks like paradise. If you want to go deeper, there’s a history of North Sentinel here, from 2000.

*Just remember that if the US owned North Sentinel, it would be a golf course.

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the baby with two faces. I’ve been sick in bed. I know it’s my duty to call attention to Horrible Stuff, so here are two things to think about.

The baby was born in India and is being worshiped as a goddess. Both faces are operative and work independently.

Here in the US, Pamela Anderson is said to have danced naked for Hugh Hefner on his 82nd birthday. Sleazy hotel owner George Maloof says “He [Hef] had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.”

Which of these two stories makes you feel more despondent?