John Allen Chau spent years preparing to travel to North Sentinel Island and convert the isolated tribespeople who live there to Christianity — but shortly after he stepped ashore on November 16, 2018, he was killed by the Sentinelese.
John Allen Chau/FacebookJohn Allen Chau’s body was never recovered, as it was deemed too dangerous by the Indian government.
While attempting to contact the world’s most isolated Indigenous tribe, the Sentinelese, American evangelical Christian missionary John Allen Chau met a grisly fate.
He traveled to North Sentinel Island in 2018 with the goal of introducing the inhabitants to Christianity. He was convinced that the island was “Satan’s last stronghold on Earth,” and despite the known risks, he made it his mission to convert the tribe.
Almost immediately, Chau was faced with hostility. The Sentinelese began stringing their bows, so he fled, but he soon returned to sing worship songs to the tribe. This time, the islanders seemed to find him amusing, but they rejected his gifts — and even shot an arrow into the Bible he was holding.
Undeterred, Chau returned to the island a final time on Nov. 16, 2018. He was never seen alive again.
John Allen Chau’s Younger Years And Passion For The Outdoors
John Allen Chau was born on Dec. 18, 1991, in Scottsboro, Alabama. He was the third and youngest child of Lynda Adams-Chau, an organizer for the religious group Chi Alpha, and Patrick Chau, a psychiatrist who immigrated to America during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Chau’s family moved to Vancouver, Washington, when he was young, and he grew up surrounded by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. There, he fell in love with the outdoors, and the books he read as a child only added to this passion.
John Allen Chau/InstagramA family picture of the Chau family. John Allen Chau is in the bottom left, being held by his mother. Next to him are his brother, sister, and father.
“Growing up, I remember dusting off a massive tome in my dad’s downstairs study titled Robinson Crusoe,” he said in an interview with The Outbound several years before his death.
“After struggling my way to read it with early elementary school English, I started reading easier kid-friendly books like Hatchet, My Side of the Mountain, and Sign of the Beaver, the latter of which inspired my brother and I to paint our faces with wild blackberry juice and tramp through our backyard with bows and spears we created from sticks. Since then, the outdoors have been my home.”
At the time of the interview, Chau had already traveled to the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, where North Sentinel Island is located. However, he expressed interest in returning, citing it as a “must-do adventure.”
But nature was not Chau’s only passion. He grew up in a devoutly Christian home. His family was seemingly part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God. He also attended Christian schools in Vancouver and the evangelical Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma.
John Allen Chau/FacebookJohn Allen Chau (back right) with fellow missionaries, dubbed “Team South Africa” in his original post.
During his high school years, he went on a mission trip to Mexico that reaffirmed his faith, despite his own father’s disillusionment with it. In an email to The Guardian in 2019, Dr. Patrick Chau called religion “the opium of the mass[es],” blaming “Western ideology” and “extreme Christianity” for his son’s ultimate fate.
Dr. Chau’s feelings on religion did not carry over to his son, though. John Allen Chau was fully on board with the idea that the word of God should be spread to all — even the isolated Sentinelese people.
Unfortunately for John Allen Chau, the Sentinelese aren’t exactly known for their welcoming, curious nature.
Who Are The Sentinelese People?
Nutu / Alamy Stock Photo A group of Sentinelese youth on the island, preparing to drive away the photographer.
The Sentinelese are believed to be direct descendants of the first human populations to migrate out of Africa, and they possibly settled on North Sentinel Island up to 60,000 years ago. They are incredibly reclusive and have been designated a particularly vulnerable tribal group. The Sentinelese have had almost no contact with outsiders — and they are known to have hostile reactions to anyone who approaches them.
Because of this, very little is actually known about the tribe. Estimates of their population vary wildly, ranging from as few as 15 to as many as 500 individuals. Most commonly, though, the cited range is somewhere between 50 and 150 people.
The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers who rely on the island’s natural resources to survive, primarily hunting wild pigs and fish and collecting fruits and honey. They typically hunt with bows and arrows made from materials found on the island or salvaged from nearby shipwrecks.
Due to their isolation and the mysteries surrounding their culture and way of life, widespread fascination has developed around the Sentinelese. Their language is unclassified, and their beliefs and social structures are largely unknown.
John Allen Chau knew about as much as anyone else about the Sentinelese, including how dangerous it was to visit their island. Still, he felt compelled by a higher power — or, at least, his faith in one — to travel to North Sentinel Island and share the gospel with the tribe.
And it cost him his life.
John Allen Chau’s Fateful Journey To North Sentinel Island
John Allen Chau/InstagramJohn Allen Chau posted this photo on Oct. 21, 2018, less than a month before his death. He captioned it, “Kayaking the tropics in this endless summer.”
Between 2015 and 2016, Chau took four trips to the Andaman Islands, where he made several contacts in the local Christian community. However, he did not visit North Sentinel Island at the time.
Then, in 2017, he was accepted to a boot camp run by All Nations International. The Kansas City-based organization, which later touted John Allen Chau as a martyr, had the express goal of trying to ensure that Jesus was “worshipped by every tongue, tribe, and nation.” To help missionaries prepare to spread the Lord’s message, they conducted mock village and role-play scenarios to help trainees get a feel for the situations they might find themselves in.
According to Mary Ho, All Nations’ international executive leader, Chau was one of the best trainees the program had ever seen.
“We are honored to have shared John’s unique missions journey,” Ho later said, according to the All Nations website. “His God-given calling to reach the Sentinelese people was an unusual one. John believed he was joining God’s mission to share His love with them… Still today, no one from the outside has learned the way they speak or think. Yet, John went, carrying no weapon, only a Bible and fish, gifts they would recognize.”
Chau also kept a diary of his last trip, which shows just how earnest he was in his attempt. He underwent a self-imposed 11-day quarantine to avoid accidentally infecting the Sentinelese with any diseases they’d never been exposed to. He also studied the accounts of other missionaries who met with isolated tribes.
But perhaps Chau should have read the story of Michael Rockefeller and the grisly fate he met when he attempted to make contact with the Asmat tribe. It might have served as a warning for what was to come.
What Happened To John Allen Chau? Inside The Missionary’s Final Days
John Allen Chau/InstagramJohn Allen Chau kayaking in the summer of 2017.
In November 2018, John Allen Chau asked some fishermen to take him to North Sentinel. On Nov. 14, they sailed toward the island in the darkness and anchored their boat nearby. The next morning, Chau headed toward the island alone, as the fishermen refused to approach it. Chau stripped down to his underwear, believing it would put the Sentinelese at ease, and paddled a kayak toward the beach, shouting to the tribespeople as he approached, “My name is John. I love you, and Jesus loves you!”
In response, the Sentinelese began loading their bows. Chau panicked, tossed them some fish he had brought as a gift, and turned away, paddling back to the fishermen’s boat. He made a second attempt later that same day, brought more gifts with him, and tried to communicate with the Sentinelese by repeating the sounds they were making at him. This made the tribespeople burst into laughter, though they did let him linger for a bit while he sang worship songs and preached from Genesis.
A Sentinelese boy then shot an arrow at John Allen Chau, which embedded itself in the waterproof Bible he was holding. Chau removed the arrow and retreated, but this time, he didn’t have his kayak — the Sentinelese had taken it. Chau had to swim nearly a mile back to the fishing boat. Still, he was determined “to declare Jesus to these people,” as he wrote in a letter to his family.
Christian Caron/Creative CommonsThe Sentinelese standing guard on a beach in 2005.
On Nov. 16, Chau made one last attempt. He asked the fishermen to drop him off and drive the boat away, hoping that without the vessel nearby, the islanders would feel more comfortable. It was a shot in the dark, and Chau knew it. He wrote in his diary, “I think I could be more useful alive, but to you, God, I give all the glory of whatever happens.”
The fishermen didn’t see what happened. When they returned, however, they saw the Sentinelese dragging Chau’s dead body across the beach.
Questions initially arose about bringing Chau’s body back home, but the Indian government determined that it was simply too dangerous. John Allen Chau’s remains are on North Sentinel Island to this day.
After reading about John Allen Chau’s fateful encounter with the Sentinelese people, learn about the Korowai tribe, the isolated Papuan people who live in treehouses — and allegedly engage in cannibalism. Then, learn about Tristan da Cunha, the most isolated inhabited place on planet Earth.
