Here's what we know about the isolated tribe that reportedly killed a 27-year-old American tourist

Members of the Sentinalese tribe, who live on North Sentinel Island, a territory of India, have limited contact with the world outside its island.
They have reportedly killed the American missionary and tourist John Allen Chau.
There are only a handful of tribe members left, and their language is incompatible with that of neighboring islands.
But the Indian government has gleaned some information from a handful of trips in the past few decades.
In August, the government passed new rules that made tourism legal there.

An American tourist was killed by arrows shot by members of the Sentinelese tribe, according to Indian police.

The tribe lives a relatively isolated existence on North Sentinel Island. It has limited contact with the interconnected world, speaks its own language and lives without modern technology.

It's also off bounds for visitors. Tourist and missionary John Allen Chau was reportedly illegally carried there by fisherman — seven of whom were arrested by Indian police. Chau was a Christian missionary and had previously attempted to reach the island around 2015, according to Reuters, but it's not clear if his attempts to reach the Sentinelese tribe were part of a religious mission.

But just because the tribe resists contact from outsiders doesn't mean we don't know anything about them. Here's what we know about the Sentinelese.

There are only a handful of them left

The Indian government doesn't include the Sentinelese in its census — in fact, it doesn't venture on to the island at all. It's counted its residents on the census based on photos taken from afar.

In its first census on the island, taken in 1991, it estimated 117 people living there. In 2011, it counted 15 people total.

Theyre hunter-gatherers and have their own language

Surveys of North Sentinel Island haven't found any evidence of agriculture. Instead, the community seems to be hunter-gatherers, getting food through fishing, hunting, and collecting wild plants living on their island.

The tribe also seems to have its own language. Attempts to contact them with Jarawa, the language of nearby islands, have been unsuccessful, according to Indian census documents.

North Sentinel Island is part of the Andaman Islands, home to many indigenous groups

The Andaman Islands are far from the coast of India and are home to the Andamanese, a group of various indigenous tribes that have historically been hunter-gatherers.

At this point in history, most of the groups that make up the Andamanese aren't as isolated from the rest of the world as the Sentinelese, which has maintained a reputation for keeping other groups away. Since its language appears to be incompatible with that of other Andamanese groups, it's isolated from them as well.

The Sentinelese do

Since colonial times, there's been a pervasive rumor that the Sentinelese are cannibals. There's no evidence to support this. And a 2006 analysis from the Indian government following the death of two fishermen on the island concluded that the group didn't practice cannibalism.

"The Sentinelese not eating the deceased is a contradiction to the common belief that these tribes are cannibals," the report said.

The false belief reportedly grew from misunderstanding the practice of a neighboring tribe, the Onge, who cut up and burned the flesh of their deceased to prevent them from being consumed by evil spirits.

There have been a handful of recorded trips to the island

In the past couple of centuries, there have been a few recorded expeditions to North Sentinel Island.

In 1880, British colonizers kidnapped six Sentinelese people, several of whom soon died, possibly because of contact with diseases they weren't immune to.

In the 1960s, Indian government researchers led several expeditions to the island. They laid the foundation for a 1975 trip from National Geographic, where island residents attacked the journalists.

From then on, trips to the island were mostly conducted for rescue missions. A ship crashed on the island in 1981, and India's coast guard recovered the bodies of two fishermen killed there in 2006. The government also flew a helicopter over the island to survey the damage after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The Indian government has offered them legal protection since 1970

India proclaimed North Sentinel Island as part of the Republic of India in 1970. Since then, it has controlled access to the island and kept it under watch with its coast guard. It even passed a law in 2017 that made it illegal to post photos of the Sentinelese, as well as other Andamanese groups, on social media.

But the current government removed some of the protections in August

India's current government, led by the nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi, revoked some rules that protected the island. In August, it removed permit requirements for 29 islands in Andaman Islands, including North Sentinel Island.

That means that it's now apparently legal for tourists to visit the islands, according to India Today, even though the Sentinelese has killed people and indigenous rights groups have called for their protection.

Visitfor more.