The Pucikwar were one of the

indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

of the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...

, one of the ten or so

Great Andamanese The Great Andamanese are an indigenous people of the Great Andaman archipelago in the Andaman Islands. Historically, the Great Andamanese lived throughout the archipelago, and were divided into ten major tribes. Their distinct but closely relate ...

tribes identified by British colonials in the 1860s. They spoke a distinctive Pucikwar language (''A-Pucikwar'') closely related to the other

Great Andamanese languages The Great Andamanese languages are a nearly extinct language family once spoken by the Great Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. History By the late 18th century, when the British first established a colonial presenc ...

. The tribe disappeared as a distinct group sometime after 1931. As the numbers of Great Andamanese progressively declined over the succeeding decades, the various Great Andamanese tribes either disappeared altogether or became amalgamated through intermarriage. By the 1901 census, the Pucikwar were reduced to 50, but distinctions between tribal groups and subgroups had become considerably blurred (and some intermarriage had also occurred with Indian and Karen (Burmese) settlers). By 1994, the 38 remaining Great Andamanese who could trace their ancestry and culture back to the original tribes belonged to only three of them ( Jeru, Bo, and Cari).A. N. Sharma (2003),
Tribal Development in the Andaman Islands
', page 75. Sarup & Sons, New Delhi.

References

Scheduled Tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Indigenous peoples of South Asia Ethnic groups in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands History of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands {{India-ethno-stub