The Onge (also Önge, Ongee, and Öñge) are an Andamanese ethnic group, indigenous to the Andaman Islands in Southeast Asia at the Bay of Bengal, India.
British naval officer M. V. Portman described them as the "mildest, most timid, and inoffensive" group of Andamanese people he had encountered.
[4] Today, the surviving members are confined to two reserve camps on Little Andaman: Dugong Creek in the northeast, and South Bay.
[7] A major cause of the decline in Onge population is the changes in their food habits brought about by their contact with the outside world.
[12][13] The semi-nomadic Onge have traditional stories that tell of the ground shaking and a great wall of water destroying the land.
[15] The liquid apparently came from a container that had washed ashore at Dugong Creek near their settlement on the island, but Port Blair authorities ordered an investigation into whether it had originated elsewhere.
[17] The Onge have been rather vulnerable toward any option for radical change, they deserve close, careful attention to ward off any untoward impact of change-initiatives.
[21] As of 2006[update], there were 94 native Onge speakers[22] confined to a single settlement in the northeast of Little Andaman Island (see map above), making it an endangered language.
[24] George van Driem (2011) considers Blevins' evidence as "not compelling", although he leaves the possibility open that some resemblances could be the result of contact/borrowing, a position also held by Hoogervorst (2012).
[27][28][29] A study by Reich et al. (2009) found that while the Onge are distantly related to modern Indian people, they have none of the admixture from Neolithic Iranian farmers or steppe pastoralists which is widespread on the mainland.