An American man speared to death as he tried to make contact with a remote tribe was attempting to share the Gospel with them.

John Allen Chau, 27, travelled to India's North Sentinel Island to reach the endangered tribe despite it being off-limit to visitors.

He was helped to the isolated island by fishermen but kayaked the final stretch to the shore alone.

Excerpts from his diary reveal that the tribe was hostile towards him and attacked him with arrows and stones the day before his death.

He describes how the tribespeople shouted at him when he tried to give them gifts of fish and a football, with one apparently shooting an arrow straight through a Bible he was holding in front of his chest.

Before running back to his kayak, he writes that he shouted out to them, 'My name is John. I love you and Jesus loves you... Here is some fish!'

He wrote: 'Well, I've been shot by the Sentinelese... By a kid probably about 10 or so years old, maybe a teenager, short compared to those who looked like adults.

'A little kid shot me with an arrow - directly into my Bible which I was holding. I grabbed the arrow shaft as it broke in my Bible and felt the arrow head.

'It was metal, thin and very sharp.

'[God] if you want me to get actually shot or even killed with an arrow then so be it. I think I could be more useful alive though.'

He spent the night aboard a fishing boat moored close to the island and wrote to tell his parents that the risk was worth it to tell the tribe about Jesus.

'You guys might think I'm crazy in all this, but I think it's worth it to declare Jesus to these people,' he said.

'Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed. Rather, please live your lives in obedience to whatever he has called you to and I'll see you again when you pass through the veil.

'This is not a pointless thing. The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand and I can't wait to see them around the throne of God worshiping in their own language, as Revelations 7:9-10 states.'

He signed off: 'Soli deo gloria.'

Despite his assurances to his parents, in his diary he revealed his fears that the next meeting with the tribe would end in his death. 

'God, I don't want to die,' he wrote. 

In a statement posted to Instagram after his death, his grieving family described him as a loving man.

'He was a beloved son, brother, uncle, and best friend to us," the Chau family wrote.

'To others he was a Christian missionary, a wilderness EMT, an international soccer coach, and a mountaineer. He loved God, life, helping those in need, and he had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people.'