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The aborigines
of northern Formosa,


THE
1925-6
ABORIGINES
OF
NORTHERN FORMOSA:
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE
NORTH CHINA BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC
SOCIETY,
Shanghai, 18th June, 1874,
BY
EDWARD C. TAINTOR, A.M., F.R.G.S.,
Commissioner in the Chinese Customs Service.
SHANGHAI:
1874.


THE ABORIGINES OF NORTHERN
FORMOSA.
The eastern portion of Formosa, it is scarcely
necessary to remark, is in the possession of aboriginal
savages. The part occupied by them, which comprises
at least two thirds of the area of the island, is mostly
mountainous and densely wooded. The Chinese set-
tlements lie along the comparatively level tracts
which extend from the base of the central range of
mountains westward, to the western coast, and con-
tinue across the northern end of the island and a short
distance down the eastern coast. I cannot better
introduce the whole subject than by quoting a few
paragraphs from a Trade Report written by me five
years since.
“The rugged character of the eastern portion
of Formosa has been alluded to above. The propor-
tion of level or valley land to be found is exceedingly
small, precipitous and densely wooded mountains
occupying by far the greater portion of its extent.
The Chinese settlers, in gradually pushing their way
into the interior, denude these mountains of their
forest coverings, and the dividing line between the
territory reclaimed by them and that still in posses-
sion of the aborigines is distinctly marked by the
boundary of the wooded tracts. The water courses
are merely mountain torrents, dashing down through
the rough rocky gorges, and affording no facilities for
navigation. The ability of this part of the island to


( 4 )
support a population is thus naturally very limited.
The savages who at present occupy it are thinly
scattered throughout the few level tracts to be met
with, and maintain a precarious existence by hunting,
and the cultivation in small quantities of beans,
millet, and bananas. These supplies often fail them,
and with their natural aversion to labor they will go
for several days without food, until pressing hunger
prompts them to organize hunting parties for deer,
wild pigs, or bear, which latter animal is occasionally
to be met with. These people stand at the very
lowest point in the scale of civilization, and in
physique those of the northern portion of the island
at least are generally puny and insignificant. Long
limbs and short trunks indicate a degenerate type of
body, and their habits and mode of life are such as
are found only among the most degraded savages.
Like most of their class, they have a fatal fondness
for ardent spirits, and the use of these has frequently
endangered the friendly relations which the Chinese
have in some few instances endeavored to establish
with them, and has led to conflict, loss of property,
and sometimes of life. Few in numbers, and weak
in combination, they are incapable of offering very
serious resistance to the encroachments of the Chinese
upon their territories, and are doubtless destined to
disappear before the slow but steady advance of their
more enterprising neighbors.”—(Customs Trade Re-
ports for 1868, p. 170.)
“Upon the eastern coast, commencing about
twenty-five miles south of Kelung, and extending
some fourteen miles farther, to Suao Bay, lies a fertile
and beautiful plain or valley. Its popular name is
Kapsulan ( 1 ), and the official Komalan (
. It is bounded inland by a semicircle of moun-
tains, its greatest breadth being six or seven miles.
The valley is one vast rice field, and much of its


produce is carried to Kelung. Several thriving
towns lie within its borders. The chief of these,
Lotong ( ), is a clean, well-built town, with a
considerable population, and an active trade, The
valley has been almost entirely settled within the
present century. It became, soon after its discovery,
and while still occupied by savages, the resort of
bands of outlaws; but during the closing years of
the last century parties of Chinese settlers were
attracted thither by the richness of its soil, and as
the immigrants increased and pressed upon each
other, feuds arose, which led to a memorial to the
Emperor from the provincial authorities in 1810, and
to its erection into a t‘ing (1) district by Imperial
edict in 1812.
“The original inhabitants of the plain, a fine
looking race of people calling themselves Kabaran,
have been gradually driven by the Chinese farther
and farther towards the mountains, or altogether out
of the valley. They have become to a great extent
civilized, and adopt many Chinese customs. They
are called in the local Chinese Pepo hwan ( #)
or savages of the plain, in distinction from those
dwelling in the mountains. Driven from their
original seats, they have themselves pushed their way
in some places into territory in possession of the still
untamed savages. An attempt in this direction on a
considerable scale has been made during the past
year by a colony of Pepos, under the leadership of a
foreigner, at a place called Ta-lam-o ), situated
on the east coast about fifteen miles below Suao.
Friendly arrangements have been made with the
savages, and the valley is abundant in resources; but
the enterprise has met with strong local opposition,
and its success is, from a combination of causes,
problematical.”—(Id., pp. 167-8).


( 6 )
My own visit to the savages on the east coast,
which was made in January and February 1869, arose
partially out of circumstances connected with the
colonization scheme alluded to. Very shortly after
my visit, the scheme ended in a disastrous collapse,
and a few months later the foreigner who had been
its active leader was drowned near the southern end
of the island.
I propose first to narrate briefly the incidents of
our journey, and then give the results of my obser-
vations on the aborigines and their country.
Our party left Tamsui at midnight on the 14th
of January, 1869, for Kelung; and the mildness of
the winter climate of Formosa may be inferred when
I state that we passed the night in an open gig on
the river, without discomfort from the cold. We left
Kelung on the 16th, in a junk of about twenty tons,
and after calling at Pitow, a coal harbor a few miles
down the east coast, arrived at Suao Bay on the
morning of the 18th. Here a heavy north-east gale
detained us for five days, making it impossible for us
to put to sea in the small open row-boats in which it
was necessary to proceed the remaining 15 or 16
miles to Talamo. This delay enabled me to make
some notes upon the customs and character of the
Pepos, and to collect a vocabulary of a few hundred
words. A small Pepo village lies on the southern
side of the bay. I may remark that during our stay
here a census of our party showed that it was
composed of no less than eight distinct nationalties—
two Scotchmen, one German, one American, and one


to neck and limb. In such places as these a few
determined men might hold their own against
hundreds of invaders.
Our embarkation at Lamo on our return was
delayed by a N.E. wind, which rendered the surf so
great that it was impossible to get the boats afloat.
While, here one of the straw huts took fire in the
night, through the carelessness of one of the Pepos,
and caused some excitement, as it was mistaken by
some for a night attack by the savages. We finally
left Lamo on February 3rd, had a quick run to Suao,
and left there the same day on our return to Tamsui.
We had determined to follow the land route, through
the Kapsulan valley. A walk of four or five hours
brought us to Kilokan, on the Kaleewan (typ )
river, and the principal town at the southern end of
the valley. Here we obtained a boat, and after
visiting a Pepo village on the western confines of the
valley, followed a canal which runs parallel with the
sea-coast, to the large town of Tow-sia ( o ), at its
northern end. Transferring ourselves here to chairs,
we followed the steep and winding road over the
mountains to the town of Nwan-nwan (un ), at the
head of the boat navigation on the Tamsui river. A
north-east gale, with drizzling rain, detracted much
from the enjoyment of what would otherwise have
been a very interesting part of the journey. Reach-
ing Nwan-nwan on the 6th, we found our boats in
waiting, and after shooting the rapids which occur in
several places in the upper course of the river, and
which were now swollen and turbulent from the rains,
sev


we arrived at Tamsui early on the morning of
February 7th; the only incident of the homeward
journey having been a summons to stop, during the
night, from a party of river pirates, who quickly
retreated into the darkness, however, at the cry of
hwanna! (foreigners) raised by our boatmen.
I proceed now to give a brief sketch of Suao
Bay and vicinity. The harbor of Suao is nearly land-
locked, and affords good shelter to small vessels. The
bay is almost entirely surrounded by steep hills, green
and wooded. On the north side of the bay is the
small Chinese fishing village of Pak-hong-o (L ),
and on the south side lies a Pepo village, Lam-hong-o
( 12), containing perhaps one hundred souls. On
the western side of the bay, on a small stream, lies
the Chinese town of Su-ao (th ), or Saw-o, in the
local pronunciation. It is a wretched town of about
fifty houses. I had hitherto always held Kelung to
be the filthiest town in the universe, not deeming it
within the bounds of possibility that a place could be
worse than it; but a visit to Suao forced me to
confess my mistake. Suao thus far, in my experience,
bears the palm, with little danger of losing it. The
valley of the Suao river extends towards the south-
west for a few miles, to the base of the wooded hills.
It is now largely occupied by charcoal burners from
the Kapsulan valley, but the ground is gradually
being cleared, and will make very rich rice-fields. A
few tea plantations had already been made upon some
of the hills just back of the town, and five or six
years previously a seam of coal was discovered by the


( 13 )
called by the Chinese shek fan (in mandarin shu fan
#), and stand in much the same position vis-à-vis
the shêng fan ( #) or savages, and the Chinese,
as do the shu Li of Hainan. Like the latter, they
act as go-betweens between the Chinese and the
savages; but they seemed to me to be relatively fewer
in numbers, and restricted to a smaller area, than were
the shu Li in Hainan. Their settlements are scattered
along the north-east coast, and about 4,000 of them
inhabit the Kapsulan valley. They are divided into
different clans, and these are frequently divided
amongst themselves. Were they to combine, they
might often offer successful resistance to the Chinese
encroachments, which are gradually pushing them
from their original seats. The' unprincipled and law-
less Chinese who abound along the borders lose no
opportunity of oppressing them. At the very time
of our visit, an illustrative case came to our notice,
and enlisted our sympathies. A well-to-do farmer
had died, leaving a widow with three children. The
Chinese had dispossessed them of their fields, driven
them from their home, and we found them wanting
for food. On another occasion we met an old Pepo
chief, of an energetic, resolute mien, and who had been
a great traveller, having been in all parts of Formosa.
He too had formerly been a farmer in comfortable
circumstances in the Kapsulan valley, with fields and
herds of cattle; but three or four years previous to our
visit, the Chinese attacked his village and stole his
cattle. In attempting to defend them his son killed
a Chinaman, and he and his villagers thereupon
retreated farther into the mountains.


( 19 )
thus described to me. Two stout poles are fixed
firmly in the ground, projecting some ten or twelve
feet. To these is fastened a ladder, formed by lash-
ing their long knives, edge upwards, to two bamboos
about thirty feet in length. The priest, or whoever
it is who officiates, burns some paper, and dances
around until he works himself into a great excite-
ment. He then draws his knife and feigns to rip
open his bowels, a delusion which he supports by cut-
ting open a bladder filled with blood, and placed un-
der his clothes. He then begins to ascend the ladder
of knives, holding on by his hands to the upright
bamboos, but still stepping on the knives. Under his
feet are bound small pieces of leather, which afford a
partial protection. The more daring and ambitious of
the men then endeavor to emulate his dangerous feat.
The Pepos have among them a tradition that
they came by sea from the southern end of the island,
during the time of the Dutch occupation. While on
our return journey I was told that in a Pepo village
in a remote part of the Kapsulan valley there still
existed some earthen jars, with foreign characters
upon them, which had been handed down for many
generations as mementoes of the former masters of
Formosa; and I regretted exceedingly that want of
time prevented me from tracing them up, and verify-
ing or disproving the existence of such interesting
relics of the Hollanders. Having regard to similarity
in physique and in language, as judged by descrip-
tions and vocabularies of the Pepos of southern
Formosa, I am inclined to accept the tradition of the
4


( 37 )
APPENDIX.
COMPARATIVE VOCABULARY
OF THE
KABARAN (PEPO) AND YUKAN (SAVAGE) DIALECTS
OF
NORTH-EASTERN FORMOSA.


( 39 )
An analogous change seems to be forined in the Yukan dialect by
the addition of the suffix nukh, nikh, ukh, or simply kh (the German
ch of buch). Thus,
stone is in Kabaran, Malay, 1 batu or vatu, in Yukan vatunukh
Bisaya, etc., s
wood · Tagalog and Bisaya cahoy,
„ khahunikh
rattan , Kabaran
u-ai or wai, , hwaiukh
s m'talakh or
red u Bugis
machala,
" , matalakh.
The columns of corresponding words in Malay and various
other languages of the Archipelago are far from being as full as I
would wish ; but the want both of time and of the necessary
vocabularies has prevented me from giving more than the present
imperfect comparisons. The words given in these languages are
merely such as I have been able to gather, somewhat at random,
from CRAWFURD'S Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands,
LATHAM'S Comparative Philology, vocabularies found in the
Journals of the Royal Asiatic and Royal Geographical Societies, and
in a few works of travels in the Philippines and neighboring islands.
It will be seen that a close resemblance exists between many
Kabaran and Malay words. So far as the limited examples afford
means of comparison, the Kabaran will also be found to be closely
allied with the Tagalog and Bisaya dialects of the Philippines,
--the former in the north, the latter in the south, -and with
the Bugis, Macassar, Mandhar, Menadu, Buton and Sangir
dialects of the Celebes group. The Biajuk of Borueo, the Bima
of Sumbawa, the Sasak of Lombok, and the Javanese also furnish
many analogous words. The Yukan words indicate a connection
with several of the above, but more particularly with the Tagalog
and Bisaya, and the Bugis and Biajuk. The resemblances thus
traced are sufficient to establish the close relationship between the
two Formosan dialects now given, and the extensive family of
languages known as the Malayo-Polynesian or Oceanic; but the
particular group of this great family to which these dialects belong,
can be determined only after the collection and study of fuller
materials than are now available.
See also above, pp. 15-16.