Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

The three principal mountain tribes of Formosa are in turn officially subdivided, for convenience' sake as much as for any ethnographic reason, into nine groups, besides one semi-civilized tribe living under ordinary district administration among the Formosan Chinese and Hakkas. The latest census, taken partly, I suspect, by absent treatment, estimates the savages at 131,609, and credits them with living in 670 villages, large and small. It should be borne in mind, however, that three or four huts in some little, almost inaccessible clearing may constitute a village in the wild man sense; they do not go in for metropolises. I have my misgivings about the exactness of that final 9 in the population figures, and particularly of the precise 2999 men-with 2753 women-who are still reckoned as "uncontrolled. " Surely the enumerators might have found, or "estimated," just one more man and made it a round number. However, there are few peoples more meticulous than the Japanese, and they inform us that 47,015 of the mountaineers are "under control and residing within administrative districts," while 78,842 are "under control, but residing outside administrative districts. " The wisest travelers will probably not take too seriously the word "control" as applied to this last and latest group.

These tribes, who divide themselves into many clans, between which fighting and even head-hunting may be legitimate, hold more than half the island, even without rolling it out level, which would vastly increase their area. Of the three main divisions, the ferocious Taiyals, who tattoo themselves blue in the face, are the fiercest, the most persistent, and the most successful head-hunters; and they hold approximately the northern half of the wild territory. The others, perhaps because man grows less energetic toward the south, are more or less amenable to civilizing influences. Below the precarious trail across almost the center of the island all except some small groups about the foot of Niitakayama, who still occasionally perform barbarous acts, are virtually domesticated; and to-day the Taiyals are the only consistent head-hunters. With them head-hunting is the most important, the most glorious thing in life. Their effete southern neighbors engage mainly in agriculture, legitimate hunting, fishing, and cattle-raising; but the southern half of the mountainous territory is poor, too rugged to be arable in most places, yet even without any great amount of timber except about Arisan and Mount Morrison.