253. The Lolos
Scattered in the mountains of southern and western China are a number of barbarous, semi-independent peoples of distinctive ways and speech who maintain their national or tribal status. They seem on first contact to promise a picture of the pre-Chinese culture of the area, but examination shows their customs to be a blend of primitive and advanced, ancient and recent elements. The Lolos of Szechuan may serve as an example. They eat meat from their herds, use no milk, but wear woolen clothing. They grow neither cotton nor rice. They raise oats, buckwheat, maize, and potatoes. Two of these plants are of north or west Asiatic origin; the others are American. Plows are used. Houses are of lashed bamboos, and rain-coats of palm-fiber. No pottery is made, but iron is worked into weapons and tools by native smiths. The Lolos are warlike. They fight like Malaysians with lance and sword. They are organized “feudally,” into nobility and commoners, with tribal heads or lords. They marry cousins. Religion resembles that of the more backward Indo-Chinese and Malaysian peoples. Sorcerer-priests cure disease; sacrifice animals for their blood, the flesh being eaten; offer also fermented liquor; divine the future by observing parts of the sacrificed animals—the cracks that develop in heated shoulder-blades (§ [97]). There is a native system of writing, which seems to derive from Chinese stimulus, if not sources. It is obvious that this culture has fused together very old elements that are characteristic of southeastern Asia, with elements that have flowed in from remote sources or during the most recent centuries. It is also clear that certain ingredients of Chinese culture have been freely absorbed and others rejected by this mountain people.
Such cultures as that of the Lolos may be described as internally marginal or peripheral. They differ from externally marginal cultures, like those of the Bushmen, Australians, Fuegians, in that the latter, on account of their geographical remoteness, have retained their ancient level with relative purity. Included marginal cultures, on the contrary, being of necessity exposed to subsequent influences, are regularly a mixture of belated and recent ingredients, no matter how well integrated these may have become.