These Ainu are much more interesting as types, and also much purer in race, than either the Piratori or the Volcano Bay Ainu. A learned missionary, who has not himself visited these people, writes as follows regarding them:—"The Ainu of the Tokapchi district, in Yezo, are spoken of as having been particularly addicted to this kind of warfare (night raids against each other, in which the men were murdered, and the women stolen and used as slaves or kept as concubines), and are even now held in abhorrence by the people of some villages. They are said not only to have murdered people, but also to have eaten some of them. They were, therefore, cannibals, and I have heard them spoken of as 'eaters of their own kind.'"[18]
From my own personal experience—and I may add I am the only foreigner who has seen these Tokachi, or as others call them, Tokapchi Ainu—I came to a conclusion very different from this. I found that not only were they not cannibals, but that, taken altogether, they were the most peaceable, gentle, and kind Ainu I came across during my peregrinations through the land of the hairy people. Indeed, I am sorry to say that it is not savagery that makes the Ainu bad, but it is civilisation that demoralises them. The only place in Yezo where I was actually ill-treated by Ainu, as my readers will remember, is the village where they were said to be "very civilised."
I have no wish to force my opinion on the public as the correct one. I do but describe what I have actually seen in a district in which others who have written on this subject have never set foot, and I leave it to my readers to judge who has most claim to be heard.
The language of the Tokachi Ainu varies considerably from the language spoken in more civilised districts, and none of the natives up the river could speak Japanese when I was there.
AINU WOMAN OF FRISHIKOBETS, ON THE TOKACHI RIVER.
Unfortunately, the Ainu of this region are not very numerous, and constant intermarriage among near relations has proved detrimental to the race. However, a glance at them is quite sufficient to show the difference between them and Ainu of other tribes. They are not so picturesquely arrayed as their more western brothers, and the large Japanese brass and silver earrings, as well as the glass bead necklaces which make such a brave show yonder, are replaced here by rough bone or wooden ornaments. Men and women in summer are almost entirely naked, and all children are clad in their own bare skins only. Their winter garments are made of bear and deer skins. Some peculiar snow-sandals, made of the bark of a kind of ash-tree called shina, are sometimes worn over the winter salmon-skin boots or moccasins. The Ainu make their ropes out of the bark of this shina, though often young vine stems are used for the same purpose. River fishing-nets are generally made of young vines twisted. They are of the roughest description, and are only fit for rivers where fish is abundant, as in the Yezo watercourses. The Ainu at Frishikobets took very kindly to sitting for their portraits, and one after the other—all the best types—were immortalised either in oils or in pencil. Strange to say, I came across another old woman, a lunatic, very similar to the one I saw at Yammakka. Her face was that of a witch, her eyebrows joining downwards somewhat in the shape of an owl's beak. Her long pale hands and face, and the long wild hair covering half her face, gave her a striking appearance. She had, however, not yet reached the stage of imbecility which her Yammakka sister had attained. Lunacy is very common among the Ainu, and the unfortunate creature thus afflicted seems to lose not only the respect, but also the pity, as well as care, of all the others, and is treated by them as a worthless animal.
After crossing the Frishikobets River, some distance off, on the east side of the Tokachi River, are the villages of Upar-penai,[19] twenty-one Ainu huts, Memuro-puto,[20] sixteen huts, and Ottoinnai,[21] fourteen huts. Then comes Kinney, with seven houses; and finally Nitumap,[22] the last village on the Tokachi River, has as many as thirty-six houses.
The huts of the Tokachi region are much smaller than those on the Saru River, and near many of them is a cage, in which a big yellow or black bear is confined. The natives told me that yellow and black bears were numerous in the neighbourhood. Deer (the yuk, male deer, and mowambe, female), were formerly plentiful, but now are very scarce. A few years ago a pestilence killed great numbers of them, and since then they have dwindled away.