Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

by Janet B. Montgomery McGovern

It was early in the next century that the Dutch, as a nation, first came into touch with Formosa. In 1604 the Dutch admiral, Van Narwijk, sailed for Macao, in the south of China; but a typhoon—that frequent occurrence in the China Sea—drove him to the Pescadores. While there he gained a knowledge of the near-by large island of Formosa, which knowledge, it is said, was responsible for the later—temporary—Dutch dominance of the island. Another typhoon, however, resulting in another wreck, brought about the actual first landing of Dutchmen on Formosa proper. This was in 1620, when a Dutch merchant ship was wrecked near the present town of Tainan.

At that time a Japanese colony was, with the permission of China, established at this point. The Dutch captain, after having first been refused by the Japanese land on which to build a depôt for his goods—or that portion which he had saved from the wreck—at last persuaded the men from Dai Nippon to allow him to build a depôt “if this could be built on ground no larger than that which could be covered with an ox-hide.” The “heaven-descended”[18] thought the Ketto-jin (hairy barbarian) mad. They naturally were not familiar with the European classics. The Dutch captain apparently was, since he repeated the famous manœuvre—said to have been responsible for the founding of Carthage[19]—of cutting the ox-hide into very thin strips. With the raw hide rope thus made he succeeded in encircling a piece of ground amply large for the building of a goods depôt.

The Chinese-Formosan, in relating this story, was so convulsed with laughter that, in spite of his excellent English, it was at first difficult to understand him. It seemed that what especially excited his risibility was the idea—to him ludicrous—that a man of any other nationality should be able to outwit a Japanese in a “sharp deal.” He declared the story “too good to be true,” but in the accounts of the early history of Formosa which I have read since hearing the Chinese-Formosan recount the story, there seems evidence for its verity.

At the time, however, when this incident is supposed to have occurred—the early part of the seventeenth century—the Chinese were really the masters both of the Pescadores and of Formosa proper. It was they who, in 1622, gave the Dutch permission to establish a fort on one of the Pescadore islands. This was done under the command of Admiral Cornelius Reyersz, who wished to have a stronghold from which he could sally forth to attack the Portuguese at Macao. The next year an agreement was reached between Holland and China by which the Dutch were to remove from the Pescadores to Formosa. In 1624 the Dutch built Fort Zelandia, the ruins of which are still to be seen at Anping, the harbour-town near Tainan.

The building of Fort Zelandia marked the beginning of Dutch dominance in Formosa, a period which, though lasting less than forty years, is one that has never been forgotten by the aboriginal inhabitants of the island, as I found later, when I went among them. During this time, however, the Dutch were not left in undisturbed control of the island. Another European nation cast covetous eyes upon the “Ilha Formosa.” Spain organised an expedition under the command of Don Antonio de Careño de Valdez, which in 1626 set forth from Manila, then a Spanish possession, and sailed north to the “Beautiful Island.” The Spaniards succeeded in establishing a colony at Keelung, which they called Santissima Trinidad, and afterwards built a fort—San Domingo—at the other northern port of the island, called by the Chinese and Japanese Tamsui.

For some years it seems there was a struggle between the Dutch and Spanish for the domination of the island. Then in 1641 the greater part of the Spanish troops in Formosa were recalled to Manila, in order to take part in an expedition against the Moors[20] in Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippine group. This gave the Dutch an opportunity of which they were not slow to take advantage. They renewed their attacks upon the Spanish garrison, now greatly weakened. The following year—1642—this surrendered, and the last Spaniard—including the priests and the Dominican Friars, who had come over with Don Careño de Valdez—left the island.

The Dutch were now left for a time undisputed masters of Formosa. They built forts on the ruins of those evacuated by the Spanish at Tamsui and Keelung. The old Dutch fort at Tamsui is still standing, and is in a good state of preservation. It has walls eight feet thick, and is used to-day as the British Consulate of the island.[21]

For about twenty years after the Spanish surrender in Formosa, Dutch prosperity in the island was at its height. It is said that during this time there were nearly three hundred villages under Dutch jurisdiction, divided for convenience of administration into seven provinces. The population of these villages, while recorded as being “native,” evidently consisted of Chinese-Formosans. Finding that agriculture was not progressing among these people, the Dutch minister, Gravius, is said to have sent to the East Indies for “water-buffaloes,” the so-called caribou, and when these arrived he distributed them among the Chinese population of the island. “Water-buffaloes”—descendants of those imported by the seventeenth-century Dutch—are used to-day by the Chinese-Formosans for ploughing their rice-paddies (see illustration).