Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

by Janet B. Montgomery McGovern

AUTHOR IN TORO (PUSH-CAR), GOING UP INTO TAIYAL TERRITORY.

The southern tribes I approached by water from the east coast; my first visit to them being during the first Christmas—rather, New Year[34]—vacation that I spent on the island. Of this visit I retain a somewhat vivid recollection, for two reasons. One because of the great cliffs of the east coast, a glimpse of which I caught in passing; the other because of the novel mode of debarkation, necessitated by stormy weather, at Pinan,[35] a port in Ami territory, just north of that occupied by the Paiwan and Piyuma tribes.

I embarked at Keelung, on one of the small coasting steamers, sailing around the east coast to Takao,[36] the southernmost port of the island. It was just south of Giran[37] that we passed the great cliffs, said to be the highest in the world. For about twenty-five miles these giant cliffs rise perpendicularly from the sea to a height of about 6,000 feet. This towering wall of granite—for such the rock seemed to be—is one of the most imposing sights that in my wanderings about the world I have seen.

The weather was grey and drizzling when we left Keelung, but it was just after we had left Karenko,[38] the first port south of the great cliffs—the second day out—that the storm broke. Those who have weathered a storm in a small boat know what this means. In all the guide-books, and other books dealing with Formosa, that I have seen, it is said that the sea-route, up and down the coast of the island, “can be safely followed only during six months of the year,” i.e. the spring and summer months. “Safely” is probably, like other words, a matter of individual definition. Personally I should be inclined to substitute the word “comfortably” for “safely,” judging from my own experience, both on this trip and on a subsequent one. That is, as far as the actual voyage is concerned, if one be content to remain on board the steamer from Keelung to Takao, where there is a good harbour. With the exception of one or two who disembarked at Karenko, the other passengers—all Japanese, naturally—seemed glad enough to do this. I, however, had not come on this trip for the sake of the sea-voyage, or with the object of reaching Takao—now a Japanese town, the southern terminus of the railway which starts from Keelung in the north—and which I could much more easily have reached by rail had I wished to visit it. Takao, like all the other large towns of the island, is on the western side of the great mountain range,[39] contains no aborigines, and, especially to one who has lived for some years in Japan, is of no especial interest.

The purpose of my trip was to study the aborigines of the east coast and those who lived in the narrow south-eastern peninsula of the island. It had not been possible for me to obtain police permission to cross—or to attempt to cross—the great mountain range; therefore I knew that my only hope of studying the eastern and south-eastern aboriginal tribes lay in landing at Pinan. The captain tried to dissuade me. He said that no man among his passengers would think of landing; much less should a woman attempt it. Would I not wait until another trip when the weather was calmer, or when I had a companion—one of my own race (on this occasion I happened to be quite alone and the only “foreigner” on board). He really did not like to take the responsibility.... But I assured him that he would be absolved of all responsibility “if anything happened” to me—a euphemism that he several times used, in his rather good, Scotch-accented English (he had been about the world among seafaring men). Also that my Government would not hold his Government responsible if “anything happened.” My blood would be on my own head.

The captain at last rather lost patience. He told me of some sensible missionaries—he stressed the adjective (he seemed to think I was a senseless one; apparently he could not conceive of any white woman wanting to go among “heathen” except for the purpose of “converting” them)—who in similar stormy weather had sailed around the island three times before they had dared to attempt a landing at a Chinese-Formosan village on the coast. I explained that the length of my vacation would not make such a proceeding possible in my case, and that rather than go on to Takao, I preferred to go ashore—or to attempt to do so—in one of the canoes in which some men of the Ami tribe had put out from shore, and in which they were evidently endeavouring to reach the ship. I was told it was their custom to do this, whenever a Japanese ship approached, in order to barter commodities.

The captain said rather grimly that would be my “only chance on this trip,” as, with the exception of a few articles which he would give the savages, if they succeeded in reaching the ship when it came to anchor, he would not attempt to discharge the cargo he had for Pinan, but would defer that until the return voyage from Takao....

The Ami canoes succeeded in reaching the ship, and I succeeded in persuading the captain to have a ladder lowered for me to descend. This, however, only after further argument, for the captain declared he had believed I was only “bluffing” (where he had learned this delightfully expressive word I do not know), when I had said that I was willing to trust myself to the Ami and to one of their canoes. He said, however, that these coast Ami were sek-huan—“half-tame,” he explained, when interpreting the expression—and that as far as my life was concerned, this would probably not be in danger, if I succeeded in reaching the shore; that is, so long as I did not venture into the interior. On this point I would make no promise, and the captain did not press the matter. He was probably glad to be rid of a passenger whom he evidently regarded as a missionary of less than average missionary intelligence. To do him justice, however, when the canoes were tossing on the waves at the side of the ship, he called down to one of the savages, who was evidently the chief, or leader, of those who had ventured out, a few words in mixed Japanese and Ami dialect. This he assured me was an order to look well after my life and comfort. The fact that I understood enough Japanese to know that the captain referred to me as the “mad one,” did not detract from my appreciation of his order.