TAIYAL TRIBESPEOPLE.
SKULL-SHELF IN A TAIYAL VILLAGE.
To return for a moment to the present chief head-hunting tribe, the Taiyal. At the time of feasting and dancing in celebration of a victory, the head of the victim is placed on the “skull-shelf” of the village—being often the last addition to a pile of others—and food and millet-wine are placed in front of it, food being sometimes inserted into its mouth. The chief (often a woman), or high-priestess, of the village offers to the last-decapitated head an invitation to the following effect: “O warrior, you are welcome to our village and to our feast! Eat and drink, and ask your brothers to come and join you, and to eat and drink with us also.”
This invocation is supposed to have a magical effect in bringing about other victories, and thus adding more heads to the skull-shelf (see illustration).
The knives with which the heads of enemies have been cut off are held in great reverence by all the tribes. Among one tribe—the Paiwan—it is believed that the spirits of ancestors dwell in certain knives, which have been in the possession of the tribe for several generations.
Among the Paiwan, and also the Bunun, the successful warrior is denoted, not as among the Taiyal by certain tattoo-marking, but by the wearing of a certain kind of cap which is made by the women of the tribe. The Paiwan, whose domain formerly extended all the way to Cape Garanbi, had—and have still in certain quarters—the reputation of being cannibals, as well as head-hunters. A statement to this effect is made in the Encyclopædia Britannica (see article under the head of “Formosa”). This, however, I believe to be a mistake; as did also George Taylor, for many years light-house keeper at South Cape (Garanbi), under the Chinese regime; one who probably knew the aborigines more intimately than any white man since the time of the Dutch occupation. The superficial observer, seeing a pile of skulls in a native village—often several skulls over, or at the side of, the doorway of a chief’s house[58]—is apt hastily to assume that the villagers must necessarily be cannibals. But, while head-hunters certainly, I do not believe that the Formosan aborigines are, or ever have been, cannibals.
Among the Paiwan a tradition exists that in “days of old,” when their territory extended to the sea-coast, “great boats” often came near their coast, from which men landed; and that these men were in the habit of capturing and carrying away numbers of the Paiwan people. Whether these “great boats” were Chinese junks or Spanish ships from the Philippines, I do not know. At any rate, among the Paiwan, the killing of strangers—except those with fair hair and blue eyes (which would indicate that the kidnapping invaders of the past were not Dutch)—is alleged to be an act of self-defence, to prevent their being carried away, “as their fathers were.” On what foundation of truth—if any—this tradition is built, I do not know.