In this connection also the Paiwan claim that once, in those olden days, when strangers were landing from one of the large ships, they themselves (the Paiwan) took refuge in a “secret place among the hills,” but they were betrayed by the crowing of a cock, which revealed their hiding-place to the strangers, who killed many of them and carried others away by force to their ship. This they give as their reason for never eating chicken.
But as a neighbouring tribe, the Ami, also never eat chicken, and assign for their abstention an entirely different reason—viz. that “souls of good and gentle people dwell in chickens”—it is not possible to give too great credence to Paiwan tradition, or to their own explanation of their custom; this being one of the many instances where various “reasons” are given by a primitive people in attempted explanation of a long-established custom.
In passing, it may be mentioned that it is only among the coast tribes, such as Paiwan, Piyuma, and Ami, that the raising of chickens, for the sake of their eggs, has been introduced—apparently by the Chinese.
Among the Paiwan, as among the other aboriginal tribes, including the Taiyal of the north, there exists the custom of two great festivals during the year, one at seed-time, the other at harvest-time. During these twice-yearly festivals there is much feasting, much dancing, and, unfortunately, much drinking of millet wine. That which distinguishes the Paiwan festivities, however, from those of the other tribes is that once every five years on these festive days the Paiwan play a game called Mavayaiya. This game consists of a contest between several warriors, each trying to impale on a bamboo lance a bundle—now made of bark—which is tossed into the air, the one who catches it on the point of his lance being considered the victor. Tradition among them asserts that in olden days it was a human head—that of a slain enemy—which was thus tossed about, a mere bundle of bark being considered a poor substitute. But Japanese laws against head-hunting are strict, for Japanese themselves have suffered from these expeditions—punitive usually—and knives, even sacred ones, are no match against modern rifles, or against bombs thrown from aeroplanes.
Similarly with the neighbouring tribe—now a small one—that of the Piyuma. On a festival day, held annually, a monkey—one of those with which the woods of Formosa are filled—is tied before the bachelor dormitory, and killed by the young men with arrows. After it is killed the village chief throws a little native wine three times towards the sky, and three times on the ground, near the body of the dead monkey. Singing, dancing, and feasting follow. The old people of the Piyuma tribe explain that in the “good days of old,” when their tribe was a large and powerful one, a prisoner, captured from some other tribe, was always sacrificed on these festal occasions, but now they—like the Paiwan, with their Mavayaiya—have to be satisfied with an inferior substitute. It seems that one of the reasons why a monkey is considered so particularly inferior a substitute for a man is that the former can at its death bear no message to the spirits of the ancestors of those who slay it. In the good old days every arrow that was shot into the body of the man bore with it a message to the spirit of the ancestor of the man who shot the arrow. Apparently it was regarded as an obligation, one that could not be evaded, on the part of the victim, to deliver this message—rather these many messages—immediately upon his arrival in the spirit-world.
Even among the Paiwan head-hunting is on the decline, being much less practised by this tribe to-day than among the Taiyal. Many of the honours which were formerly paid to the successful Paiwan head-hunter are now paid to the successful hunter of game, and the latter is now even wearing the cap of distinction at one time reserved exclusively for the former.
In game hunting the aborigines use either the old guns, obtained from the Chinese by barter, long ago, or—in the cases where these guns have been confiscated by the Japanese on the ground of their owners being “dangerous savages”—they have returned to the use of bows and arrows such as were used by their ancestors before guns were introduced among them. The bow is simple, usually made of wood of the catalpa tree, the bow-string being made of the tough “China grass,” which grows on the island. The arrow is made of bamboo, the arrow-head now being of iron, this being pounded out from any piece of scrap-iron which the tribes-people can obtain by barter.
An interesting feature of Formosan archery is that the arrows are not feathered, as Japanese arrows are; also that in shooting the arrow, this is always placed on the left side of the bow, whereas it is placed on the right side by both Chinese and Japanese.
So much for the rather unpleasant subject of head-hunting, and those customs which are associated with, or have sprung from, it.
