The Yami of Botel Tobago are skilful pottery-makers, their pots recalling in appearance those of the Papuans; but the other tribes are crude and clumsy in their attempts at the making of pots. These are roughly fashioned by hand, and, as they constantly break, are apparently not sufficiently baked before being used. Consequently for carrying water most of the tribes now use tubes of the great bamboo that grows in Formosa. For cooking they use baskets coated inside and out with clay, as a substitute for pots.
There is reason to believe that the skilful making of pottery was once an art more widely spread among the different tribes than is the case at present. Among many of the tribes there is a tradition that their ancestors were mighty in the making of “vessels moulded from earth.” The Tsarisen not only have this tradition, in common with the other tribes, but also they have kept among them for many generations—just how long there is no means of ascertaining—a few pots more skilfully made than this tribe is capable of making at the present time. These, they assert, were made by their ancestors, who, in turn, were taught by the Ottofu of their own ancestors. These pots are regarded as being most sacred, and are kept in front of the house of the chief of the principal tribal unit. So sacred are these particular pots that only the chief, or members of his immediate family, and the chief priestess of that tribal unit, are allowed to touch them. It is parisha (tabu) for anyone else to touch or even to come within a “body’s length” of the sacred vessels. In Formosa—except among the Ami and the Yami tribes—as in Polynesia, skilful pottery-making seems to be an art that is rapidly dying out.
Implements connected with the harvesting and preparation of millet—a short curved knife for cutting, formerly made of flint, now usually of iron, a winnowing-fan of basket-work, and mortar and pestle of wood—are not dissimilar to those used by other Malay peoples; nor are they unlike those used by the Chinese and Japanese in the harvesting and winnowing of rice. The aborigines, however, except those who have come directly under Chinese and Japanese dominance, look with contempt upon rice-eaters as being unclean—much as the latter regard eaters of beef and potatoes. All tribes among the aborigines seem to regard millet as a sacred food, the use of which was revealed to their ancestors by “further away God-ancestors.”
The agricultural implements of the east coast Ami show greater skill of manufacture than those of the other tribes, this perhaps being due to contact with the Chinese.
The Ami living on, or near, the coast also make—and successfully use—an ingenious fish-trap of bamboo having on the interior sharp spikes or thorns, pointing inward. These act as barbs, and prevent the fish which have entered the basket-like trap from leaving it.
A TAIYAL WOMAN AT HER LOOM.
(See page [179].)
WOMAN OF AMI TRIBE MAKING POTTERY.