Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/148

116 A party of the Paiwan tribe visited London in 1910, on the occasion of the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition.

The present paper is confined to the most primitive and interesting tribe in the island, the Taiyal, numbering some 32,000. Three mountain tribes—the Taiyal, the Bunun and the Tsuwō— practise the custom of knocking out their teeth; while the plain tribes—the Paiwan and the Ami, as well as the Yami of Botel Tobago—chew betel nut. The country of the Taiyal extends on both sides at the foot of the central mountain range. The people living to the east have a different dialect, calling themselves Seidekka or Saddekka, and their physique is better than that of the Taiyal on the west. The Taiyal occupy lands between 1000 and 5000 feet above sea-level. Beyond 6000 feet the vegetation is poor and the crops unproductive. As a rule this district, especially in the north, is healthy, and epidemics are almost unknown. Malarial fever has certainly increased since the Japanese occupation, owing to more free communication with the lowlands. The mountain districts have an important camphor industry, and produce the fragrant oolong tea.

The Taiyal have the reputation of being head-hunters and cannibals, but the latter charge is untrue. They are a well-behaved race, who believe themselves to be the only perfect people in the world, and call foreigners Yugai or monkeys. But the Hakka or Chinese immigrants, who live on their frontier, do eat human flesh occasionally. Some years ago a Taiyal man was killed in a raid and his body was cut up into small pieces, which were introduced into soup and other dishes. When charged with the offence by the police, the Chinese pleaded—unavailingly, as it turned out—that the practice acted as a charm to preclude the attacks of their deadly enemies, and likewise that eating human flesh wards off epidemic disease.

The morality of the Taiyal is of a high type. They never steal, always keep their promises, honour their elders,