Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/213

Rh better for me to leave Mr. Batchelor to tell Ms own story about the Ainu, but a missionary who is working single-handed (practically) over the extent of territory which he is trying to cover, can have but little time for ethnological work, and one wonders how Mr. Batchelor has managed to put together even the few stray bits that have come from his pen.

In the villages of the southern and eastern coasts of Yezo, nearly all the men (and many of the women and children) speak Japanese well. Hence it is always easy to get information from them; but, though deserving in a large measure their character for honesty and truthfulness, the Ainu have become sufficiently civilized to thoroughly love "taking a rise" out of a stranger—and if a bit of a lie will make the inquisitive one's eyes pop open and his pencil and note-book spring into unusual activity, the "gentle, truthful savage" is not going to spoil a good story by sticking to dry facts.

In the extreme northern and northeastern coasts of the island, and in the mountain fastnesses of the interior, there are still some villages of Ainu (not great numerically, but preserving their integrity) in which the people have quietly but firmly resisted Japanese advances and civilization. In those places many of the inhabitants can not speak Japanese. They use a few household utensils of Japanese manufacture, but, with this exception, continue to live as much as possible as they did before they came into contact with the Japanese. This seclusion can not last long now, however, for the Japanese are pushing their way slowly but surely (and of late it may be said kindly) into every nook and corner; establishing police stations and customs barriers, and fast breaking down the last trace of distinctive lines between the two races. There is a marked difference between—what I may call—the civilized and savage Ainu, and therefore he who would see something of them in anything like their natural condition must come quickly.

It is not my present purpose to discuss this people exhaustively, but merely to present a brief ethnological sketch of them in such a form as may be found interesting to the general reader, which may serve as a skeleton for me or some one who may have time and opportunity to deal with the subject thoroughly, to fill out in the near future.

There are very few tribes remaining on the earth who are as interesting in themselves as the Ainu; and none, perhaps, about whom so little can ever be known. Without a literature, without any monuments or reliable records, dreading to speak of the dead or the acts and deeds of their ancestors, they must be taken as they are, and speculation as to what they have been will always be more or less unsatisfactory.