Back in the A few thoughts on integrating here thread:
I was looking for records of Han Taiwanese cannibalizing the Indigenous Peoples during Qing and early Japanese periods, and found George MacKay’s memoir online.
There are some amazing stories that he told about the Indigenous Peoples, which he often referred to them as savages or Malays.
In one story, he mentioned that he accompanied captain Bax of the H.B.M Dwarf to visit one such tribe in the mountains. They started off at Tamsui, and after 3 day journey by foot, they met up with a friendly chief who escorted them up the mountain to meet up with the “savages”.
Going in an almost opposite direction we were surprised to come upon a well-beaten path, winding, to be sure, but good for traveling ; and when on the top of a very high range we were ordered to halt and remain silent. A peculiar shout was raised and immediately answered from another mountain-top. Going down one range and up another, we saw their village, with several hundred men, women, and children gazing at us, and half-starved dogs yelping like very devils. Other terrible noises, wild and hellish, were explained as the shouts of rejoicing at a feast that was being held over a Chinese head that had been brought in fresh from the border-land.
We were invited to a seat, and several to whom I had given quinine for malaria the evening we were in the valley came forward and claimed me as a friend. We were interested in the architecture of their huts, and produced note-books and pencils to make sketches. The savages stared at us for a while, and when they understood what we were doing they began chattering angrily among themselves. The young men darted into the huts and reappeared with long iron-headed spears. They were wild with rage. Every eye flashed. We took in the situation and quietly put away our books and pencils. Gradually the excitement subsided and we tried to ex- plain. But no explanation would satisfy. In our ignorance we had committed a great offense. They have a superstition that making a photograph or picture extracts the essence of a thing, and they believed that our innocent sketches would not only take the essence out of their houses, but could be used to our advantage and to their hurt. We were afterward assured that had we persisted neither of us would have returned to tell the tale.
…
There are many different tribes in these mountains, and each tribe has its peculiar features in language, customs, and’ modes of life ; but all that is distinctive of savage life is common to each. They usually live in hamlets or villages built on the top of a mountain or high upland. The largest village I saw had about seven hundred inhabitants ; the average population is about one hundred and fifty. Each village has a head man, and each tribe a chief. The greatest brave, the one most gifted to command, is generally chief ; and his son, if brave and popular, sometimes succeeds him in office. The chief’s authority is absolute, but he has a kind of council, composed of a half-dozen of the older braves, with whom he confers in matters of unusual importance.
I was wondering if people are interesting in figuring out where MacKay went and which groups of people he interacted with.
My guess would be the Atayal in today’s Daxi or Sanxia?
Also, if MacKay’s account about the population in each villages is accurate, could we extrapolate the Indigenous population size of that period?
