TW-HB
From Bioanthropology
The Tribes of Taiwan
- By Cliff Vost, Photos by Sung Chih-hsiung (from 
, Copyright 1995 Vision International Publishing Co.)
- Edited by Ho Ghang, 14, May, 2007
Island of Diversity
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Before the Han Chinese immigration began in the mid-1600s, Taiwan was inha-bited by people belonging to the Austronesian race, the members of which lived in a vast area extending from Madagascar in the west to Hawaii and Easter Island in the east, and from New Zealand in the south to Taiwan in the north. Taiwan's aborigines are believed to have come from the Malay archipelago in different waves about 6,000 years ago at the earliest and less than 1,000 years ago at the latest. Since their languages are very different--more varied than those of the Philippines--some scholars suggest that Taiwan is the original homeland of all Austronesians. Archeological findings indicate that Taiwan had been inhabited by other people before the current aborigines came. However, little is known about them, particularly when and why they disappeared.
When the Han Chinese came to Taiwan, they divided, for convenience, the aborigines into Pingpu (plains) people and Kaoshan (mountain) people. They further subdivided the Pingpu people into 10 tribes and the Kaoshan people into nine. These labels are misnomers, for they don't reflect cultures and languages, or place of residence, properly. A tribe in one division often has more similarity with one in another division than with one in its own division, and three tribes of "mountain people" don't live in mountains at all. The early Han Chinese immigrants were mostly bachelors, and many of them married Pingpu girls, which sped up the melding of the two ethnic groups. There is a Taiwanese saying that "We have mainland forefathers but no mainland foremothers." The Han Chinese totally overcame the Pingpu people and nearly killed their languages. However, many Pingpu phrases remain in Taiwanese. The word kanchiu (wife) is derived from the Siraya tongue of the Pingpu; and mangga , the old name of the Wanhua district of Taipei, is the language of Ketagalan, a Pingpu tribe that once lived there. None of Taiwan's aborigines had a written language. To study the Pingpu culture, one must rely on archeological finds, written records from Chinese, Japanese, Dutch and Spanish explorers and rulers, and remaining oral tradition. |
