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Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

CHAPTER IV THE PRESENT POPULATION OF FORMOSA

Word Count: 1229    |    Released on: 17/11/2017

inese-Formosans, Ja

s"-this not only among themselves, but who also are so called (i.e. Taiwan-jin, "men of Formosa") by their Japanese conquerors, and by Europeans resident in the island-are Chinese; that is, descendants of the immigrants from the mainland of China. Of these, between 80,000 and 90,000 are Hakkas, origi

een 120,000 and 125,000, and are constantly increasing in population. All official positions, and tho

the central mountain range-was naturally once in the hands of the aborigines. But during the Chinese dominion of[88] the island, from the conquest of Koksinga (1662) to the close of the Sino-Japanese War (1895), the aboriginal population was-if all reports and all records, including those of the Chinese themselves, speak truly-treated with systematic cruelty and with ruthless greed and rapacity. Sometimes by wholesale slaughter, sometimes by fraud and cunning, the Chinese gradually pushed the aborigines back into the central mountain range, or, as the Japanese to-day are doing, confined

eeing aborigine to redeem his land, some method was usually found by t

se of their Japanese[89] conquerors; this usually by force and extortion, the Chinese having suffered at the hands of t

owever, from wondering just how the displacement of millet by rice, as a staple of diet, and compulsory training in Japanese language and customs and Japanese "good manners" will be of benefit to the aborigine (the eating of white rice will probably give him berri-berri-as it has given this disease to so many of the Japanese-from which up to this time he has been spared by the eating of millet), one notes that the Japanese in their[90] reports-official and otherwise-of the efforts of their Government in the dir

TING CAMPHOR IN THE

pervision of Japanese officials. The manufacture of camph

them-one of a Golden Age long past; just how long of course they have no idea, but in the time of "many grandfathers back." There is [91]a tradition that the Dutch even taught the aborigines to read, and also to write their own dialect-this in the "sign-marks of the gods" (Roman script). Old documents written by their ancestors are said to have existed among them even a generation ago

came over the sea in white-winged boats"-or, as some o

eople-will return and help them throw off the yoke of their Chinese and Japanese conquerors.[47] Hence the welcome which a fair-haired, blue-eyed person receives from them, and the reverence with which he-or she-is treated: their apprec

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