CHAPTER XII METHODS OF TRANSPORT

Ami Wheeled Vehicle Resembling Models found in Early Cyprian Tombs—Boat-building and the Art of Navigation on the Decline.

This subject might be dismissed with a word—so little is any method of transport less primitive than that of human shoulders developed among the aboriginal tribes—were it not for two facts which raise interesting questions. One of these has to do with land transport; the other with transport by water.

Regarding the former, the only tribe that uses any sort of wheeled vehicle, or that knows anything of a beast of draught, is the Ami. The vehicle of this tribe is a primitive two-wheeled cart, the interesting point about it being that the solid wheels are fixed to the axle, the latter revolving with each revolution of the wheels. In fact, the construction of the cart causes it to resemble an enormous harrow rather than any vehicle usually associated with transport. The Ami tribes-people, however, are inordinately proud of this invention, which they say was introduced among them by the “White Fathers” (evidently the Dutch) of the “glorious long ago.” This cart is[194] drawn by a “water-buffalo,” a descendant of those said to have been brought to Formosa by the Dutch.[98]

The question of interest in connection with this vehicle is whether or not the Dutch of the seventeenth century used carts of so primitive a type as that now in use among the Ami. Is it not more probable that when the carts introduced by the Dutch fell into decay, the Ami, in their attempts at imitation of the original model, unconsciously reproduced a form of vehicle used by man at the “dawn of history?”[99]

Needless to say, the Ami cart produces a painful creaking, and a sound that can be compared only to a series of groans when it is drawn over the rough roads of the east coast. This, however, apparently adds to its attractiveness in the eyes of its owners.

Whether or not the present-day cart represents the degeneration of a more highly evolved type of vehicle once known to the Ami would be difficult to assert with positiveness. As regards water[195] transport, however, it is almost certain that degeneration has taken place among the Ami, as among the other Formosan tribes, both in the craft of boat-building and in the understanding of navigation. Tribal traditions among all the aborigines point to the fact that their ancestors were skilful navigators and that they understood the construction of boats capable of making long voyages. But the rafts used for fishing at the present time by those tribes living on the east coast could not be used for making even a short sea voyage. Nor could the plank canoes also used for fishing which a few tribal units of the Ami, living near Pinan, build—in obvious, though crude, imitation of the Chinese fishing-junk—be used for navigation.

Of all the aboriginal tribes, the most skilful boat-builders are the Yami, of Botel Tobago. Their boats, like their pottery, resemble more those of the Papuans of the Solomon Islands than they do those of the other Formosan tribes—this both in mode of construction and in ornamentation. These boats are not dug-outs, but are built from tree-trunks, smoothed and trimmed with adzes, lashed together—through holes bored near the seams—with withes of rattan. Prow and stern are rounded in graceful curves. The boats present a picturesque and attractive appearance, but cannot be used for making long voyages.

That the tribes living in the interior of the island should have lost the art of navigation is[196] not surprising, as on the east side of the mountain range—within which section the present “savage territory” lies—there are no navigable rivers, and in the mountains is only one lake, the beautiful Jitsugetsutan (“Sun and Moon Lake”), so-called by the Japanese.[100] On this lake those members of the Taiyal and Tsuou tribes who live near it paddle in their dug-out canoes. These dug-outs, however, are of the most primitive type, with open ends, obviously unfitted for seafaring. Even a storm on the lake sends the canoes hurriedly paddling to shore. But the Ami and the Yami, and also the Paiwan and Piyuma, have not the excuse that applies to the tribes of the interior. Before these tribes lies the open sea, over which their ancestors navigated. That they should have lost the art of building and of navigating seaworthy craft is strange; as strange as is the fact that many of the tribes have lost the art of successful pottery-making, which according to tradition—and also judging from the few ancient specimens preserved among the Tsarisen—their ancestors seem to have possessed.

Whether the losing of these arts implies that the tribes since they have been in Formosa have not had material as suitable for making either seaworthy boats or uncrumbling pottery as they had in the land whence they came, or whether[197] it implies that they are an “ageing” people, a people who have lost their “grip on life,” and have no longer either inventive ability or mechanical skill, is a question which I shall not attempt to answer. It is one which presents an interesting field for speculation and also for further investigation.