The Point of View of the Aborigines regarding Sex—Courtship preceding Marriage—Consultation of the Bird Omen and of Bamboo Strips as to the Auspicious Day for the Wedding—The Wedding Ceremony—Mingling by the Priestess of Drops of Blood taken from the Legs of Bride and Groom; Ritual Drinking from a Skull—Honeymoon Trips and the setting-up of House-keeping—Length of Marriage unions.

Turning from the subject of religious observances to that of marriage customs, one finds the same close association between the two in Formosa as in other lands. Indeed, the association is more close than in countries like England and America, or present-day Russia; since among the aborigines of Formosa there exists no registry office or other place where a civil marriage can be performed. In Formosa marriage means always a religious ceremony, one demanding the presence of the most powerful priestess of the local group. In some cases, several priestesses take part in the ceremony. This is especially true of certain of the groups among the Taiyal tribe, or nation.

Among those tribes, including the Taiyal, that have come least into touch with alien culture—Chinese, Japanese, or European—the religious side of the marriage ceremony seems to consist largely in purificatory rites—rites which tend to[153] neutralize, as it were, the difference between the sexes. Sex is, to the aborigines of Formosa—as to many primitive peoples,—a thing of mystery, and one fraught with danger—danger not only to the man and woman chiefly concerned, but also to the tribal group, or whole tribe. The welfare or “ill-fare” of the tribal unit is a consideration which seems always taken into account, even in connection with matters which people at a different stage of evolution would regard as being purely personal and private; these primitive folk being in some respects practical socialists, in spite of the fact that they are under the domination of a theocracy.

Before going on to speak in detail of the marriage ceremony, it may be well to say a few words in regard to the courtship which precedes it.

To one who has never been in the Orient, it may seem a matter of course that courtship should precede marriage. This, however, is very far from being the case in most Oriental countries, as all know who have been “east of Suez.” Certainly both in China and Japan, marriages are arranged entirely by the parents of the young people, often with the aid of a professional “go-between,” the bride and bridegroom-to-be sometimes not even knowing each other. The idea that a young woman should express any preference on her own part as to the choice of a husband would be considered most indelicate.

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This, then, makes it the more surprising that a people not only geographically so near to China and Japan, but one that is evidently so closely akin racially to the Japanese—a fact that is now recognized by practically all scientific Japanese ethnologists—should observe customs of courtship which resemble those prevailing in the Western world, rather than those characteristic of the Orient. Nor is this true of one or two tribes only. It is true of all the tribes of the Chin-huan (“green savages”), and even also of those sections of the Ami, Piyuma, and Paiwan tribes that live directly on the east coast, and that have, through contact with the Chinese, become in other respects partly Sinicized. Their own customs of courtship and marriage, however, have remained up to this time intact.

“When a young man’s fancy”—not lightly, but seriously, always, in the case of the aborigine—“turns to thoughts of love,” he begins to pay court to the maiden of his choice by going each evening about sunset to her home. Instead, however, of calling, Occidental fashion, upon the young lady or upon her parents, he contents himself with—not exactly sitting upon her doorstep, since she, in the first place, has no doorstep, and since he, in the second place, being a Malay, never sits, as we of the West think of that attitude; but, rather, with squatting in front of the door-way of her hut and beginning to play upon a bamboo musical instrument which somewhat[155] resembles a jews’-harp, and which is played in much the same way. The sound produced is, to the Western ear, more like a wail or lament than like a love-song. However, in Formosa it is—as far as the aborigines are concerned—the practically universal method of serenading one’s lady-love, and is apparently enjoyed both by the serenading warrior and by the young lady. The lover often keeps up the performance for hours at a time, and returns the next evening, and for many succeeding evenings, to repeat it. All this time he makes no attempt to pay any other form of address to the young lady, or to ingratiate himself with her parents. Finally, after some weeks of this nightly serenading, he leaves the bamboo jews’-harp one evening at the lady’s door. When he returns next evening if he finds it still lying there, he knows that his suit has been rejected; and as in Formosa a woman’s “No” apparently means “No,” the swain makes no further attempts to renew the courtship, as far as that particular lady is concerned. At least, this has been the case as far as my observation has extended; and apparently to attempt to do otherwise would be one of the things that is “not done” in the best Formosan society; the etiquette of primitive peoples being—as is well known by those who have been among them—curiously rigid on many points.

On the other hand, if the swain finds that the harp which he left has been taken into the house[156] of the young lady, he regards it as an indication that his suit has been successful, and that he will be acceptable as a husband to the maiden of his choice. He thereupon enters the hut, where he is welcomed by the young lady as her formally betrothed, and by her parents as a future son-in-law.

With the Tsuou tribe, it is customary for the lover to leave an ornamental hair-pin, called susu, carved from deer-horn, in front of the door of his beloved, either in place of the musical instrument or together with it. The young braves of the Paiwan tribe leave food and water, as well as the jews’-harp, before the young lady’s door.

Among the Ami—or at least among certain tribal groups of this people—the devotion of the lover takes a utilitarian turn. On the night that he begins the musical serenade he brings with him four bundles of fuel—wood cut into sticks of convenient length for burning under the cooking-pots. A number of these sticks—such as would form a good armful for a woman—are bound together into a bundle, and wrapped about with wild vine. The four bundles the serenader deposits at his inamorata’s door. The second night he brings another bundle, which—on departing after the serenade—he adds to those left the night before. The third night he brings still another; and so on, until a pile of twenty bundles (never either more or less) stand as a monument[157] testifying to his affection for the lady of his choice. On the night that the twentieth bundle is added to the pile, the jews’-harp is also left. This is the night that decides his fate. Next day he returns to find whether the monument is still standing, or whether the lady, by using it as firewood, has seen fit ............