Notes from Central Taiwan: Resistance as tradition

Taiwan’s indigenous communities adapted guns to their hunting traditions, but also used them to resist Manchu and Japanese colonizers

• By Michael Turton / Contributing reporter

Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order, were fitted with a stock much like that of a European gun.”

White’s host was Chinese, but his neighboring hunters — who appear to be indigenous people long accustomed to exchanges with the Han — he says, were “fine strapping fellows” who all belonged to the local militia. They must have been called up for service whenever the free indigenous people of mountains engaged in raids, or for services such as guard duty.

The indigenous peoples were able to keep the Manchu (Qing) empire out of the mountains. Conventionally, this indigenous success is attributed in historical discussions to the ferocity of the mountain peoples and the difficulty of the terrain, and the institutional weaknesses and policy goals of the Manchu state. One almost never hears that by the end of the 19th century the warriors of the mountains had acquired a kind of technological superiority over the Manchu militia: they had access to much better firearms.

The indigenous people today are allowed to hunt with muzzle-loaders, homemade gunpowder weapons. Hunting is traditional, and to outsiders viewing this carve-out in Taiwan’s strict gun laws, such weapons may also appear “traditional.” The idea appeals to the unconscious perception so many people have that cultures are something identifiable and essential that never changes. In truth, the only thing “traditional” about indigenous gunpowder weapons is that whenever modern hunters in the mountains have the chance to (illegally) acquire better weaponry, they do so.

Susan Lin, in a marvelously interesting doctoral thesis on gun use among indigenous communities, contends that after 1860 they acquired all sorts of weaponry. Whereas in the 17th and 18th century they had fought the Dutch and Chinese settlers with their traditional weapons of bow, spear, sword and shield, perhaps augmented by a few muskets, in the 19th century they began substantially upgrading their armories.

“The sorts of munitions indigenes later possessed were not only limited to traditional weaponry,” she observes, “but also flintlocks, Chinese matchlocks, Snider rifles, Reminton [sic] rifles, Mauser rifles and other breech-loading rifles were found and used in warfare by indigenes from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.”

Lin implies that they adopted such weapons more rapidly and proficiently than the Manchu forces they faced. Their success against their Qing opponents arguably supports that idea.

Lin argues that indigenous peoples not only obtained modern firearms but “developed and embedded them in their own culture.”

By the end of the 19th century, indigenous communities were completing their third millennium of extensive trade with the outside world and adaptation of its technologies. Breech-loading firearms would have come to them as simply another outside technology to be adapted or discarded as local use dictated. Adoption was not difficult because such weapons could be used by individuals and did not require group coordination, Lin notes.

Our perceptions of how the indigenous people operated against outside penetration have been powerfully shaped by the first encounters with gun-armed fighters. Early in March of 1867 the ship Rover grounded off what is now Kenting, and the people aboard were massacred by local Paiwan fighters. Later that month the British sent a warship to search for survivors, but the landing crews were driven back to their boats by musket-armed Paiwan warriors who took advantage of their knowledge of the terrain. In June an American expedition was driven back to its ships in a similar manner.

The American expedition apparently lost a few modern rifles to the local bravos, as did the Japanese. American journalist Edward House, who accompanied the 1874 Japanese expedition to southern Taiwan, said that Japanese officers demonstrated the capabilities of their Winchester rifles to the local Paiwan, and also gave three Snider rifles as gifts to local chiefs. Many other outsiders also gave modern firearms as gifts. Nearly all Westerners who wrote on or encountered the indigenous people in this period remark on their strong desire to obtain modern firearms.

CONSTANT WARFARE

The Rover and Mudan incidents are landmarks in our outside-focused histories of Taiwan, but the reality across the island, as Lin observes, was constant warfare. Han ethnic groups fought among themselves, or against the indigenous people, and groups of settlers and indigenous allied against the Manchu state, or fought each other. In 1862, for example, Tai Chao-chun (戴潮春), a local militia leader in Changhua county (now Beitun in Taichung), revolted and took the city of Changhua. The revolt took years to suppress. In such chaos, weapons and knowledge would have spread freely.

Westerners, Lin says, were a major source of firearms knowledge. Many Westerners report demonstrating the superiority of their weaponry to eager indigenous audiences, or using modern arms to scare off large groups of warriors. The Manchu troops, by contrast, were late adopters. Matchlocks remained in use deep into the 1870s. Lin describes how, in 1868, when the British seized the fort at Anping in Tainan, they destroyed the Qing soldiers’ weapons — matchlocks, rattan shields and the like.

After the 1870s the imperial government began shipping in modern weapons, in isolated instances, for specific tasks or garrisons. Lin observes that “foreign firearms like Henry Martini rifles, Mauser rifles and breech loader rifles that had been equipped and transferred by the Qing army began through various avenues to appear in the society of Taiwan.” It was just a short step for this cornucopia of weapons to reach the indigenous people, traveling through long-established trade and intermarriage channels for the firearms trade. Firearms were also lost to mountain warriors in combat.

The 1884-5 campaigns of the French around Keelung led to the introduction of large quantities of modern firearms, used by both sides. But the fighting took place, Lin points out, in mountainous areas around Keelung where indigenous people lived. Though records are scant, they must have participated in the combat, and looted the battlefields or traded with combatants.

The 1895 Japanese invasion led to both the Manchu and Japanese governments dumping thousands of modern weapons into Taiwan. James Davidson’s account of the invasion describes how after the fall of Taipei to the Japanese, Chinese soldiers sold their rifles, while ammunition lay scattered about the streets, anyone’s for the taking. The fighting against the Japanese took months, during which many firearms must have found their way into the mountains. Indeed, Lin cites media reports showing that the Japanese handed over 3,000 Remington rifles to the mountain warriors.

After 1884 the Manchu government set out on another round of opening up the mountains, which resulted in regular clashes between its troops, increasingly armed with modern weaponry, and the mountain peoples, whose own armory was also increasingly modern. Like all colonial powers, the Manchus used native troops against native opponents, which led to them acquiring both firearms and training. Defeats of the poorly-trained, poorly-led Qing troops at the hands of skilled, motivated indigenous warriors led to the latter acquiring modern rifles by the thousand. Indeed, ill-disciplined Chinese soldiers often simply sold their modern rifles for cash as soon as they received them, putting them into local trade networks.

By 1890 it was obvious to all observers that modern firearms were widespread in the mountains, and that indigenous fighters were making regular and knowledgeable use of them. This incorporation of modern weaponry into indigenous culture was to become a major problem for the Japanese in their suppression of indigenous power and occupation of the mountain areas.

Because, for the warriors of the mountains, resistance, unlike their choice of guns, was traditional.

Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.