Some Reflections about the Lanyu-Ivatan "Ocean ways" Project from an Anthropological Perspective

Abstract. In this paper I take the sea voyage in a traditional rowing boat from Lanyu island (Taiwan) to Basco (Philippines) as an occasion to reflect upon the mutual precolonial social relationships that once existed between the Tao people in Taiwan and the inhabitants of the Philippine Batan islands until about 250-300 years ago. My discussion focuses on a range of topics (e.g., intra- and inter-village fighting, competition over social status among peers, the relationship between anger and anxiety) which I believe are suitable entry points for a reconstruction of the traditional sociocultural lifestyle(s) and ethnopsychology within the Bashiic island archipelago. It should be emphasized that any tentative analysis of past living conditions and social relations between the precolonial inhabitants of Lanyu and the Batan islands has to consider the sometimes-harsh weather conditions that in regular intervals threatened the survival of the local population. My insights are based on a careful reading of the ethnographic record in Western languages (mostly English and to a lesser extend in German), the oral traditions of the Tao, eye-witness accounts of early European and Japanese seafarers and Spanish missionaries, and archeological findings.

摘要。在本文中，我以從蘭嶼（台灣）到巴斯科（菲律賓）的傳統拼板舟航海計畫「海路」為契機，反思前殖民時期（約250-300年前）台灣達悟族人與菲律賓巴丹群島居民之間曾存在的社會關係。我的討論集中在一系列主題上（例如，村莊內部和村與村之間的戰鬥，同輩之間對社會地位的競爭，憤怒與害怕之間的關係），我認為這些主題是重建巴士群島傳統社會文化生活方式和族群心理學的適當切入點。需要強調的是，對前殖民時期蘭嶼和巴丹群島居民過去生活條件和社會關係的初步分析，必須考慮到時常威脅當地人生存的惡劣天氣條件。我的見解基礎來自於對民族志記錄（主要是西方語言如英語，次要是德語）的仔細閱讀、達悟族的口述傳統、早期歐洲和日本航海者及西班牙傳教士的目擊報告和考古發現。

The “Ocean Ways” project[1], which is led by the Taiwanese film maker Chien-Hsiang Lin, consists of a bunch of different activities, which are all connected with each other. The core idea is to build a large traditional Tao boat (cinedkeran) and to row it from Lanyu to Ivatan. The building process and the journey itself are documented in a film which seeks to attract the attention of a wider audience. Besides that, there are negotiations between Taiwanese officials and the provincial government in the Batanes/ Philippines to facilitate travelling connections between the two countries (e.g., direct flight from Kaohsiung to Basco; ferry boat connection between Lanyu and Basco during the summer months).

From this it follows that there are several different groups involved in these activities: the Tao elders who build the boat, the rowing team, Tao people from other villages, Taiwanese film makers, a not yet defined audience for their film, local people on Ivatan and the other islands of the Batanes, government officials in Taiwan and the Philippines etc. It can further be assumed that they all have different perspectives and opinions about what this project is essentially about. Is it about “reconnecting with long-lost friends,” as Tao people from Iratai village, where the boat is built, told me? Or is it about developing tourism between the two locations, as some government officials said during a meeting in Basco in September this year? From the perspective of the film makers, the crucial point would be to create a story that works well with the audience.

Of course, all these different standpoints and interests are legitimate and understandable. It is worthwhile, however, to reflect on these issues while the project is still in the making. In my view, it is important to gather orally transmitted as well as written forms of knowledge about the inter-island connections between Lanyu and Ivatan from the times when trading relations between the islands were still operating (roughly some 250-300 years ago). This is necessary because past experiences, even though they might be only vaguely remembered, are always a crucial factor for shaping present and future relations.

In Tao society, people usually do not talk about “bad things” (marahet so vazey) to protect themselves and others from harmful influences. I do believe that not talking about “bad things” is a good strategy to reestablish peace between antagonistic groups who are forced to coexist in a small village. However, while this collective “forgetting” (jiozayan; topikabobwa; naziboan) certainly has its benefits, the suppression of the negative aspects of life leads to the situation that the sufferings of the past and intergenerational traumas cannot be voiced and remain hidden in the “deep insides” (onowned) of many Tao people. From the perspective of the historian, it is therefore especially difficult to write a history of the precolonial past.

I’m writing my “Anthropological Reflections” from the standpoint of a German social and cultural anthropologist who has done research on Lanyu in 2010-2011 and who has since then repeatedly revisited the island (Röttger-Rössler et al. 2015; Funk 2014, 2022). I’m aware that my perspective is informed by Western scientific concepts of which some are alien to Taiwanese people. It is important to note, that I’m far from believing that my perspective is “true” while others are not. It is part of my work to switch between different perspectives or world views while taking them all seriously.

In this paper, I will juxtapose a range of topics I came across through my own observations as well as through a close reading of the ethnographic records on Lanyu and the Ivatan islands. This will enable me to answer the following two questions which I think are important for the implementation and out-come of the Lanyu-Ivatan project:

·      How can today’s relationship between the Tao people and the Batanese islanders be defined?

·      Which narrative of the journey from Lanyu to Ivatan could be promoted?

I mostly focus on literature in the English language because I assume that this body of knowledge is only fragmentary known on Taiwan and Lanyu. It remains a considerable problem that research about the Lanyu-Ivatan region was and is undertaken by scholars from different nations who do not communicate well between each other due to language barriers. In order to get an overview about the ethnographic records from Lanyu and the Ivatan islands, a researcher would need command in the local languages (Ciriciring no tao; Ivatan; Itbayaten), Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, German, and French which seems to be an almost impossible task. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many texts are not freely available and that a lot of time and money needs to be invested to obtain the relevant information. This is also the case with English language publications about the Ivatan islands from Philippine publishers which are hardly available in Europe. My insights are therefore preliminary in nature.

“Good times” and “bad times” in Lanyu history

When Siaman Rapongan (2003) describes the precolonial life on Lanyu as an “original affluent society”[2], this, however, is only partly true. Due to sometimes difficult weather conditions, the island is plagued with draughts which occur in regular intervals. In the past, depending on the duration of the draughts, they could cause serious food shortages and even famines during which people were starving to death. Therefore, we have to differentiate between a normal state of life, in which there was plenty of food and in which life was flourishing, and a state of crisis, a temporal breakdown of the social order, in which people from different kinship groups were fighting over scare resources and occasionally even killing each other for reasons of survival (Yu & Dong 1998; Funk 2022). Lanyu was never an easy place to life – an assessment which has also been shared for the Ivatan islands (Esteban & Valientes 2019).

Antagonistic groups within villages

In the past, and in some ways even today, kinship groups with many able-bodied male members were in a better position to defend their properties and interests against antagonistic others than those who were smaller in number. In former times, the morality within the villages on Lanyu was of a relativistic order: without clearly defined kinship ties, and without regular food exchanges, people remained “strangers” (kadwan tao) and were not obliged to treat each other in respectful ways. Especially in times of crisis, more powerful lineage groups “harassed” (jyasnesnekan) unrelated weaker groups by forcefully taking away their life resources (e.g., food; fields; firewood) and by sabotaging their subsistence activities (e.g., intentionally disrupting the water supply for their wet taro fields). Hostilities usually only occurred when no other co-villagers were around to report on the bad treatments of others. The victims had to endure their “bad feelings” (marahet so onowned) and to suppress their anger (somozi do onowned; lit. “anger hidden in the deep inside”) until the moment for revenge had come (Funk 2022).

Intra- and intervillage fighting

Until the 1980s, conflicts between lineage groups and villages on Lanyu were solved by “collective fighting” (macililiman). It is important to note that the aim of these physical confrontations was not to kill the opponents but to discourage them with one’s collective strength, so that one team would finally be exhausted and withdrawal from the fighting. The conflicting parties usually met at a prearranged place at the beach where they would throw stones against each other. They also used their clubs and spears to attack the arms and legs of their opponents. In intra-village fighting, people usually took sides with their relatives. Women also took part in the fighting by providing their men with stones which they could use as missiles. In this way, the number of people involved in a fighting could reach a few hundred (de Beauclair 1958a; Benedek 1987, 1991). In case of homicide, whether intended or not, vendetta was practiced: the murderer or a person from his family had to be killed for revenge. Under these circumstances, the restoration of peace was difficult, and hostility between families could last for a long time.

Socialization within peer-groups and the competition over social status

The socialization of Tao children is an important topic to mention here because it gives us some cues on how important features of the social organization on Lanyu are reproduced in each generation. It is likely that the socialization on the Ivatan islands bears or bore similarities with the present-day socialization of the Tao, but further studies are needed to substantiate this hypothesis.

In Tao society we can identify two important social dimensions: the hierarchically organized kinship groups and the egalitarian age-groups. The common and the differentiating features in both groups are reversed: the members of a kinship group are status equals and differentiate themselves according to age while peers are of the same age and differentiate themselves according to social status. Since the main motivation for inter-island trading between Lanyu and the Ivatan islands was the enhancement of social status through the exchange of valuable objects, as I will explain further below, I will concentrate myself here on the socialization among age-mates. Drawing on my own research (Funk 2022), I will describe how the social order within each generational group is being negotiated and how social status evolves over the life span.

            When Tao children are approximately 3,5 years of age, they increasingly turn to their peers with whom they spend the bulk of their time roaming about the village and its adjacent areas. Often, young children are so busy playing with each other that they only come home for dinner or during excessive rainfalls. Adults usually do not interfere with children’s affairs as long as children do not engage in dangerous activities or disrespect the property of others. From the viewpoint of Han-Taiwanese or Western middle-class parents, the behavior in Tao children’s peer-groups is quite rough as children constantly “bully” (jyasnesnekan) each other and fight over status positions. In each peer-group, there is usually a “tough guy” acting as a leader who orders weaker and slightly younger children around. The friends of the leader come second in the status hierarchy, then there are children in intermediate positions, and finally children of lower standing who often originate from marginalized kinship groups. If children show signs of weakness (e.g., if they cry or get angry for no socially acceptable reason) or breach social norms (e.g., if they are not willing to share a toy with the group), it often happens that the whole group turns against them, usually by laughing at them and by “irritating” (pasozi) them even further. Bullying also occurs when others can take advantage of a situation: For example, if children go alone to the toilet the door might be locked by the peers, or if they leave their shoes unattended someone might throw them on a roof top where they are hard to reach. Through these practices Tao children learn that they need to be always attentive and that they cannot afford to be weak or to make a “mistake” because otherwise their life would be miserable.

When children grow older and become adults, fighting over status positions continues but manifests itself in a more mature form. The social status of a person viz-a-viz his age-mates is determined by his “personal ability” (moyat) to accumulate “wealth” (meynakem) in the form of food, pigs, goats, gold, and nowadays also money, a large modern house, a car, and a boat. Social status is not evaluated on an individual basis but always on the level of the household. Therefore, a woman needs an industrious husband to obtain a good social standing and vice versa. Social status ultimately is derived from the size of one’s social network, that is by the number of households with whom regular food exchanges are taking place. In sum, the food a household produces can be converted into social status which itself is a guarantor for security.

Contesting status positions between different villages

I have shown that in Tao society social status is of vital importance. In this section, I deal with the negotiation of status positions between lineage groups from different villages as they have been recorded by de Beauclair (1959a). According to de Beauclair (1959a: 189), “in former times …, the Yami [Tao] were not satisfied to display their wealth at more or less individual feasts but held competitions of wealth, machi vai-vait [original spelling]. Members of certain lineages or individuals challenged each other to a display of wealth, and by comparing their goods, established the superiority of one party.” The parties involved in these inter-village competitions met at the borders between villages or visited each other by boat. They compared the quality of the food they had produced (e.g., the fatness of their pigs; the length of their taros) as well as the quality of their craftmanship (e.g., the fineness of their clothing; the thickness and purity of their gold foil). The losing party usually was laughed at by the winning team and silently withdrew from the competition.

De Beauclair (1959a:190) also states that rivals “eat together, but each takes his own food, as it is taboo, makaniu [original spelling], to partake of the food of the rival during the competition.” Since in Tao society not sharing food and “not talking with each other” (jimaciciriciring) are expressions of “enmity” (ikavosoyan), there seems to be a connection between “collective fighting” (macililiman) and macivaivait, with the difference that the former is physical and the latter symbolic in nature.

          Traditional house and boat inaugurations during which the host displays his wealth to a larger number of guests who arrive from different villages are, in a way, comparable with macivaivait because on both occasions the social status of a group is made visible in a ritualized form. Modern examples for inter-village competitions are sport events on Lanyu in which teams from all villages compete against each other (e.g., boat races in traditional boats).

The relationship between anger and anxiety

No matter if it is the antagonism between kinship groups, the collective fighting, the bullying within children’s peer-groups, or the competition between villages, there seems to be a common pattern of how the status relationship is organized in emotional terms: it is always the aggression, “fierceness” (masozi), and supreme “ability” (moyat) of the superior party that leads to the defeat of the weaker party. A higher social status manifests itself through the successful demonstration of vital “anger” (somozi) which in turn evokes diffuse feelings of “respect” (kanig) and “anxiety” (maniahey) in the inferior opponent (Funk 2022). It is important to note that the local term for “anger” has a broader meaning than in the English language as it also denotes “vitality,” “strength,” and “assertiveness.” According to this conceptual framework, a person who is industriously working the fields in order to produce large amounts of food, is utilizing his or her vital energy in a culturally approved way.

It could be argued that the affective nexus between higher status “anger” and lower status “anxiety” resembles the fundamental relationship between parent and child, or between ancestor and descendant. Tao children obey elders because they “are afraid of their parents” (ikaniahey inapowan).

Overpopulation, fortified settlements, and famine in the Ivatan islands

In the Ivatan islands, knowledge about the precolonial past is shallow. There are two valuable accounts from the British navigator William Dampier who visited the Batanes in 1687 (Dampier 2020 [1697]) and from the surviving crew members of the Japanese Captain Jirobei (Yamada 2007, cited in Bellwood & Dizon 2013) who landed in the Batanes in 1668 after a long drift voyage. In addition, there are descriptions of precolonial social and religious life by Spanish missionaries who begun to pay occasional visits to the Ivatan islands commencing in 1686 (Gonzales 1966; Llorente 1983; Hildago 1996, cited in Bellwood & Dizon 2013) which I did not have a chance to read yet.

Dampier and his crew first landed on Ivatan but spend most of his time on Vuhus, an island to the West of Sabtang. When passing by Itbayat, he wrongly believed that the island with its steep cliffs and inland settlements, which are hidden from seaside view, was not inhabited. Dampier writes that the other three larger Ivatan islands (Ivatan, Sabtang, and Vuhus) were densely populated and that at the time of his visit there existed at least four “large Towns” which were located on hill tops and ridges. They were all protected by “precipices” and their terraced layers could only be reached by climbing ladders. Today these former fortified settlements are called idiang which is derived from the root word idi (or ili in the Tao’s language) which means “settlement” (Valientes 2019). Unfortunately, Dampier fails to mention the place locations with the exception of Chuhangen on Vuhus island. Interestingly, according to Si Malaos (personal communication; September 2023), this is the same island and settlement with which the ancestors of Iratai village used to trade with before the breakdown of communications between Lanyu and the Ivatan islands.

Dampier tells us that the Ivatans, just as it is reported for the Tao (de Beauclair 1969; Scheerer 1926; Egan 1983), were “greedy” for iron and that they used low quality gold as a currency among them. They grew yams and sweet potatoes, along with pumpkins, bananas, and sugar cane, from which an alcoholic drink (basi) was produced. The people on Vuhus were using buffalo hides for body armors which had to be obtained from Luzon to where the Ivatans undertook trading expeditions, as there were no cows or water buffalos on the islands during the time of his visit. It should be noted here that buffalo hides were one of the valuable objects the Tao traded with Ivatans before the onset of Spanish colonialism in 1783. In Dampier’s account, there are no descriptions of social and religious activities except from the burial alive of a thief. This draconian punishment is also mentioned in a story recorded in de Beauclair’s (1958b) unpublished field notes from her research in the Batanes. The boats in the Ivatan islands were built using planks, dowls, and iron nails. The largest of them, according to Dampier, could carry 50 people.

When the Japanese landed on Ivatan in December 1668, Captain Jirobei and his crew of 15 men were captured by the locals. Only after 16 months of forced labor did they manage to flee to another village and from there back to Japan. The Japanese mention that the locals mainly grew tubers and that they hold pigs and goats as animals, but also cattle, dogs, and possibly even horses – the latter animals not being mentioned by Dampier. On Ivatan, just like on Vuhus, people were using cowhides as armors. Iron was scarce and old people were killed when they were no longer able to work (including the unfortunate Captain Jirobei himself).[3] The Ivatans visited another unspecified island – most likely Luzon – to trade for bows, guns, gold, and silver. Drawing on Yamada (2007), Bellwood and Dizon (2013:7) describe the Ivatan society eye-witnessed by the Japanese as “warlike,” and it is worthwhile to quote them at length:

“… [T]he Japanese describe one remarkable and rather sobering occurrence about life in a warlike society in which each village was presumably independent of, and hostile towards, its neighbors. While they were on Batan, a war occurred from April 2 to May 10 1669 between Great Makata (Mahatao) and Sekina (Ivana). During this war, a rather incredible toll was recorded in which Mahatao lost 309 killed and 900 wounded, and Ivana lost 91 killed and 407 wounded. If we can trust these figures (could they be exaggerated? If so, why?), the are without doubt surprising for such a small island, and indicate just how crowded and stressed the population was during the late prehistoric phase of intensive ijang [idiang] occupation, as also described by Dampier.”

Another war from precolonial times between fortified villages on Ivatan is mentioned in de Beauclair (1958b). Some of the survivors of the defeated party fled to Sabtang where they were safe from immediate persecution. During our stay on Itbayat in September 2023, Lita Horcajo, the wife of Siaman Sidongen, who herself was borne on that island, told me that her ancestors once came from Ivatan or Sabtang. When I asked her about their reasons for moving to Itbayat, she supposed that they must have been escaping a fight. From this I conclude that before Spanish colonial times it was not unusual for populations to flee and resettle in other locations within the Ivatan islands.

           This argument is further reinforced by The Story of Simina Vohang from Ivalino village (de Beauclair 1959b; story told in 1959 by Siaman Poyopoyen from Ivalino village; Benedek 1991, 2011; story told on March 17, 1984 by Siapen Manabey from Ivalino village) in which a woman from Lanyu marries a man from the Ivatan islands. The couple resides on the man’s home island – it is not clear which one – where they have children (and according to some versions of the story even grandchildren). When a serious food shortage occurs, they realize that they would starve to death if they would stay on the Ivatan island. Therefore, they decide to return to Lanyu in the search for food. On the journey to the North, they pass by several islands which for various reasons are no options to stay. Finally, they reach Lanyu and after trying out a few other locations they found the village of Ivalino. There are many other aspects of the story which I have omitted as they do not concern us here. The important message of the story is that famines were not only common on Lanyu but throughout the region and that people occasionally had to leave their islands searching for food. When tracing back the genealogical information transmitted in this story, it can be assumed that the village of Ivalino was established around the year 1500 (de Beauclair 1959b).

The stratified society of the precolonial Ivatan islands

Unlike Lanyu, the society in the Ivatan islands prior to the arrival of the Spanish was stratified into three different social positions: 1. mangpus, or head of a town/ village; 2. mapalon, or head of a subsection of a town/ village; and 3. kumaydian, or the general populace. While the families of the magpus and the mapalon belonged to the upper class of precolonial Ivatan society, the rest of the population belonged to the lower class (Beauclair 1958b; Hornedo 1995-1997; cited in Valientes 2019). The higher status of the leaders manifested itself in the amount of gold in their possessions which they displayed in the form of body ornaments during ceremonial occasions (Llorente 1983; cited in Valientes 2019). There seems to be a parallel to the display of gold, silver, and other jewelry among the Tao which also serve as status markers. Moreover, there are archaeological speculations about the meaning of the boat-shaped stone markers on Vuhus island (dated around the year 1595) according to which these monuments served not only a religious purpose but that they were also indicators of a high social status (Valientes 2019).

It can be concluded that in the precolonial Ivatan society there must have been a highly competitive climate in which people were fighting over status positions to secure their living. Although there are commonalities and differences between Lanyu and the Ivatan islands regarding the social organization and the role of status in social life, there are reasons to believe that in the precolonial past people in both places shared a general cultural system of regional importance.

Trading relations with the Ivatan islands

In the final section, I take another mythological story from Lanyu, The Voyage of Siapen Mitozid to Ivatan (de Beauclair 1959b; story told by Siaman Makaro [Si Torid] from Iratai village; Benedek 1991, 2018; story told on February 12, 1984 by Siapen Manamying from Iratai village), as a reference point to reflect on the former trading relations between the Tao and the Ivatan people. This will enable me to draw the connections between the topics I have mentioned so far. In a short version, the story goes as follows:

Around the year 1662 (Kano 1946; cited in de Beacuclair 1958a), Siapen Mitozid, the hero of the village of Iratai, makes friends with Si Vakag from Ivatan, in whom he has found his equal in physical strength. Si Vakag and his followers return several times to Lanyu to exchange gold for goats, pigs, and sugarcane (de Beauclair 1959a: 200). When the Ivatans tell their wives about their experiences, their wives are curious about the Tao men and require to see them. The Ivatans reply that the Tao men are ugly and that the women will laugh at them but since the women insist on their wish, the Ivatans encourage the Tao to pay a return visit to Ivatan.

Having said this, 80 Tao men put on their woven coat, lion cloth, and silver bracelets and set out in their boat to Ivatan. At night they gather with the Ivatan women and have a good time with them singing mikazyak, a form of singing among men and women accompanied by hand clapping. To try their strength, the men of both islands hold competitions. At the first visit, they measure their strength with a cow: while the Ivatans need five men to restrain the cow, Siapen Mituzid manages to do so single-handed. At the second visit, Siapen Mitozid pulls a shark ashore, much to the admiration of the Ivatans. At the third visit, the Tao transport a large banana plant (for making clothes?) to the village of the Ivatans, which is appreciated by the women. At the fourth visit, Siapen Mitozid carries a large bamboo from the mountains holding it upright without letting it shake in the wind. At the fifth visit, a wrestling match is organized between the Ivatans and the Tao. Although the Ivatans win the first match, the second round is won by the Tao. The superiority of the Tao at so many occasions arise the anger of the Ivatans, who are also displeased with the visitor’s success with the women. So they decide to forbid any further visits from Lanyu. The Tao agree, but in turn make it known that they do not wish any visitors from Ivatan either.

Sometime later, Siapen Mitozid sees a beautifully carved “boat’s ornament” (morong) at the boat of another man from is village. After he has prepared an equally fine piece, the man destroys it when Siapen Mitozid works in the mountains. As a revenge, Siapen Mitozid destroys the “central post” (tomok) in the house of his opponent – a very serious offense. A fight between the two is arranged and since Siapen Mitozid’s son does not have a leather armor, he decides to sail once more to Ivatan to obtain one for him. Together with 80 men he passes by the island of Itbayat where the locals warn them to continue to Ivatan but they do not listen to them and ignore other bad omens as well (e.g., black water in a river). Upon their arrival in Ivatan, there are mutual insecurities on how to interact with each other. The Tao remain on their boat refusing to land. Only when Si Vakag orders the Ivatan women to dance naked at the beach do they come to the shore. Their boats are smashed by the Ivatans and in the resulting fight Si Vakag and half of the Tao including Siapen Mitozid are killed. The remaining 40 Tao manage to hide in the mountains and to steal a boat with which they set out for Lanyu. However, due to stormy weather conditions, only two men survive the journey.

(Adapted and partly quoted from de Beauclair 1959a: 116-121)

Siapen Mitozid from Lanyu and Si Vakag from Ivatan are friends because they are equals in strength and therefore in status. None of them can claim a superior status position over the other which makes them ideal exchange partners. Their mutual harmonious existence, however, is challenged by the success the Tao men have among the Ivatan women. This interesting detail needs to be seen against the background of a significant shortage of marriable women on Lanyu which has been reported by several authors and for different periods of times (de Beauclair 1957; Mabuchi 1956: 17). When Si Mogaz (who later changed his name to Siaman Sidongen) from Yayo village on Lanyu accompanied Desző Benedek, a Romanian born cultural anthropologist and scholar of comparative literature, to Itbayat in 1986, one of his motivations to go there was to search for a wife (Benedek 1991). From this the possibility arises that at least some of the Tao men travelling to Ivatan did not have a wife and thus were especially interested in making contacts with the local Ivatan women.

The fact that the Tao men put on their fine clothing and bracelets when travelling to Ivatan, can be read as the motivation to display their social status. When the Tao and Ivatans compare their “strength” (moyat) with each other during a row of visits, the initial admiration of the Ivatans for Siapen Mitozid’s physical powers – who is representative for the Tao as a group – slowly turns into anger, because constantly being defeated is hard to bear. The solution is to end the visits so that they can avoid fighting.

The competitive character in Tao society is further illustrated by Siapen Mitozid’s dispute over a boat ornament. Siapen Mitozid is overdoing it when he destroys the tomok in the house of his opponent. He is so self-determined to go to Ivatan that he even ignores bad omens. For a Tao listener to the story, it is already evident from here that there will be no good ending.

Interestingly, there is a letter from Father Francisco de Paula, missionary on Batan, written in 1802 to his superior in Manila, in which a similar (or maybe even the same?) incident is being discussed (de Beauclair 1959a). He writes:

“… A long time ago, the people of Diami [Yami] and those from Batan had communications, but these were suspended when a tataya [boat] came from Diami, and those those from Vasay [Batan] killed all its passengers except for one, who could leave with the tataya, and reached Itbayat, from where they were able to return to the island of Diami. Since this event all communications were suspended. Notwithstanding the long time that this incident happened, it seems that the people of Diami have not forgotten it, for ten years have not yet passed, when some people from Batan, who reached Diami, were robbed of all their belongings and one of them was killed by the people of Diami. It is said that the island is very populated.”

(de Beauclair 1959a: 123-124; letter was translated by the Spanish Domican Father of Mahatao/ Ivatan for the author)

From this letter we can conclude that the mythological stories of the Tao are not entirely made up as they contain elements which are also reported by Catholic officials.

The objects the Tao traded in the Ivatan islands were gold, jars made from stone and clay, cow hides (from which they produced leather armors [paged]), and other valuable objects such as spears (de Beauclair 1958a, 1959a, 1969). These objects all have in common that they could not be obtained from elsewhere and that they were valuables of high social standing. The Tao in turn could only provide the Ivatans with pigs, goats, millet, and sugar cane (for brewing basi?) as they did not have any valuables other than that for trading. It is important to bear in mind that there were only small gold deposits on the Ivatan islands and that the Ivatans obtained most of their gold from over-sea trade with Luzon (de Beauclair 1969). Therefore, the flow of gold was organized almost exclusively from the South to the North with the Tao being the last recipients. Since there were no regular communications with Taiwan, the Ivatan islands were the only trading option for the Tao (unless foreigners came to their shores). So the question arises: Who was the more important trading partner: the Tao for the Ivatans, or the Ivatans for the Tao?

***

I believe that in former times the Tao and the Ivatans did not have island- or archipelago-encompassing identities. This can be clearly seen on Lanyu where strong village identities continue to exist until the present day. Before the Tao had been classified as an indigenous group first by the Japanese and then by the Taiwanese, each village formed a unit on its own. The same holds true for the Ivatan islands which have been described as a war-like society by the European and Japanese seafarers of the 17th century. Their new identity as Batan islanders was constructed during colonial times only.

Consequently, until recently, people throughout the region were primarily concerned with their own survival; they were not only competing with their fellow villagers over status positions but also as members of a village against other communities on their island and beyond. Relations with outsiders who did not become relatives by means of inter-marriage have always been difficult and instable. Although there is a concept for “friends” (kagagan) in the Tao’s language, the practice between friends (e.g., exchange of food; eating together; cooperating economically) is the same as among relatives. The blurring between both concepts is also reflected in the saying “friends will turn into relatives.” According to tradition on Lanyu, regular exchanges, at least once a year, are necessary to acknowledge social relationships; otherwise, they cease to exist.

            Under these circumstances, it can be assumed that the inter-island trading of the past was a fragile and potentially dangerous activity as any disturbances in the relationship between the trading partners could easily lead to the suspension of the communication, or to physical confrontations and even war. In a story from Ivalino village, a woman from Lanyu is married to a man from Ivatan. When the women and her child become sick and die, messengers are sent from Ivatan to tell the parents about the death of their daughter. They inform them that from now on they should not come to Ivatan anymore and that the Ivatans will also give up their visits to Lanyu (Beauclair 1958a: 103-104; story told by Siapen Soribush from Yayo village [originally from Iwatas village]). In other words, the premature death of the woman from Lanyu and her child is interpreted as a bad omen which causes uncertainties within the Ivatans which are so strong that they decide to end the relationship.

Given the fragility of the mutual inter-island relationships, it is perhaps understandable that each side was primarily bearing in mind their own benefits. It is occasionally mentioned in stories recorded from Lanyu that the Tao “cheated” (manivet so tao) the Ivatans, or even “stole” (manako) their belongings. Tadao Kano, for example, presents another version of The Voyage of Siapen Mitozid to Ivatan in which the Tao are described as sly and cunning as they trade a stone covered with gold foil for pure gold (Kano 1946; cited in de Beauclair 1959a).

In both societies people compete for prestige. It is exactly this striving for social status which in the past has motivated men from Lanyu to sail to the Ivatan islands for the exchange valuables (e.g., gold; cow hides; stone jars) with which they could symbolically express their social standing in their home communities. Drawing on this important cultural trait, I believe that a good way for building up relations between young Tao and Ivatans could be through their mutual participation in sport events (e.g., basketball), which always bear an element of competition. By mentioning this I do not want to imply that local cultures do not change and that traditional lifestyles last forever.

Perhaps most important for the establishment of good future relationships between the two places is that the people from Lanyu and the Ivatan islands have the chance to engage in regular cultural exchanges. By spending time together and by “mutual learning” (macinanaon) about their traditions they might come to understand that their cultural identity encompasses much more than belonging to a marginal ethnic minority group within their respective nation state as they are all descendants of an ancient archipelago civilization that managed to adapt its cultural ways to a sometimes-harsh environment, an achievement they all can look up to. However, regular visits between the islands depend on reliable, affordable, and convenient transport services between Lanyu and Basco which have not yet been established.

After having stated what is known about the precolonial relations between Lanyu and the Ivatan islands from a close reading of ethnographic materials written in the English language, I will now try to give answers to the questions I have asked in the beginning of this paper. I come to the conclusion that the relationship between the Tao people and the Ivatan islanders is a close one, since both sides speak related languages and have many cultural features in common. However, it would be misleading to phrase their past relations in the idioms of “friendship” or “kinship.” Although it is known from genealogical stories and official records that occasionally close relationships were established between people from both locations, they usually lasted only for short periods of time and were easily terminated when disruptions occurred. This makes me believe that a good narrative for the journey by traditional boat from Lanyu to Basco would be “peacemaking.” By using this narrative, a positive message could be spread, while at the same time the troublesome past would not fall into oblivion. In my view, restoring relations between the people from Lanyu and the Ivatan islands will only be fruitful if they are built upon an understanding of the pastime.

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[1] The full name of the project is “Ocean Ways – Austronesian Language Group Seafaring Project: Boat Building & Documentary Film Production” (海路—南島語族航海案之造舟與紀錄片攝製).

[2] Probably a term he borrowed from Sahlins (2017 [1968]).

[3] When I visited Itabayat in September of 2023, I learned that frail elders were sometimes called “those who will fall down soon.” Unfortunately, I was unable to record the local word.