Taiwan Indigenous News
Tuesday, 25 October 2005
Female head of the national park system seeks to improve parks
... She said she could sense the wisdom of the mountain forests as passed down throughout the ages by Taiwan's indigenous peoples. The ...
Hsieh reveals moves to help indigenous students
... crystal display television to the students at an elementary school in Taitung County and announced more measures to help Taiwan's indigenous children secure ...
Tribe wants official recognition
... "Taiwan's indigenous tribes are all unique minorities in this country, but we are all the original residents of the island. Every ...
When you visit a Paiwan family in their home, you will soon discover that they have a deep veneration for pottery kettles. This is especially obvious when you’re in the home of members of the aristocracy. Here they have special places or niches reserved for the pottery kettles, and they treasure them so much that visitors or outsiders are usually not allowed to touch them.
The origins of this kettle cult are steeped in mystery, but this much is clear: the kettles are a symbol of the exalted position and privileges of the aristocracy. Ancient pottery kettles that have been handed down through many generations are of particular value, but the exact date and method of manufacture, or the place where they were originally found, can no longer be determined with any certainty. What most of the kettles share are similar decorative patterns. Mostly one finds more or less stylized depictions of the hundred-pace snake, and the oldest and most cherished of them continue to be passed on as family heirlooms and symbols of a clan’s status and importance.
One of the legends told in connection with the pottery kettles goes like this: a long, long time ago, the Sun God put three kettles on Mount Tawu. One of them was made of gold, one of silver, and the third of pottery.
Now one day, two dogs came running up Mount Tawu. They crashed into the pottery kettle and broke it, and a girl rose out of the shards. She was the first ancestor of the Paiwan people.
The girl grew to be a woman and married Mount Tawu’s Hundred-Pace Snake God. They had three sons. The eldest became the chief of the Kunaljau community, the second the chief of the nearby Apudan settlement. Meanwhile, the youngest son excelled at witchcraft and became a medicine man: the founder of the local shaman tradition.
This myth of the origins of the Kunaljau community has already been passed on through fifteen generations, and it is said that the pottery kettle that was broken by the two heavenly dogs is still being kept in the chief’s house. It said that the second kettle, which was made of silver, has disappeared without a trace. But in the most mysterious golden kettle, several items were found: golden thread, ancient strings of glazed beads and some particularly precious lapis lazuli pearls called “Lozegnagadaw” (“Tears of the Sun”). During the Japanese colonial era, all the things from the golden kettle were seized and never returned, with the sole exception of the Sun’s Tears. They still remain in the chief’s family. Another version of the story, often told among the Paiwan, has it that the golden kettle was taken to Japan, where it kept changing hands. Later it became known that anybody who had owned the kettle died under mysterious circumstances. In the end, after passing through many hands, the kettle came back to Taiwan. The last buyer, it is said, lives in Taipei County’s Yonghe and has tried to sell the kettle back to the Paiwan chief’s family. But the golden kettle’s value has soared to such an outrageous level that the Paiwan tribe simply can’t afford to buy back the golden kettle of their own creation myth. So it seems as if the kettle’s “roaming days” are not over yet.