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 ...
Back in the mists of time, one of the ancestors of the Thao tribe named Padamu took a dozen of his men to go on a long hunt. They carried with them provisions for fifteen days: millet in a bamboo tube, raw taro and sweet potatoes. After many days in the mountains, they still hadn’t caught anything, and so Padamu and his men decided to rest for a while in a cave, and try their luck again the next day. After so many days on the hunt, it would be very embarrassing to return to the village with nothing to show for their efforts. They couldn’t let their people down like that, especially since everybody was expecting them to bring back a sizeable quarry. So they plodded on, more eager than ever to hunt down some prey, even though they knew that they were running out of provisions.
Then a day came when the hunting dogs were suddenly barking fiercely, running about wildly in the woods. At last, some of the men saw the prey: to their surprise, it wasn’t a wild boar or a hare, but a white deer the likes of which they had never seen before.
In that moment, their disappointment was turned to excitement, and they immediately started off after the white deer. But after a few days of steady pursuit, they completely lost track of the animal. Only their dogs kept searching, trailing the deer’s scent. Seeing this, Padamu and his men were not willing to let the nice plump deer get away like that. So they picked up their bows, arrows and knives again and continued their chase. Wherever the barking dogs were leading them, they followed. Finally, as they reached the area that today is known as Nantou County’s Yuchi Township, they caught sight of the deer again, and saw it jumping into a large lake—which we know as the Sun Moon Lake.
Since they were all very hungry and thirsty, they followed their dogs’ example and drank the water of the lake. As they did so, they noticed that many plump fish were swimming next to their feet in the water. The Thao, as typical mountain dwellers, were used to eating wild boars and hares, as well as all kinds of birds and snakes, but they had never tasted fish. Together, they started to catch the fish and roasted them over a fire. What they couldn’t finish, they smoked to make it last longer. Now they had enough provisions for their way back.
After returning to their village, Padamu and his men told their people how they had discovered a new place, and their adventurous tale created a big stir in the village. As the days went by, Padamu couldn’t get the thought of that beautiful place with the big lake out of his head. Eventually he decided to move there with his people. Almost one hundred villagers went with him, and following the marks Padamu and his men had carved into the trees along the way, they had no trouble to find the way back to what would become their new home. Now the people chose Padamu, who had first found the place, as their chief: the first generation headman of the Thao tribe. Then, assembling the entire tribe under a huge autumn maple tree, so big that it took thirty people to embrace its trunk, Padamu swore an oath to the tree spirit, “From this day forward, we will never leave this place, no matter if times are good or bad. We will stay here forever, and whenever a new leaf grows on this autumn maple tree, a new child will be born unto our tribe, the Thao.” That tree stood not far from what’s known today as the Sun Moon Lake’s Lalu Island.