AMONG THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES
The halfway station on the ancient trail between Yunnanfu and the
Yang-tze is the walled city of Chaotung. I left most of my baggage there
and went on a side-trip to the eastward. That was the only way to see
Kweichow, the most isolated province of China, and I had determined to
visit all eighteen provinces. Besides, the western part of that province
is noted for its wonderful scenery, and—most important of all from my
point of view—many of the tribesmen of China live there.
Long before the Chinese conquered what we now call China, many other
tribes or races of people occupied that territory. In a way they were
much like the Indians in America, and the conquering was very much the
same. That is, the Chinese gradually defeated the tribes in the north
and the east, and the conquered people either were absorbed, by marrying
with the Chinese, or they fled south and west. That is probably why
there are many dialects along the coastal strip of land between Shanghai
and Indo-China. The descendants of the people who fled south, and were
finally conquered when the ocean stopped them from fleeing farther, kept
their own languages, more or less mixed with Chinese.
[Illustration:
The coal mines near Chaotung are so shallow that only boys can carry
the coal out of them, and they have to stoop in this four-legged
fashion. What an outcry would be made if growing boys in America
worked under such conditions!
]
The first signs I saw of aboriginal tribes not entirely absorbed by the
Chinese, were the “field-women” of Foochow district, each with three
daggers through her hair. The farther west I went, the more I saw of
peoples who have lived in China for thousands of years and still are not
Chinese. In Kwangsi Province many of the inhabitants are Chung-chiah,
one of the most important of what we might almost call China’s Indian
tribes. The tribes are especially numerous in the southwest, but have
farms of their own or rent them from the Chinese. The Chinese have had
less trouble with these early peoples than we once had with our Indians.
Millions of them are left, although it is many centuries since the
Chinese began to conquer them. One of the aboriginal tribes has never
been conquered, and lives under its own laws in a mountainous region
where the Chinese rarely dare go.
Over the Trail into Kweichow
I rode and walked all day in the rain over a very difficult mountain
trail from Chaotung to a place called Shih-men-k’an, or Stone Gateway,
in Kweichow. British missionaries have headquarters there, in several
whitewashed buildings that stand out against the green mountain sides.
They work among the Hwa Miao, or Flowery Miao, who get their name from
the gaudy garments they wear. There are also Black Miao, who wear black
garments, and River Miao, who live in river valleys. The many thousands
of Flowery Miao live among high mountains, at least a mile above
sea-level, and they are all farmers.
Two of the missionaries went on with me next day. There was to be a Hwa
Miao festival at one of their stations in the mountains. My servant,
Yang Chi-ting, walked all that day, just as he always had; but it was so
distressing to see him toiling up and down those terrible mountain
trails that I bought him a horse next morning. The horse, by the way,
was a splendid little stallion, plump and lively, and a wonderful hill
climber; and I paid just ten dollars for him. Later I sold him in
another part of China for more than he had cost; but if only I could
have brought him back to America and had wished to sell him, I could
easily have asked and obtained ten times as much for him.
The only way I can describe the wonderful scenery of western Kweichow is
to ask you to imagine several great green worlds, covered with little
farms of strange shapes, piled up into the sky on the far side of gorges
so deep that the rivers at the bottom seem threads. There were many
tracts of splendid forest on this high rolling landscape; for parts of
southern and especially southwestern China have not been settled long
enough by the Chinese to have all their trees turned into coffins.
The Flowery Miao
The Hwa Miao live off the main trails. They do not like visitors as well
as the Chinese do, and they do not have stores, with things to sell.
Their villages are usually hidden in clumps of trees back among the
hills. They raise hemp, in what geologists call sink-holes, and weave
their own garments from the fiber in the stalk. They eat oatmeal and
buckwheat and corn, which are their principal crops. I saw many a
buckwheat field in blossom, adding to the beauty of the landscape. Some
of the cornfields were so steep that we wondered how the women and girls
hoeing them could stand up.
Miao oatmeal is rather different from our own. When these people go out
to work in their steep fields, or start on a journey, they take along
dry oatmeal in a sack. When they are hungry they put some of this in a
bowl and pour cold water on it, mixing it with their fingers. Then, if
they have no chopsticks, they make a pair out of the first switch they
can find, and eat. If they are more thirsty than hungry they use much
water, and if they are more hungry than thirsty they use little water.
Of course they have no sugar or milk, and not even salt. The rest of
their life has just as little luxury. If you looked into one of their
huts you would probably think it a very badly built and poorly kept
pig-sty.
Yet the Hwa Miao are very likable as well as simple people. Nearly three
thousand of them were gathered for the festival. Missionaries did not
find it so hard to convert the Hwa Miao as they did the Chinese, perhaps
because no one else had ever been kind to them as far back as they could
remember. Formerly they had festivals in which everyone drank too much
corn-whiskey and did even worse things. So the missionaries introduced a
kind of field day with our style of sports. I saw running and jumping
and pageants and outdoor games that are much more familiar to us than
they are yet to the Miao.
Most interesting to me were the people who had come to see the games.
Some had walked for two days over the mountains to get there. Many had
changed their clothes in a gully or in one of the mission buildings.
Even the girls each carried a sack containing her best clothes, and
oatmeal or cornmeal enough to live on while away from home. The people
filled a steep cornfield above the playground, as they might a stadium.
Flowery Miao Girls Dress Gayly
[Illustration:
A Miao mother watching the of the Christian festival while her baby
sleeps on her back. Below her gay skirt she wears wrap leggings and
straw sandals.
]
No wonder they are called the Flowery Miao. It would be so difficult to
describe the gaudy homespun garments, especially those of the girls and
young women, that I shall have to let the photographs I took give you
some idea of them. Red and black were the most common colors, but there
was every other hue one could think of. The women’s hair was not
jet-black, and oiled, as it always is among the Chinese women, but had a
reddish-brown tinge. Possibly the color is caused by the sun, as Miao
girls never wear hats. They never cut their hair, but do it up in puffs
and masses and coils, and adorn it with all manner of ornaments, such as
porcupine quills, silver bangles, wooden combs and more things than I
can name. Many of them wear huge silver earrings of strange designs, and
bracelets that clank as they walk. Their gay pleated skirts come barely
to their knees. Below the knees they wear what we might call wrap
leggings, in gay colors. Their feet are always bare, except that
sometimes they wear _tsao-hai_, or straw sandals, like the Chinese. Once
a girl is married, however, she puts away all her ornaments. Earrings,
bracelets, her gayest garments, all disappear. Her hair, wound tightly
about a stick set upright on her head, is built into a cone shape. A
Miao mother’s hair is quite safe from tangling by baby’s fingers.
[Illustration:
A Hwa Miao mother with her baby on her back, and a Hwa Miao girl. The
girls wear elaborate garments and do their hair in complicated style
with many ornaments. Married women never put on ornaments, and they
build their hair up into a cone shape, wrapped around a stick.
]
The I-bien, Nosu, or “Lolos”
The Hwa Miao are almost slaves, for they all have to rent their land
from a more powerful tribe or from the Chinese, and do just about what
the landlords tell them to do. We call that other tribe the “Lolos.” You
will find this word in geographies and encyclopedias, which is
unfortunate, for it is the insulting name given these people by the
Chinese. They prefer to be called the I-bien or Nosu. They are tall and
stately, quite different from the short, sturdy Hwa Miao. The women wear
cloth turbans and long gowns, often of purple, but never of the gaudy
colors liked so well by the Flowery Miao. The men now usually dress like
the Chinese, though some of them still wear a turban, and many use a
white felt cape nearly half an inch thick.
The “Lolos” are divided into three classes. At the top are the “Earth
Eyes,” landlords owning often thousands of square miles of land and
ruling much as did the feudal barons of Europe during the Middle Ages.
Their homes are castles, generally on some high spot from which they can
see for many miles around. Under them are the Black Nosu, who are
freemen, usually owning some land, but obliged to become soldiers and
fight for the “Earth Eyes” when the latter are in danger. Under these
are the White Nosu, who have been slaves for hundreds of years.
Over in Kweichow the “Lolos” have been conquered by the Chinese, or at
least live in peace with them. But in a great mountainous region almost
encircled by the Golden Sands, as the upper Yang-tze is called, are the
independent “Lolos.” We passed within sight of this region on the way
northward again from Chaotung by the main trail. But I did not cross the
river for a visit. So far as is known, only three white men have ever
been among the independent “Lolos.” One was an English lieutenant, whom
they killed. The other two were English missionaries, one of whom told
me about his trip. He found some of the “Lolos” so well educated that
they could read the Chinese classics.
The women were much more independent than most women of Asia—more nearly
regarded as the men’s equals. There were many tribes, each ruled by its
headman, and most of them were at war with other tribes. Their country
is so mountainous that many of the trails seem as steep as ladders.
To me, the most interesting fact of all about the independent “Lolos” is
that they have many Chinese slaves. If you can imagine our Indians of
Colorado, for instance, living in their mountains so independently that
whenever a white American ventures among them he is put to work and kept
as a slave, you will understand that the Chinese have really never
conquered all of China. In fact the independent “Lolos” make raids on
the territory across the Golden Sands whenever they need new workmen. An
American farmer who needed more hired men during harvest-time would have
to go to a labor-agency, but not so the “Lolo”!
[Illustration:
On the left are three Black Nosu or “Lolos,” who have to bear arms
(and such queer arms!) to protect their feudal lords, the “Earth
Eyes.” On the right is a “Lolo” woman. These people belong to a
tribe which the Chinese have never entirely conquered.
]
Yet I might have visited the independent “Lolos,” as well as the “tame”
ones of Kweichow, if I had had time, for they do not hate white men as
they do the Chinese. But they are a very suspicious people; and I should
either have had to find a missionary whom they had known for years, and
coaxed him to go with me, or have lived on the “tame” side of the river
myself for years until they had come to know me. Perhaps some boy who
reads this will be the one to make the world acquainted with that
strange tribe who have defied the conquering Chinese for hundreds of
years. Spots are still left on this old globe of ours for boys now
growing up to explore, thereby making themselves as famous as some of
our old geographers.
On to the Northward
Most travelers take two weeks to go from Chaotung to the Yang-tze. But
it is all downhill, and by promising my coolies special wages I made the
trip in ten days. The trail follows a river which, when I first saw it,
was a small white stream that seemed to drop from the sky. It fell,
really, from a mountain, the summit of which was lost in clouds. For
hours we went down steep stone steps alongside it, and for a week we
scrambled along a terrible trail, with the roar of the stream always in
our ears. The hills were so steep that the people had to build their
houses right over the trail. In one day we often rode or walked through
several dozen houses, in some of which rice and tea were sold and
sometimes poor lodgings were offered. As the houses close their doors at
night no one can travel after dark.
[Illustration:
On the way from Chaotung to the Yang-tze we often had to ride straight
through dozens of houses in a day because they are built over the
narrow trail and it is impossible to go around them. This introduces
to you my very valuable servant, Yang Chi-ting, riding on the fine
little stallion I bought for ten dollars in Kweichow.
]
Pigs were tied by one leg to prevent them from falling down the mountain
side. Land was so scarce that many a farmer piled a few shovelfuls of
good earth on top of a huge rock and grew three or four stalks of corn
in it. As we dropped lower and lower, it became hotter and hotter. The
delightful climate of the highlands disappeared, along with the potatoes
and finally the corn, and before long we were surrounded again by rice
fields.
Human Pack Horses
The most interesting people we saw on that part of our trip were the
_bay-fu_. Most Chinese carry their loads at the ends of a pole across
the shoulders. But out in the mountainous parts of Yunnan and Szechuan,
the great west-central province which I entered about a week’s journey
below Chaotung, they _bay_—that is, they “carry on the back.” We met
thousands of these men every day, some in caravans miles long. It was
often very difficult to get past them with our horses, on the narrow
trail. Each had on his back a kind of heavy wooden knapsack, something
like a dog-sledge with the runners stretching forward over the head. On
this contrivance the _bay-fu_ carried loads that we would not believe
possible, if missionaries and other foreigners had not often weighed
them.
Most of these coolies, so thin that their ribs could be counted ten feet
away, were hardly as big as the average American woman; yet many of them
carried leads of more than two hundred pounds! They start in as
children, and of course the training their ancestors have had for
hundreds of years helps also.
I met a boy of eight who had fifty pounds of rock-salt on his back,
besides the heavy wooden framework itself. The coolie cannot lift his
load. He has to be lifted to his feet after he gets under it, unless he
has put it together on a ledge or a table. Once up he will walk twenty
or twenty-five miles a day over the mountain trails. But if he falls
down under his load he cannot get up until someone without a load comes
along to help.
[Illustration:
A load weighing about 150 pounds, consisting of bamboo splints from
which will be made ropes such as are used in the deep salt wells of
Tzeliuching in Szechuan Province. The coolie has to pick his way on
the narrow flagstone road which, winding endlessly between the rice
fields, is typical of southern China.
]