Project Narrative
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About Truku tribe History and geographical environment
Languages and cultures
Social systems
Ceremonies
Historical events
Myths and tales
About Shinbaiyang
Thanksgiving ceremony
Experiencing Thanksgiving ceremony
The Priest
Sacrificial offerings
Project research

History and Geography
 èRectifying Name

The Truku Tribe rectified their name as the twelfth tribe of Taiwan indigenous tribes on January 14, 2004.
        At first, anthropologist divided the Atayal Tribe into the Tayal and the Sejiq, according to factors such as their legends of origin and languages. The Sejiq call a person “Sedeg”. Their legend has it that they originated from the Baishi Mt. at the south eastern of Wushe (now Hualien County Wanrong Township), but some also say that they actually originated from the Niumian Mt. in Puli.

I am Truku (illustrated by Yan-yu Yan)	I am Truku (illustrated by Pei-hsuan Hsu)

　

During Qing Dynasty, the Sejiq founded three tribes at now Nantou County Ren-ai Township: Truku, Tkdaya, and Teuda. Members in each tribe had strong and distinct senses of their ethnic identification.

Sine the Atayal and the Sejiq have different languages and social conventions, later with the permission from the Executive Yuan, the Truku of Sejiq became a different tribe as Truku Tribe.

References:
1. The Geographic Distribution and an Introduction to Taiwan Indigenous Peoples—Truku Tribe. (2006.06). http://www.tacp.gov.tw/intro/nine/taroko/taroko1.HTM.
2. Walis, Yu, G.H. (2002). History of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples—Atayal Tribe.. Nantou: Taiwan Historica.
3. Li, Y.Y. (1963). ‘The Atayal in Nanao—Ethnological Field Investigation and Research (1)’. Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology Journal 5.

4. Hsu, M.C. (1989). The Culture and the Conventions of the Truku of the Atayal  . Commissioned by the Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of the Interior, researched by Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology.
5. Huang, C.H. (2000). ‘The Hunting Culture of the East Sejiq’ . Compiled by Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology, 15: 1-104.
6. Tian, C.Y. (2001). Taiwan Indigenous Peoples—Atayal Tribe. Taipei: Taiyuan Publishing.
7. Liao, S.C. (1977). ‘The Migration and Distribution of the East Sejiq of the Atayal (1)’. Collected Papers of Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology 44.

 èDistribution

Truku Tribe migrated from Wushe of Ren-ai Township in Nantou County to Liwu River and Mugua River in the northern Hualien County about 300 years ago. Traditionally, Truku Tribe was widely distributed over the mountainous region of eastern Taiwan at the river terraces, plateaus, and piedmont along the coast of the following rivers: Heping River, Liwu River, Mugua River, Chiyagan River, Wanli River, Taiping River, and Lakulaku River.

According to the Japanese scholar Narazaki in The development of the Truku aborigine, there were 96 Truku villages or communities in 1917. However, after the Wushe Incident in 1930, the Japanese government, for management reason, forced their communities in Central Mountains to migrate to their current residence during 1931 to 1937. Furthermore, in order to weaken their tribal power and prevent anything like the Wushe Incident from happening, the Japanese government also mixed the Truku residences with that of other tribes

The current distribution of the Truku is, roughly, between Heping River and Taiping River, distributed over Songlin, Lushan, Chingguan of Nantou County Ren-ai Township; and Hualien County Shioulin Township and Wanrong Township, Chosi Township Lishan Village, and Chi-an Township Chingfeng Village, Nanhua Village, and Fuhsing Village.

Hunting (illustrated by Meng-sheng Chiou)	Hunting (illustrated by Jie-sheng Deng)

References:

1. The Geographic Distribution and an Introduction to Taiwan Indigenous Peoples—Truku Tribe. (2006.06). http://www.tacp.gov.tw/intro/nine/taroko/taroko1. HTM.

2. Liao, S.C. (1977). ‘The Migration and Distribution of the East Sejiq of the Atayal (1)’. Collected Papers of Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology, 44.

3. Pan, C.D. (2003). ‘“The Development of Mountainous Areas and the Comforting of Barbarians” of Late Ch’ing Dynasty and the Change of Interest of Taiwan Truku’, The Historical Cultivation 9: 49-70. Taipei: Graduate Institute of History, National Taiwan Normal University.

Languages and Culture

Language is the most important core of a tribe. Truku Tribe successfully rectified its name as a tribe precisely because their language is different from the language of Atayal Tribe.
        The following is an introduction to the basic pronunciation of the Truku language according to The Written System of Aboriginal Languages published by Ministry of Education, and a list of Truku language’s alphabet and phonation.

Table 1: The Written System of Truku Languages

References:

The Written System of Aboriginal Languages (Dec. 15, 2005). Tai-Yu-Tze-Di#0940163297, Yuan-Min-Chiao-Tze-Di#09400355912. Taipei: Ministry of Education, Council of Indigenous Peoples, Executive Yuan. http://www.edu.tw/files/list/M0001/aboriginal.pdf

Social System

A traditional Truku society’s core is their belief of their ancestral spirits. The most important element of a Truku social system is Gaya, which sustain their people’s survival.

Gaya includes the culture of living norm, evaluative judgments, etc., which the Truku follow in their lives. The term “Gaya” means customs, or conventions, which includes laws, moral view, taboos, rituals, customs, and norms, etc.

Gaya also means “a ritual group”, families from the same ritual group would hold various agricultural ceremonies at the same day. They would also plant seeds and harvest at the same day. So a Gaya is a group of Truku people that lives, holds ceremonies, complies with taboos, and bears penalty together. Whenever there is a festival, all members of a Gaya would sing, dance, drink, and pray to the ancestral spirits for an abundant harvest. After a person dies, his/her soul will reunite with his/her ancestors of the same Gaya.

A priest praying to the ancestral spirits for an abundant harvest	A communal dance after a sacrificial ritual
A singing performance after a sacrificial ritual	A musical performance after a sacrificial ritual

For the traditional Atayal people (Truku people), all the behaviours of a person throughout his/her whole life must obey Gaya. Disobedience will anger ancestral spirits and incur penalty to oneself or other members in the same Gaya. So the chief, priest, and priestess of a Gaya are responsible for overseeing all members obeying Gaya.

Facial tattoos are the symbols of fame for traditional Truku people. Only after many successful hunts can a man has tattoos painted on his forehead and his jaw; a woman must know how to weave cloth before she can have tattoos painted on her forehead and cheeks. Only a person with a complete facial tattoo can marry.

Due to the beliefs and conventions of the traditional Truku society, they had a head hunting convention. The Truku thinks that head hunting is a sacred and manhood-proving action. Normally they would not go head hunting, unless they were attacked by a foreign tribe, or they wanted to take revenge, or they wanted blessing from gods during a disaster.

References:
1. Yu, G.H. (1981). ‘The Tribal Organization of the Sejiq of the Atayal’. Collected Papers of Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology, 50: 91-110.
2. Liao, S.C. (1998). The Social Organization of the Atayal. Hualien: Tzu Chi University.
3. Li, N.L., Tu, L.C., Chen, P.Y., edited by Liu, H.Y. (2001). A Complete Guide to the Sacrifice of Taiwan Aborigine. Taipei: Chang Min Culture.

Sacrificial Ritual

The Truku calls every supernatural being “rutux”, which include benevolent rutuxs (souls from people who died naturally) and evil rutuxs (souls from people who died unnaturally). They do not offer sacrifice to evil rutuxs; but the benevolent rutuxs (including ancestral rutux and some others) are closely connected to their everyday life and thus receive sacrifice.  

In important ceremonies like wedding, ancestral spirit sacrificial ritual and harvest sacrificial ritual, all men from a Gaya or a society will join a hunt. The hunting zone will be far from their residence and cover a large area; it will take a week or even a month. As a result, the women will prepare enough food for the hunter before the hunt. During the hunt, the hunters will start from the peripheral or a part of the peripheral of the hunting zone and chase the preys to the centre. So it will require the cooperation of the whole tribe, so as to strengthen their tribal identification and the cohesion of the Gaya.

èAncestral Spirit Sacrificial Ritual
       Ancestral spirit sacrificial ritual signifies the core of beliefs of the whole tribe, which is also the spiritual symbol to the cohesion of the tribe. An ancestral spirit sacrificial ritual consists of three parts: admonition from an elder, history telling, and the summoning of ancestral spirits.

A week before the ritual, the chief will send members to weed the graveyard and start to prepare the ritual. The ritual will begin with a representative of the Gaya, with sacrifices such as meat and millet cake clipped with bamboo chopsticks, leading the tribal members to the ritual site. After the chief have given an admonition, he will, together with the vice-chief, lead all the men from the tribe to the ritual site. On their way to the site, people will hold a touch and sacrifices in their hands and call the names of their ancestors to ask them to join the ritual. When they arrive, they will still keep asking their ancestors to join with fire.

After they arrive at the ritual site and stick their bamboo chopsticks into the earth, the chief will first pray to their ancestral spirits, and then the representative, an elder, or a prestige person from each Gaya will also pray their ancestral spirits.

After the ceremony, the young will return first. When they leave, they must go across a fire pile, symbolizing that they are parting with their ancestral spirit, and hoping to cleanse themselves and to keep the calamity away. Older people and the chief will stay there and talk and drink with the spirits. The alcohol and sacrifice that are left must be left on the site.

  èSeeding Ritual

When the tribe is going to hold a Seeding Ritual, people must steam the millet cakes for the ritual at the early morning. Fires in one’s home must not be extinguished. During the ritual, these fires will be used to ignite the touches. Two priests will then lead the people to the field with millet cakes, alcohols, millet tassels and small hoes.

They will first come to the field of one of the priests, and dig a small area in the field for the Seeding Ritual to pray to their ancestral spirits for the successful sprouting of all the seeds planted. 

After the prayer, half of a piece of millet cake will be put at the centre of the ritual field, and then alcohols will be poured on it. And the rest of the millet cakes and alcohols will be shared by the two priests beside the field. And then they will go to the field of the other priest and repeat the same ritual.

èHarvesting Ritual

After the millet matured and ready to be harvest, each family will harvest a few tassels of millet back home, and then hand one on the tree and plant one in the field.After the harvest finish, one tassel will also be put on the roof of the barn.
        On the early morning of the ritual day, two tribal members will be picked to summon the ancestral spirit and pray for good luck. When the ceremony finish, all the people must leave the site and must not turn back to look.

  èHunting Ritual

Before a hunting group sets out, two hunters will go first and try to observe the flying direction of the Sisils, in order to decide whether to set out to hunt. When a group goes hunting in the mountain, members will setup a hunting hut at the destination and rest for a night. They will start hunting the next day.

References:
1. Chou, Y.E. (2001). The Hunting Culture of the East Sejiq and the Management of National Parks. Taroko National Park Administration, Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of the Interior.
2. Yu, G.H. (1981). ‘The Tribal Organization of the Sejiq of the Atayal’. Collected Papers of Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology, 50: 91-110.
3. Liao, S.C. (1998). The Social Organization of the Atayal. Hualien: Tzu Chi University.
4. Li, N.L., Tu, L.C., Chen, P.Y., edited by Liu, H.Y. (2001). A Complete Guide to the Sacrifice of Taiwan Aborigine. Taipei: Chang Min Culture.

Historic Events

Truku Campaign: Due to the Treaty of Maguan, The Japanese forces entered Taiwan in 1895. They rose many battles against the Truku in the eastern Taiwan, who did not submit to the Japanese, in the 18 years between 1898~1916.

Among these battles, the “Military Action against the Truku” in May of 1914 is the longest and the biggest. The Japanese deployed totally more than 20,000 members from the land force and the armed police, equipped with the latest type of firearms, attacking the Truku from the east and the west simultaneously. The force attacked from the east was further divided into two sub-forces at Tongmen and Wenlan: a western sub-force and a northern sub-force; the western force was led by the Taiwan governor, Kawagoe, himself, started from Puli, through Wu She, Chuifeng (now Cuifeng), they arrived at Hehuan Mt. (about the now winter training centre of the land force) and founded the “Commend Centre of the Campaign”. His force consisted of almost ten thousand members, overseeing the Truku together with the eastern force coming from Hualin port, which, through Xincheng, arrived at Wuxi.

In the meantime, the Truku had only 2300 fighters, equipped with simple hunting bows, to defend against the well-equip Japanese force. They surrendered after 60 days of fierce battles. Both sides had heavy casualties, and the Truku paid for the campaign bitterly.

A march of the Japanese force equipped with guns	The Truku under the dominion of the Japanese
The Japanese force at Hehuan Mt.	The Japanese attacking the Truku with cannons

References:
Bulletin, New Aspen Rest Stop, Taroko National Park, Central Cross-Island Highway, Tai-8, 143 km mark

Myths and Legends