Chapter XIX: 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.

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

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.
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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.

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”!

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.

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.

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.
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