A Century in Hiding: The Sakizaya People of Taiwan

This is a translation from the original 古老兒歌數字，是他們隱藏129年終再復名的密碼！撒奇萊雅傳說：一位尋找密碼的女孩 by the editors at Mata Taiwan. Originally published by Mata Taiwan. Translation by Chieh-Ting Yeh.

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Hualien is a small port city located on the remote eastern coast of Taiwan. Situated right in between the towering cliffs of the Taroko Gorges to the north, and the Eastern Rift Valley and the Pacific Coast to the south, Hualien is most known as the gateway to Taiwan’s natural sights for tourists both from Taipei and beyond.

But Hualien is also full of history and folklore. It is the homeland of the Sakizaya (撒奇萊雅), one of the 16 officially recognized indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Nonetheless, the Sakizaya were only recognized as recently as 2007, and until then only a handful of people knew that they even existed—including most of the descendants of the Sakizaya, who were taught by their elders to say they were part of the much bigger Amis (阿美) people to the south.

How did the Sakizaya identity disappear, and how was it kept alive until it was ready to reassert itself again?

The key, according to the executive director of the Tiway Sayion Foundation Toko Sayion, lies in a nursery rhyme kids sang to learn how to count…

The password to survival

In the Amis language, numbers are pronounced cecay, tosa, tolo, sepat, lima…but some Amis kids learn a different set of numbers as a nursery rhyme, that goes like tinacay, tinusa, tinulu, lulu, awmay…

These numbers turn out to be number in the Sakizaya language.

But while the Amis kids sing this nursery rhyme for fun, for the Sakizaya it is actually a serious, solemn song, a matter of life and death.

For centuries, the Sakizaya settlement of Takubuwan (達固部灣) was a center of cultural and political activity. It was heavily fortified by spiked bamboo, and one can only get inside through two entrances. The front entrance was guarded by young warriors, and the password to enter was this very song of numbers. Only a Sakizaya would be able to recite the right numbers fast enough, and this is how the guards can tell friend from foe, especially in the dark of night.

There is another back entrance, an underwater tunnel where one would have to swim through and surface at just the right moment to get to the entrance. The right timing, again, is the time that it takes to recite the numbers in a particular song.

The story of Lutuk

In 1878, the little Sakizaya girl Lutuk was only 13 years old. She was the daughter of Bakah, an elder and youth mentor (a specific role within the Sakizaya society in charge of passing down collective wisdom and warrior skills) of the Takubuwan settlement. Lutuk was a smart little girl, who gladly helped her baki  (grandpa) and bayi (grandma) tilling the fields and gathering wild plants.

Lutuk also loved to listen to the stories told by the elders in the village, and she would remember all the stories and retell them with her own song and dance. She was a delight to everyone in Takubuwan.

But when she was 13, the entire Sakizaya nation was engulfed in the flames of war. A far away foreign empire called the Qing sailed to Taiwan all the way from across the ocean with their metal battleships, carrying men armed with guns and cannons, invaded the Sakizaya and their friends the Kavalan people. Everyone across all Sakizaya settlements were mobilized; the men made sharp blades, bows, and arrows, and the women started stockpiling food, water and other supplies in designated hidden spots.

One night in the fall, Lutuk’s ama (father) gathered everyone and said, “the paylang (a term used to refer to the Han settlers and invaders) are coming, and the head chief Pazik has called on us to fight. If the paylang come up to the settlement, you must all go to the Great Mountain and meet at the foot of the bishop tree.”

The “Great Mountain” in Hualien (by Chieh-Ting Yeh)

Soon afterwards the Qing Empire mounted their final offense, and the two sides fought in a battle to the death. The young Sakizaya warriors and priests were decimated, and their bodies formed piles on the Hualien plains. At the end the Qing commander ordered the chief tortured and his wife crushed to death between two tree trunks, and torched the Takubuwan settlement.

In the dark, Lutuk ran and came up to the underwater tunnel. She remembered her dad telling her, if you hold your breath and swim, counting the numbers, you can escape from the village. As she was ready to jump, a young man covered in blood and dirt grabbed her and jumped into the water, as arrows flew by inches above their heads.

The young man who saved her was 16 year old Tiway Kalang, of the Pazik settlement. They swam across the tunnel and emerged outside the village, just to watch their homes go up in flames. They ran and ran until they reached the tree on the Great Mountain, only to see other fellow villagers, wounded and dying. Tiway recognized his father lying on the ground, and ran to him. He weakly muttered some words to Tiway, and seeing Lutuk beside him, held her hand and said:

“Your ama was my saydang (mentor) and my best friend, and I saw him and your brother give their lives protecting our homes. Your ina (mother) also died at the hands of the enemy. No one is left.

You two must run far away from here, to keep the blood of the Sakizaya alive. Go across the river to Ciwidiyan (水璉) by the ocean, and establish your new home there.

And you must never, ever tell anyone you are Sakizaya.”

With those words, he let out his last breath and left the land he loved.

With the help of the few surviving tribesmen, Tiway took care of burying the dead and led the rest down across Amis lands, crossed the great Hualien River and settled in Ciwidiyan to the south. A handful of teenagers began building a new settlement, tilling the land and living in hiding. They kept to their father’s last words and stopped speaking their ancestral language, and never told outsiders they were Sakizaya.

The Ciwidiyan Settlement (by Chieh-Ting Yeh)

A century in hiding

Tiway and Lutuk married, and Tiway became the first chief of Ciwidiyan. He worked to preserve certain Sakizaya traditions known only to those in the village, and was the chief for 26 years until he died in 1916.

Lutuk, now a mother and a grandmother, kept telling her fellow villagers the legends and stories of the Sakizaya, as well as the heroic acts of their ancestors in the Battle of Takubuwan. 60 years after the war, the Qing has also left and was replaced by the Japanese, she returned to the ruins of Takubuwan, with tears in her eyes, calling out to her ama, ina, her brother kakama, her grandparents baki and bayi…she repeated the nursery rhyme she taught her children and grandchildren: tinacay, tinusa, tinulu, lulu, awmay…

Lutuk spent the rest of her days in Ciwidiyan, and when she was 95 years old while she was weaving clothes for her grandchildren, closed her eyes; and with a smile she left this world to rejoin her family in the Sakizaya’s spiritual ancestral paradise.

It would not be another 47 years, in the year of the Western calendar 2007, that Lutuk’s descendants found their way back to their rightful identity as Sakizaya, recognized by yet another government, this time the Republic of China on Taiwan. After more than a century of hiding, the Sakizaya can now properly proclaim their name and their stories for everyone living in the nation of Taiwan.

But that’s another story for another time…

(Special thanks to Tiway Sayion Foundation’s Toko Sayion for retelling the story to Mata Taiwan. Feature photo courtesy of Mata Taiwan.)