Although this painting dates from a century after the Dutch period, it illustrates an important aspect of traditional Formosan Austronesian society: the prevalence of intervillage warfare. In the forefround is a fortified aboriginal village whose entrance is guarded by three warriors. Behind the village stand four more warriors, who point at a group of aborigines from a different village, peering back over a hill. The inscription notes that aboriginal villages located near “raw aborigines” (生番, unpacified aborigines) make stockades out of wood and bamboo, and every day aboriginal warriors (番丁) are sent out, “each carrying spears and bows, to watch for the arrival of raw aborigines.” Image is from the Fan she cai feng tu (番社采風圖 Genre Paintings of Taiwan Aborigines), used by permission of the Academia Sinica Institute of History and Phililogy. Source: Academia Sinica Institute of History and Philology Credit: From 六十七, 番社采風圖; published in 1998 by 杜正勝 for the Academia Sinica; more online at:

From How Taiwan became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in the seventeenth century by Tonio Andrade