The Social Culture Of Aboriginal Tribes From The Ethnographic Description During Qing Dynasty

The aboriginal tribes, which are called tribes living on plains today, mainly referring to the literature of the Qing Dynasty plain aboriginal tribes, and in this paper refers primarily to the tribes living on Taiwan's western plain. Those tribes entirely became Chinese without remaining traditions. However, as an important part of Taiwan's native peoples, it is quite necessary and valuable to study their society, history, and culture.Without written record of their own history, the aboriginal tribes' cultural traditions are now completely disappeared. Therefore it's difficult to study the tribes. But recently, the tribes were focused because of political reasons.And the Qing Dynasty's ethnographic description which recorded the social culture of the historical tribes now becomes particularly valuable because of the lack of information of the tribes.Based on the Qing Dynasty's ethnographic description, I want to describe Taiwan's native tribes' material culture, habits, beliefs and so on from eyes of Chinese in Qing Dynasty, and try to explore the relationship between Chinese and the tribes, the change process of the native tribes, especially those living on western plains under the guidance of Chinese government.At that time, the tribes living on the western plains created their own cultural traditions in the posses adapting to the local natural environment, living a self-sufficiency life. However, the arrival of Chinese broke their silence in Qing Dynasty, with advanced production technology. In the exchange course with Chinese, those aboriginal tribes gradually and ultimately permeate into Chinese.This paper, as a base work of the ethnical archaeological research, tries to illustrate the initial impression of Taiwan's aboriginal tribes' social culture in the Qing Dynasty's ethnographic description.