The Qauqaut () were a
Taiwanese Indigenous people who lived primarily in the town of
Su-ao in
Yilan County. They spoke the
Basay language, which is a
Kavalanic language, an Austronesian language family of Taiwan. According to Japanese anthropologist
Inō Kanori, the Qauqaut people had been assimilated by the
Kavalan people
The Kavalan (endonym ; "people living in the plain"; ) or Kuvalan are an indigenous people of Taiwan. Most of them moved to the coastal area of Hualien County and Taitung County in the 19th century due to encroachment by Han settlers. Their l ...
by early 20th century. The Qauqaut people are not recognised by the government of Taiwan.
According to oral tradition from various
Atayal villages, the Qauqaut originally settled in the middle portion of the Takiri River (). In the mid-1700s, following pressure from Atayals, they moved to the east coast down the Takiri. Later, some moved north to Langsu in
Nan'ao County
Nan'ao or Nanao (), formerly romanized Namoa, is an island and county of the prefecture-level city of Shantou in Guangdong Province, China. The county spans a land area of , and sea area of . As of 2020, the county had a permanent population o ...
.
Early modern
The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...
Chinese documents on the Kavalan territories reported that the Qauqaut were linguistically and culturally distinct from the other Formosan ethnic groups and that they did not intermarry with the other communities.
Taiwanese linguist
Paul Jen-kuei Li hypothesised that, in about 200 BCE, the Qauqaut migrated from
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
to the
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country west of the International Date Line and north of the equator in the Micronesia region of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.
The territory consists of 29 c ...
and the
Caroline Islands
The Caroline Islands (or the Carolines) are a widely scattered archipelago of tiny islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea. Politically, they are divided between the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the cen ...
and in around 1000 AD arrived on the east coast of Taiwan, based on his linguistic comparison with the nearby
Taroko (Seediq) language of Taiwan, which he said varies greatly from the Qauqaut. This contrasts with the rest of the Taiwanese aborigines, who are said to have arrived on the island much earlier.
The Qauqaut bury the dead in a sitting position, like those of neighbouring villages in southern Kavalan territory.
See also
*
Demographics of Taiwan
Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration.
Demographic analysis examine ...
*
Taiwanese indigenous peoples
Taiwanese indigenous peoples, formerly called Taiwanese aborigines, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognized subgroups numbering about 600,303 or 3% of the Geography of Taiwan, island's population. This total is incr ...
References
Works cited
*
Taiwanese indigenous peoples
Extinct Indigenous peoples
{{Taiwan-ethno-group-stub