Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

In 1916, Janet B. McGovern left Japan for the mountainous interior of Formosa, driven by a question that had haunted anthropological debate: could a true matriarchal society exist? What she found among the island's aboriginal tribes would challenge everything Western scholars assumed about gender, power, and social organization. This is her account of two years living among the Taiyal and neighboring peoples, documentiong their customs, spiritual beliefs, and the extraordinary social structures that placed women at the center of political and economic life. Written with the precision of a trained observer and the immediacy of someone witnessing cultures in their final days, McGovern's narrative captures a world on the verge of erasure. Japanese colonial rule was accelerating the transformation of the island's indigenous populations, and the head-hunting practices that had defined tribal identity for centuries were being ruthlessly suppressed. McGovern arrived just in time to record what remained: ceremonies, kinship systems, and ways of living that had evolved in near-complete isolation from the mainland. More than an anthropological record, this book is a meditation on what it means to study a disappearing world. McGovern never romanticizes her subjects, but her fascination is palpable on every page.