Monkey Festival and Great Hunting Festival

About the rite

In Puyuma communities, boys enter a youth house at about twelve or thirteen and train in physical endurance, community knowledge, and outdoor skills. At the year-end Monkey Festival they demonstrate courage; a grass monkey now replaces the animal formerly used.

Around seventeen or eighteen, young men move into the adult house. During the Great Hunting Festival they camp outdoors, hunt, and learn survival skills from elders. Completion advances them within the age-grade system and recognizes their ability to protect the community. Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples authority describes both festivals as continuing parts of the annual cycle.