Origin of the Ainos. 1*7 



gradually became suspicious and uneasy as the strength of 

 the Japanese increased and their demands were more openly 

 made and boldly enforced. Seeing their lands and choicest 

 hunting-grounds fast taken from them, they soon felt that. 

 by a resort to force only, could they hope to preserve their 

 natural rights. Then followed a series of bloody wars in 

 which the Japanese, possessing superior skill and weapons, 

 were in the end victorious, and the poor aborigines were 

 driven further and further towards the northern portion 

 of the country in the direction from which they came. 

 Early' Japanese history is filled with accounts of this con- 

 stant struggle. 



The retreat of the Ainos seems to have been slow, how- 

 ever, and stubbornly made, for in A.D. 110, seven hundred 

 years after the first landing of the Japanese, the Ainos were 

 still in possession of the region extending southward from 

 Tokio to the Hakone Mountains, and at this date is chroni- 

 cled an important campaign of Yamato-Dake against the 

 savages of this district. By the middle of the fourth century, 

 the war, which had been continuously waged against the 

 Ainos for so long a time, had driven them well to the north, 

 so that they were confined principally to the region lying 

 beyond lat. 38° N. The policy which led to constant warfare 

 with the Ainos, continued in full force and was perhaps 

 given fresh strength, when, quite at the end of the twelfth 

 century, the Mikado appointed Yoritomo as his great gen- 

 eral, or " barbarian-subjecting great general," the Tei-i-tai 

 Shogun. Driven finally to the limits of Honshiu, their 

 last hold on the main island was lost ; and crossing the 

 Straits of Tsugaru (Sangar), they found refuge in the wilds 

 of Yezo. Not even here, however, did they find immunity 

 from persecution, for the Japanese soon discovered the valu- 

 able fisheries and compelled the Ainos to yield an unwilling- 

 consent to their occupation of the island. Thoroughly sub- 

 dued at last, with broken spirits, they calmly bowed to the 

 inevitable and became quietly submissive, and thus it is 

 that we find them to-day. 



It will thus readily be seen that the relations of the Aino 

 to the Japanese were and are precisely those of the Amer- 



2 



