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(Ann)
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measures to restrict further incursion, however, was a concession–the
addition of a regularjunxiansubprefectural magistrate in Bedune to
manage Han migrants now too numerous to be expelled. Outposts
around foraging enclaves and prohibition of Han tenancy in Manchu
fields were among the measures proposed to save what was to be a purely
Manchu arablist and foraging preserve.^28
Patchy compromises also underlay the proposal to consolidate a
more regulated borderland space. Mountains were to be“protected
and rent and revenue collected without scrimping the hunters’duties
while simultaneously making full provision for their livelihood.”
A preliminary survey was conducted to determine foraging and arable
boundaries on the basis of red pine distribution. Butha Ula’sflat and
thinly forested Sihe River area, where unauthorized activity was
already underway, was marked for agricultural clearance. The
enclave’s northeastern mountainous Huolun River region, thickly
covered with red pine, was restrictively reserved for foraging. Never-
theless, a request for farming this area’s arable subsections,“where tree
cover is light around the bases of the mountains,”would be entertained
to aid “surplus population without a livelihood to clear land for
taxable cultivation.”Despite the proposal’s intentions to promote indi-
genous hunting interests, it reveals a susceptibility to qualities of eco-
tones and patchiness that continued to abet the expansion of arablism
and, inadvertently, Hanspace.^29
It is significant that any pines were left to be surveyed by this time,
given the testimony engraved on a boundary marker on the tributary
enclave’s northern perimeter.“Commoners”were said to be in league
with guards who had already“cut down no less than 30 – 40 , 000 red pines
that produce tribute.” The marker’s southern counterpart provided a
more detailed chronology of the preliminary deforestation phase of arab-
list penetration. This was spearheaded by Han settlers, sometimes with
state countenance or indigenous collusion. Jilin’s administrators had
indeed already requested that, in light of“ill-omened”harvests,”some
of Butha Ula’s hills befired during the Xianfeng reign. Further relaxation
of state restrictions on land clearance in 1870 had resulted in the“cutting
of wood everywhere in the mountains and plowing every foot of ground.”
Both steles, probably erected no earlier than the 1880 s, reiterated prohib-
itions that reserved tribute mountain enclave resources explicitly for state
hunter-gatherers out of“respect for the ritual objects of the court and in
all matters of foraging in the wilderness.”Trespass“obscured distinctions
between public and private and negated those between household and
Borderland Hanspace in the Nineteenth Century 231
