George J. Geis
Encyclopedia
Kutkai
Kutkai is a town and seat of Kutkai Township, in the Shan State of eastern-central Burma. It lies along National Highway 3, approximately 24 kilometres to the north of Lashio .-History:...
)
was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Baptist minister and anthropologist of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
descent, best known for his missionary work in northeastern Burma. He promoted Christianity amongst the Kachin people
Kachin people
The Kachin people are a group of ethnic groups who largely inhabit the Kachin Hills in northern Burma's Kachin State and neighbouring areas of China and India. More than half of the Kachin people identify themselves as Christians - while a significant minority follow Buddhism and some also adhere...
, a group which he also studied, collecting general ethnographical data about them.
He arrived in Burma with his wife in 1892, and spent most of the rest of his life there, establishing missions throughout Kachin State
Kachin State
Kachin State , is the northernmost state of Burma. It is bordered by China to the north and east; Shan State to the south; and Sagaing Division and India to the west. It lies between north latitude 23° 27' and 28° 25' longitude 96° 0' and 98° 44'. The area of Kachin State is . The capital of the...
and Shan State
Shan State
Shan State is a state of Burma . Shan State borders China to the north, Laos to the east, and Thailand to the south, and five administrative divisions of Burma in the west. Largest of the 14 administrative divisions by land area, Shan State covers 155,800 km², almost a quarter of the total...
.
Geis is best known for his work in Myitkyina
Myitkyina
Myitkyina is the capital city of Kachin State in Myanmar , located from Yangon, and from Mandalay. In Burmese it means "near the big river", and in fact "Myitkyina" lies on the west bank of the Ayeyarwady River, just below from Myit-son of its two headstreams...
in Kachin State, but in the 1930s he established a mission in Kutkai
Kutkai
Kutkai is a town and seat of Kutkai Township, in the Shan State of eastern-central Burma. It lies along National Highway 3, approximately 24 kilometres to the north of Lashio .-History:...
in Shan State, and at the time of his death in 1936 was working there at the Kachin Bible Training School.
Background
The American Baptist Eugenio KincaidEugenio Kincaid
Eugenio Kincaid was an American Baptist missionary who labored for two periods in Burma . In the first period, he served twelve years. In the second period, he served for another fifteen years...
visited Burma in 1837. While distributing religious tracts and New Testaments among the villages north of Ava
Ava
Innwa is a city in the Mandalay Division of Burma , situated just to the south of Amarapura on the Ayeyarwady River. Its formal title is Ratanapura , which means City of Gems in Pali. The name Innwa means mouth of the lake, which comes from in , meaning lake, and wa , which means mouth...
, Kincaid heard of a people named "Hka Khyens", who were said to believe in a supreme being. He appealed for other missionaries to come to preach to these people, but with no immediate result.
However, in 1877 a Christian named Bogalay, from Bassein
Pathein
Pathein , also called Bassein, is a port city with a 2004 population estimated at 215,600, and the capital of the Ayeyarwady Region, Burma. It lies on the Pathein River , which is a western branch of the Irrawaddy River....
, began to learn the Jinghpaw language of the Kachins.
In 1878 the first overseas Baptist missionary to the Kachins, Albert Lyon, arrived in Bhamo, but died of consumption
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
within a month.
Lyon was succeeded by William Henry Roberts
William Henry Roberts
William Henry Roberts was a Baptist minister from the United States who worked for many years as a missionary in Burma.Roberts was born on 25 October 1847, in Botetourt Springs, Virginia....
, a former soldier who had fought in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Roberts obtained grudging permission from the Burmese king, Thibaw Min
Thibaw Min
Thibaw Min was the last king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma . His reign ended when Burma was defeated by the forces of the British Empire in the Third Anglo-Burmese War, on 29 November 1885, prior to its official annexation on 1 January 1886....
, to build a school and educate the Kachins. Although his wife soon died from Malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
, Roberts was to carry out his mission for 34 years.
Ola Hanson
Ola hanson
Ola Hanson was a Swedish-American missionary who worked for the Kachin people in Burma....
, an accomplished linguist of Swedish origin, arrived in Katchinland in 1890 and was to remain for 38 years.
He formulated an orthography for the Jinghpaw language using Roman script, prepared educational materials in the language as well as a grammar and a Jinghpaw-English dictionary, translated over 200 hymns into Jinghpaw and wrote a book on Katchins: Their Customs and Traditions (1913). Hanson also began work on a Jinghpaw translation of the Bible, translating St. John's Gospel within two years of his arrival.
Early Burmese mission
When Geis arrived with his wife in 1892 he was the third Baptist missionary in the area.Gies made the difficult journey up the Irrawaddy River in the rainy season, and decided to establish a mission at Myitkyina
Myitkyina
Myitkyina is the capital city of Kachin State in Myanmar , located from Yangon, and from Mandalay. In Burmese it means "near the big river", and in fact "Myitkyina" lies on the west bank of the Ayeyarwady River, just below from Myit-son of its two headstreams...
. This was planned to become the headquarters of the Kachin District and the northern terminus of the Burma Railway. The first buildings of Geis' new mission were built by Christian converts from Bhamo
Bhamo
Bhamo is a city of Kachin State in northernmost part of Myanmar, located 186 km south from the capital city of Myitkyina. It is on the Ayeyarwady River. It lies within 65 km of the border with Yunnan Province, China. The population consists of Chinese and Shan, with Kachin peoples in...
.
By 1894 Geis was able to report: "During the past year we have had many tokens of the Lord's blessings resting upon our
work. Never have more Kachins come to us, and never have they shown a greater interest in
the gospel message. Hundreds from the distant north as they came down to Myitkyina on
bamboo rafts have for the first time heard the story of Jesus". He reported on his extensive travels, growing friendship with the local people, the opening of the first out-station in the mountains and the substantial and convenient site that the government had granted for the new mission compound. However, his report was written in the United States, to which he had been forced to temporarily return due to his wife's severe illness.
Geis's work was not confined to Kachins. He first visited a Lisu village is 1898.
He was accompanied by Karen
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
missionaries from the Karen Bible Seminary, he was the only Western missionary to visit the Lisu people in their mountain villages until 1910.
In October 1902 he baptized his first Lisu converts, a couple named Ngwa Tar and Gu Na Du, and this was followed by further conversions.
In 1906 the first Lisu church was built in Manhkring, a Kachin village located in the valley between Namhkam
Namhkam
Namhkam may refer to several places in Burma:*Namhkam -Shan State*Namhkam, Hkamti -Sagaing Region*Namkham, Homalin - Sagaing Region...
and Bhamo
Bhamo
Bhamo is a city of Kachin State in northernmost part of Myanmar, located 186 km south from the capital city of Myitkyina. It is on the Ayeyarwady River. It lies within 65 km of the border with Yunnan Province, China. The population consists of Chinese and Shan, with Kachin peoples in...
.
The Lisu established their own village beside the Kachins, and became part of the Manhkring Kachin Baptist Church, although they held some services in their own tongue.
Growth of local church leaders
On December 15, 1901, the first ordination council convened in the Kachin Hills. The candidates were Damau Naw, who had come as a school boy almost twenty years earlier, and after being educated in Rangoon had helped Hanson in his literary work since 1893; Ning Grawng, who had accompanied Geis since 1894 in the Myitkyina area; and Shwe So, a Karen missionary who had served since 1884.By 1911, there were more than 300 communicants of the Kachin Baptist Church, many of whom had been educated at the mission schools.
More pastors were ordained in 1911, although foreign missionaries remained the leaders of the church for many years.
Ba Thaw (1891–1967), who had studied for his bachelor of arts in Calcutta, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, worked with Geis from 1911 and quickly became fluent in the Lisu and Kachin languages. He made great efforts to adapt to the Liu lifestyle, but realized that "a tribe having no literature cannot be improved much in education, social activities, and also in spiritual aspects."
Ba Thaw visited Lisu villages in China, where he collaborated with James O. Fraser
James O. Fraser
James Outram Fraser was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He pioneered work among the Lisu people of Southwestern China in the early part of the 20th century.- First years in Yunnan:...
of the China Inland Mission
China Inland Mission
OMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...
to develop a Lisu alphabet using Romanized letters and translate central Christian texts. During a long and fruitful life he was an evangelist, pastor, and teacher.
Later mission career
The Geis's were transferred to the PhilippinesPhilippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
in 1918, where they worked for four years. In 1922 they were able to return to their "first love" in Myitkyina, to work again among the hill tribes of Upper Burma.
In the late 1920s, George Geis was planning to start a small bible school in the hills east of Bhamo to train additional workers to those who had completed the course at the Burmese Seminary at Insein. This area had shown increasing interest in the Baptist message, not only among the lowland Shan people, but also with the Lahu
Lahu
The Lahu are an ethnic group of Southeast Asia and China.They are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, where about 450,000 live in Yunnan province. An estimated 150,000 live in Burma. In Thailand, Lahu are one of the six main hill tribes; their...
s and Wa
Va people
The Va nationality lives mainly in Northern Burma, in the northern part of Shan and eastern Kachin States, near and along the border with China. Their defacto capital is Pangkham in the unofficial Wa State in North Eastern Shan state. The majority of the Va live in Burma...
s in mountain villages east of Kengtung. There was a severe shortage of trained teachers.
In the 1930s Geis established a mission in Kutkai, and he was working there at the Kachin Bible Training School when he died in his seventies on 28 October 1936.