A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography

by Daniel McGilvary

Two days later we reached Chieng Sên. Here we received a mail from home, with news that Mrs. McKean was not well, and other members of the station needed the doctor’s presence. It was expressed as “the unanimous judgment of the station that he should return immediately.” We had planned a regular campaign in the Mūsô districts on both sides of the Mê Kōng—the sort of trip in which the medical missionary finds his best opportunity. But the recall was so imperative that it could not be ignored. So I was left to continue the work alone.

The Mūsô tribe was about equally numerous in the mountain ranges on both sides of the big river. On the east side there were eleven villages. It seemed advisable to take that section first, because they were under Chieng Sên rulers, of whose cordial and sincere interest in our work we were sure. Sên Chai, the head man of the large village nearest to the city, was a friend of Nān Suwan, and was strongly inclined to embrace our religion; but felt the difficulty of breaking the tribal bond. Before this I had made him a visit of two or three days, and saw clearly that our only chance of accomplishing anything was to gain all the head men of the eleven villages. It was actually easier to win over the whole as a unit than to win it piecemeal. This was a formidable task to undertake, but with God’s blessing on the labours of Cha Pū Kaw and Nān Suwan, it seemed not impossible.

We set out for the first village one morning shortly after ten o’clock. It was four o’clock when we stopped for rest at the first cluster of houses on the outskirts of the settlement. The news of our arrival soon reached the main village. When we started again we met Sên Chai with a regular serenade-party of men and boys with native reed instruments, blowing their plaintive dirge-like music, to welcome us and escort us in. Soon the population was all assembled—the maidens in their best sarongs, the mothers and grandmothers each with an urchin strapped to her back by her scarf, the men coming in from their work, and the inevitable crowd of children. Cha Pū Kaw was already answering their questions, with Nān Suwan’s sympathetic aid. They were respectfully shy, but there was no cringing. Sên Chai invited the local Pū Chān and all the villagers to assemble after their evening meal to hear the new doctrines. We first had worship with singing, and prayer by Cha Pū Kaw. It was the first time they had heard the Great Spirit addressed in their own Mūsô tongue. There were frequent exclamations of delight that they were able to understand every word.

And then, before that motley crowd, drinking with them their native tea from an earthen teapot, the men seated close around, or reclining as they smoke their pipes, the women and children walking about or sitting on the ground—we tell of God the great Spirit, the Creator, and Father of all—the Bible, His message to men—the incarnation, life, and death of Christ, and redemption through His blood. Before we get through you will hear man after man say, “I believe that. It is true.” One man takes up the story from Cha Pū Kaw’s mouth and repeats it to another—a story that till now he himself had never heard. Another says, “Nān Suwan has told us this before, but now we hear it from the father-teacher.”

Before we retired that night Sên Chai said to us, with the approval of most of his village, “Go on to Sên Bun Yūang and the head men of the other villages. If they agree, we will all accept Christianity. One village cannot accept it alone. If we do not ‘kin waw’ with them—join in their New Year’s feast—we shall be treated as enemies by the whole tribe.”

So, next morning, we set out to find the great Pū Chān—the religious head of the province. On our way to his village we fell in with a man to whom Cha Pū Kaw was speaking with great earnestness. I found on approaching him that he was not a Mūsô, but a Kūi—of a tribe which we had planned to visit later. He was the Pū Chān of his village. He had already invited us through Cha Pū Kaw to change our plan, and visit his village first. It was nearer than the village we were intending to visit, and we were already tired enough with our climb to be willing to stop at the nearest place.

The village was a large one, as mountain villages go—of twenty-five or thirty houses, and from two hundred and fifty to three hundred souls—in general not unlike the Mūsô villages we had seen. The Kūi language also, while different from the Mūsô, is cognate with it, so that Cha Pū Kaw could still act fairly well as our interpreter. His talk with the Pū Chān on the way had already laid a good foundation for our work in the evening, when curiosity and interest in our errand brought the whole village together to hear Cha Pū Kaw’s new doctrine from his own lips. The news of his conversion had already reached them, and he had made a good impression on the religious head of the village.—And, then, it was something new to see the Mūsô boys able to read and to sing. Nān Suwan and Cha Pū Kaw led in prayer, the one in Lāo and the other in Mūsô. Then our religion was explained in its two leading ideas—rejection of the spirit-cult, and acceptance of Jesus for the pardon of sin and the life eternal. Questions were asked and answered.

At last the Pū Chān suggested that, while we continued our reading and singing with the women and children, he and the men, with Cha Pū Kaw, withdraw to a neighbouring house and talk the matter over. It was evident that they would be more at their ease by themselves, unawed by the presence of the foreign teacher. For some two hours the debate continued. I could hear their earnest voices from the neighbouring house, with only now and then a Lāo word that I could understand. Then they returned to make their report. With oriental politeness, they expressed their gratitude to the “great teacher” who had come so far and at such expense, and had brought with him a fellow-mountaineer of theirs, to teach them, creatures of the jungle, the way to happiness. They had talked these matters over, and understood them somewhat, but not fully. Some were greatly pleased with the teachings, and believed them true. But they could not yet come as an entire village, and they dared not separate. Next morning we parted as friends. They were glad that we had found the way to their village. “Be sure to come again!” That I thought surely I should do; but this proved to be my only visit.

At the Sên Lūang’s village, where the great Pū Chān lived, we had the same experience—a good reception, many apparently interested and anxious to escape their own spirit-worship. A number of the head men said, “If such and such a village accepts the Jesus-religion, we will.” But no one could be found to face the clan and make a start.

Thinking that our native evangelists might get at the heart of the people all the better if left to do it alone, and being anxious to get my mail from home, I went down on Saturday to Nān Suwan’s to spend the Sunday there with the Christians. On Tuesday, to my disappointment, the evangelists returned to me discouraged. They were convinced that in the district east of the Mê Kōng River, no break in the solidarity of the clan could be accomplished that season.