George J. Geis

The Reverend George J. Geis (c. 1860 – October 28, 1936) was an American Baptist minister and anthropologist of German descent, best known for his missionary work in northeastern Burma.

While distributing religious tracts and New Testaments among the villages north of Ava, Kincaid heard of a people named "Hka Khyens", who were said to believe in a supreme being.

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.

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.

[5] Ba Thaw (1891–1967), who had studied for his bachelor of arts in Calcutta, India, 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."

[11] 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 Lahus and Was in mountain villages east of Kengtung.

[12] 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.