George Leslie Mackay

[1] The Zorra pioneers were Evangelical Presbyterians, for whom their church, led by lay elders, was the centre of their collective life.

William Campbell, a contemporary missionary, as: ...a little man, firm and active, of few words, unflinching courage, and one whose sound common sense is equalled only by his earnest devotion to the Master.

[...] During the first year of his stay at Tamsui, he began an educational and evangelistic training movement among the young men who came about him, and this has been greatly blessed throughout that northern part of the Island.

He argued that “when the misery of poverty and degradation is combined with a hope of moral and material salvation, the resulting mixture is explosive.” (1969:239).

Han migration to the isolated I-lan plain in the early nineteenth century began suddenly and on a large scale.

... [Despite policies by the first prefect, Yang T'ing-li, attempting to protect aborigine land rights,] it was too little too late, for the Kuvalan were unable to adapt to such rapid change.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Kuvalan population had declined by approximately 70 percent, and many were migrating to Hua-lien.Indigenous historian Chan Su-chuan 詹素娟 ，describes the “extremely difficult situation” confronting the Kavalan in the 1880s:[8] “The period when Mackay entered Ilan was exactly the period in the late 19th century when traditional Kavalan society was facing shocks from an external power and was undergoing large scale forced emigration ... With the changes in their social and economic life, the traditional religion of the Kavalan people also underwent huge changes.

But Mackay also saw that the in fact the Kavalan people still “simultaneously” preserved their traditions “nature worship” and “relics of superstition”.

He must have seen in their crisis a reflection of the collective memory of his own people, the Highland refugees from the Sutherland Clearances, who were burnt out of their cottages by officials clearing the land for sheep: There were at one time thirty-six thriving villages in the Kap-tsu-lan plain.

It is political rather than religious, and to the large majority it is meaningless, except as a reminder of their enslavement to an alien race” [9] It is in this context that the rapid, mass conversion of almost one-half of the Kavalan people in the early 1880s can be understood.

Mackay was clearly astounded by the response of the Kavalan to his evangelism, so different from the process of conversion in the rest of north Taiwan.The removal of idols and ancestral tablets by new Christians in Taiwan was usually a discreet individual decision.

The first is reported in letters of March 30 and June 5, 1883: I am here about 4 days journey from Tamsui -on the east side of the Island with the Pacific dashing this shore.

I never passed through such an experience.The revitalization movement in the form of communal removal of Chinese idols proceeded even without the presence of Mackay, who was amazed at what he saw happening.

In a letter addressed “To the Presbyterian Church in Canada from Halifax to Manitoba” (June 5, 1883) he wrote: I sent a telegram some time ago to say that 1000 were asking Christian instruction.

Another village with nearly 300 not very far away came out as a body, men, women and children and already sing our sweet hymns long in the night.The second reference to communal idol burning is September 8–9, 1890, when Mackay, accompanied by Koa-kau and Tan-he travelled by boat to visit Kavalan people who had settled in Ka-le-oan (嘉禮宛) north of Hualien City(花蓮港).

Mackay letter to Wardrope Oct. 16th 1890: About dark we entered Ka-le-oan (the Pin-po-hoan settlement I longed to visit for upwards of a dozen years).

– Another important transaction was executed – a temple for idols built by themselves at a cost of $2000 was handed over for chapel service the all retired and the tumult abated.

The following was a joyous day; no one went to work – The Head men joined our party (after invitation) and ordered four boys to carry 8 baskets one on each end of a pole.

... Nearly five hundred idolaters cleaned their houses of idols in our presence.Similar to other indigenous groups in northern Taiwan, the Kavalan has a patronymic name system, rather than surnames.

In 1884 John Jamieson reported in a letter to the Foreign Mission Committee (June 30, 1884) that “The girls have made excellent progress during their four months of study.

Among the ten Plains Indigenous groups (Ping-pu 平埔) who occupied the entire western half of Taiwan, only the Kavalan have continued as an organized community, still using their own language, in their exilic home on the northern coast of Hualien County.

In the last decade a group of women weavers (the leader is surnamed Kai 偕) have been reviving traditional weaving.

They hope to visit the Mackay Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum to study the textiles that came from Kai Ah-hun in 1893.

In 1880, Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity, presented by Principal George Monro Grant and Chancellor Sandford Fleming.

As moderator of the Presbyterian church, he broke precedent to speak in favor of a resolution opposing this tax, saying it was unjust and racist.

[12] In Taiwan's modern democratic period Mackay's life has been celebrated by advocates of a distinctive Taiwanese identity and historical understanding separate from colonial narratives brought by Japan and China.

Its collections of items from both Chinese and Indigenous cultures of Taiwan, and specimens of geology, flora and fauna was constantly replentished by donations from local people.

James Rohrer, missionary historian, states that Mackay, "allowed himself to truly encounter and to be transformed by the people he sought to serve.

In 2008 Taiwan's government invested in the project: the world's first-ever Taiwanese grand opera, Mackay: The Black-Bearded Bible Man.

Over a hundred singers and production crew were engaged for the project from Europe, Asia, and North America.