From far Formosa the island, its people and missions (1900)

George Leslie Mackay (1844 – 1901) was the first Presbyterian missionary to northern Formosa (Qing-era Taiwan). He served with the Canadian Presbyterian Mission. Mackay is among the best known Westerners to have lived in Taiwan. In 1871 Mackay became the first foreign missionary to be commissioned by the Canada Presbyterian Church (predecessor of both the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the United Church of Canada), arriving in Taiwan on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1871.



After consulting with Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell Sr., a medical doctor serving as a Presbyterian Church of England missionary to southern Formosa (1865), Mackay arrived at Tamsui, northern Formosa in 1872, which remained his home until his death in 1901. Starting with an itinerant dentistry practice amongst the lowland aborigines, he later established churches, schools and a hospital practicing Western biomedicine. He learned to speak vernacular Taiwanese fluently, and married Tiu Chhang-miâ known as "Minnie" in the West, a Taiwanese woman. The churches he planted later became the Northern Synod of the present Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. In 1896, after the 1895 establishment of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, Mackay met with the Japanese Governor-General of Formosa, Maresuke Nogi. Some families in Taiwan today, particularly of lowland-aboriginal Kavalan ancestry, trace their surname ('Kai' or 'Kay') to their family's conversion to Christianity by Mackay.



Mackay's "From Far Formosa" is considered an important early missionary ethnography of Taiwan and an important contribution to the anthropological understanding of the culture and customs of the people of Taiwan during that period. Mackay himself was as fascinated by the cultures and habitat he found as he was disapproving of native practices he viewed as idolatry.



The Taiwanese language first entered written form in the nineteenth century when Mackay and his colleagues adapted the Latin alphabet to render it phonetically. The orthography, called Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ), meaning "vernacular writing", was used by the Presbyterian missionaries and became standard in the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. The first printed newspaper on the island was a church bulletin in Taiwanese. The Presbyterians continued to use Taiwanese in their services and communications even in years when pressure from first Japanese and then Chinese authorities was intense in suppressing public use of the language.



Although Mackay had suffered from meningitis and malaria, he eventually died of throat cancer on June 2, 1901 in Tamsui. He was buried near Oxford College ( now Aletheia University) in Tamsui, Taiwan; more specifically, his grave is in a small cemetery in the eastern corner of the Tamkang Middle School campus, where his own son was buried next to him.



CONTENTS

1. Early Years Of The Author

2. At Princeton And Edinburgh

3. Toronto To Tamsui

4. First Views Of Formosa

The Island

5. Geography And History

6. Geology

7. Trees, Plants, And Flowers

8. Animal Life

9. Ethnology In Outline

Among The Chinese

10. The People

11. Government And Justice

12. Industrial And Social Life

13. Chinese Religious Life

14. Beginnings Of Mission Work

15. The First Native Preacher And His Church

16. Establishing Churches

17. How Bang-kah Was Taken

18. Touring In The North

19. The Waiting Isles

20. The Coming Of The French

21. Pe-po-hoan Characteristics

22. Rice-farming In Formosa

23. Mission Work Among The Pe-po-hoan

24. A Trip Down The East Coast

25. A Sek-hoan Mission

26. Life Among The Lram-si-hoan

The Mountain Savages

27. Savage Life And Customs

28. With The Head-hunters

At Headquarters

29. A Sketch Of Tamsui

30. Training A Native Ministry

31. Oxford College

32. Native Workers For Native Women

33. Medical Work And The Hospital

34. Foreigners And The Missions

35. With The English Presbyterians

36. Retrospect And Prospect



Reformatted from 1900 publicatio