 The greatest accomplishment of America is the conquest of the continent, and the greatest achievement of the American churches has been the extension of their work westward across the vast stretches of the continent, keeping abreast with the restless and ever moving population... Throughout this whole period the churches were in continuous contact with frontier conditions and frontier needs, and no single fact is more significant in its influence upon American religion.
William Warren Sweet
The Story of Religion in America,
1950, p. 3
1
The course of events that led ultimately to the founding of the northern Thai church by the Laos Mission of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1867 may be traced back to any number of starting points; the period of great revivals in early nineteenth century America: the beginnings of the missionary movement in England and the United States; or the events leading to the founding of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the 1830s. An enterprising historian might boldly plunge into the frigid waters of Scottish Presbyterianism, the baptismal font of Daniel McGilvary's own religious experience. (1) Or, one might rightly explore the implications of certain concepts coming out of American frontier and expansionist experience—such as the concepts of the "go-getter" and the "booster" as described by Daniel Boorstin among others. (2)
So, then, where to start ? For my purposes it is enough to begin with Siam.
(3) Evidently, the first Christian tract printed in Siamese and the first Siamese convert resulted from Ann Judson's work in 1819 in Rangoon with Siamese captives carried off by the Burmese. The road to Chiang Mai began there and in Singapore, also in 1819, where Samuel Milton of the London Missionary Society based himself and laid plans for an L.M.S. mission to Bangkok. After a number of unsuccessful attempts to initiate a Bangkok mission, the first L.M.S. (and Protestant) missionaries finally reached Bangkok in August 1828. But they did not stay very long, and the L.M.S. failed to plant the first permanent mission in Siam.
In fact, one could get into quite a little discussion over which mission was first. That honor is usually given to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions since their first missionary couple arrived in Bangkok in
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July 1831. ( 4) But they also did not remain as illness drove them out of the country in January 1832. Thus, if "permanent presence" means continuous residence, the Baptist Mission begun in March 1833 established the first permanent mission in Siam. The A.B.C.F.M. did not return until July 1834. For the next fifteen years, then, these two missions, Baptist and A.B.C.F.M., carried on the difficult work of Protestant missions in Bangkok. They were hard years. The political situation was dangerous since the King of Siam wanted as little to do with the West as necessary and feared Western designs on his nation. The people did not respond to preaching, and illness and death dogged every effort, every undertaking. The A.B.C.F.M. mission showed the strain within a decade, especially after China "opened up," and the A.B.C.F.M. began to reassign some of its Bangkok forces to China. The specter of theological controversy raised its head in the mission as well, causing the mission's two most capable members, Jesse Caswell and Dan Beach Bradley, to withdraw. The last A.B.C.F.M. missionary left Bangkok at the end of 1849. The Baptist mission was only slightly more successful but considerably more tenacious. Never a strong mission, it too suffered from the opening of China since personnel and resources were drawn off from Siam for China. The mission hung on until the last Baptist missionary finally left Siam in 1893.
While the Baptist mission struggled on, the breakaway Caswell-Bradley mission sought to establish itself. After they resigned from the A.B.C.F.M., Bradley returned to the United States in 1847 to see what he could get started. He contacted the American Missionary Association, a body primarily concerned with slaves in the American South, and the A.M.A. agreed lo accept Bradley and Caswells as their missionaries to Siam. Unfortunately. Caswell died in September 1848. Bradley and his second wife, Sarah Blachly Bradley, returned in 1850 with three others to begin the A.M.A. Bangkok mission, but within a short time feuding erupted in the mission, and by 1855 only the Bradleys remained on the field. The mission lingered on until Bradley died in 1873.
These three missions faced a formidable set of circumstances. Health was a serious limitation. Their political standing fluctuated but was never quite secure. They fought with each other and with other foreigners. (5) The people at home showed more interest in China than Siam. The Siamese themselves totally ignored the religious message of the missionaries. The available resources for the work were always inadequate, the personnel never enough. The mis-
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sionaries themselves felt alienated from Siamese culture. They had to learn the language without benefit of any linguistic tools or methodologies. They came with cement-hard stereotypical ideas about Siamese culture that only slowly modified through contact with the more benign reality of that culture. Yet, without their efforts the church in northern Siam could not have come into existence.
(3)
The first permanently assigned Presbyterian couple, the Buells, arrived in Bangkok in August 1840, but "permanent" in Siam in those days was a relative term. They left in early 1844 both ill and disillusioned with the prospects in Siam. The mission was reestablished by the Board of Foreign Missions three years later with the appointment of the Mattoons and Dr. Samuel Reynolds House, all of whom arrived on the field in March 1847. The work developed only slowly and fitfully. More as an act of faith than a sign of evangelistic success, the mission established its first church on 3 September 1849. It took another decade before the first Siamese converted to the Christian faith.
The period around 1850 proved to be a difficult one for all three of the minions in Siam, Presbyterian, Baptist, and the A.M.A. The King increasingly distrusted the missionaries and applied more political pressure on them until the Presbyterians seriously considered withdrawing entirely. But, then, the King died in 1851, and Prince Mongkut, a man friendly with and tolerant of the missionaries, came to the throne. The period of trial by fire ended.
The Siam Mission remained small, its work limited, until the Rev. Jonathan Wilson Family and the Rev. Daniel McGilvary arrived in June 1858. Their arrival marked an important transition period not only for the Siam Mission but also for the possibility of a northern mission. In September, the mission founded the Siam Presbytery to govern its still unborn churches. The year 1861 marked another important turning point for the Siam Mission and all mission work in the country. In June, the mission sent the McGilvarys and the recently arrived McFarlands off to open the first station outside of Bangkok at Phet Buri.
Although the Siam Mission had few converts to show for its first twenty- five years, it accomplished a stability and growth of activities at a time when the only other Bangkok missions were already in decline. It laid the first foundations for the Siamese church and the base upon which the history of the Laos Mission and its churches was built.
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Although the Presbyterians founded missionary work in the North, the vision for that work began with Dr. Bradley, the premier first generation missionary in Siam. He came to know of the northern Thai through delegations that came down frequently and lodged at a temple near his compound. The northern Thai intrigued him, and he went out of his way to make their acquaintance. (6) Others in missionary circles were also aware of these strangers from the North. House expressed the first Presbyterian interest in them in 1854, and he recorded the first expression of a desire to fund a "Laos" Mission." But it was Bradley who seems to have been most influential in setting the direction towards Chiang Mai.
There is little wonder that the northern Thai, a people the missionaries knew little about and even the extent to which escaped them, intrigued Bradley and others. The six northern principalities were only loosely related to Siam. Centuries earlier they composed a strong union, the Lan Na Kingdom, which was a center of Southeast Asian Buddhist culture and militarily strong enough to seriously threaten the Siamese kingdoms on its southern border. The power of the Lan Na Kingdom came to an end and its culture rapidly deteriorated when most of the region fell under the Burmese. Only in the early nineteenth century did the Lan Na states, now tributary to Bangkok, begin to emerge from the chaos of two hundred years of war and revolution. Chiang Mat led the emergence and remained the central and strongest of the states, something more than just the first among equals, but still a dependent of Siam. It was, however, a distant dependency. The power of the Siamese King in the region was limited, and the Chao Muang of states like Chiang Mai and Nan had considerable freedom, particularly in internal matters. Only a handful of Europeans had ever traveled to Chiang Mai.
Early missionary interest in the northern Thai focused on Phet Buri, south of Bangkok, where there resided people who were, apparently, ethnic northern Thai. In 1859, Bradley visited a number of those northern Thai villages, and the fact that they did not practice Buddhism and resembled the Karens particularly struck Bradley. His appetite for a northern Thai mission increased. He experimented with printing the distinctive northern Thai alphabet and in about 1860 produced the first known example of northern Thai printing, a brief tract. At some point, probably also in 1860, he formally requested funds for the establishment of a Laos Mission from his supporting board, but the Rev.
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George Whipple, of the American Missionary Association, replied with a regretful but firm. "No." There were no funds available. ( 8) Bradley did not give up, and it was he who interested the eventual founder of northern missions, McGilvary, in the northern Thai.
Daniel McGilvary, Bradley's son-in-law, was born into a rigid, devout Scottish Presbyterian family in Moore County, North Carolina on 16 May 1828. He grew up in strict surroundings in which religion always played a central part. After teaching for a period, McGilvary attended Princeton Theological Seminary where he came under the influence of Dr. Charles Hodge, a strong supporter of foreign missions. While there, he and another young seminarian, Jonathan Wilson, met and spoke with Dr. House who convinced them to consider joining the Siam Mission. After graduation, McGilvary went back to North Carolina and served as a pastor for one year, then applied for the Siam mission field, and along with the Wilson family arrived in Bangkok in 1858. (9)
Interest in the northern Thai turned into a family affair when McGilvary married Sophia Royce Bradley on 6 December 1860. The couple even used their wedding as an occasion for involvement with the northern Thai. Since the Chao Muang of Chiang Mai, Kawilorot, was in town, the newly weds sent over a piece of wedding cake to him, and the following day he repaid the compliment with a visit, it was the first meeting between two men who would come to know each other all too well. Meanwhile, the Siam Mission sought to take advantage of the invitation of local officials in Phet Buri to open that station. It fell to the McGilvarys and the McFarlands to open the station, and McGilvary reported that one reason far his keen interest in Phet Buri was the northern Thais there. (10)
By this time, it was clear that McGilvary's classmate from Princeton, Wilson, would also be involved in starting a "Laos Mission", if and when that day came. Thus, Wilson joined McGilvary on a survey trip to the northern cities of Lampang, Lamphun, and Chiang Mai. They left Bangkok on 20 November 1863 and reached Chiang Mai on 7 January 1864. The Chao Muang was on a trip to Bangkok (they had missed him on the river), but the two missionaries were very cordially welcomed by the high officials of Chiang Mai who assured them that they would be just as well received if they decided to live in Chiang Mai. McGilvary commented that Bradley's long-standing friendship with the Chao Muang helped them not a little. (11)
McGilvary and Wilson spent only ten days in Chiang Mai, returning to
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Bangkok on 6 February 1864. ( 12) McGilvary then wrote enthusiastic letters to the Board describing not only what he had seen but also the wonderful opportunity awaiting the Board in Chiang Mai. The ideas and the language of these letters find their place in the long tradition of correspondence from the field describing the great prospects of some new goal in the North replete with resounding calls to Move Forward! The door is open, McGilvary wrote, and it is God's time. We must depend upon the "divine agency" and trust in God. He urged that Chiang Mai was a distinctly Presbyterian responsibility. It was a special calling for the Presbyterians alone... It is a special opening! How can we let this opportunity pass? A nation, a race is waiting for us! How often northern missionaries in later years wrote in nearly this same way: Always the urgency, the pleas that this, this! is the time... God is calling.' Give us permission! Hurry! As in later cases so now, the ones calling for expansion acknowledged that limiting factors existed, considerations that might make the Board hesitate and then still issued a clarion call for Trust in God. In his request for the Board's sanction for Chiang Mai, McGilvary wrote in this same way. ( 13)
That sanction came in September 1864, but so did one problem after another. Sophia McGilvary was ill for a good part of the year. There were problems with lack of funding and of personnel. Wilson returned to the United States after both his wife and daughter died. Two years passed. (14)
Things finally came together in late August and early September of 1866. Wilson returned from his furlough; and he went to visit McGilvary in Phet Buri to consult on the proposed Laos Mission. He brought with him news that Kawilorot, again in Bangkok, had been suddenly called back to Chiang Mai and was about to leave. Since McGilvary knew that everything depended upon Kawilorot's permission, he flew off to Bangkok and spent a whirlwind, exciting week consulting with Kawilorot, Siamese officials, the U.S. Consul, and his mission colleagues. At the end of that week, he had permission from everyone concerned to go as soon as possible after the rains stopped to open the "Laos Mission". (15) Presbyterian work in Chiang Mai was about to begin.
Hot. Dusty. Chiang Mai in April: the heat clings to the land... no comfort.. at night or in the shade..no getting away from the heat anywhere. The two older McGilvarys and their two small children landed in Chiang Mai on the third of April to live in a crowded little guest sala (rest house) in the hottest
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month of the year. Chiang Mai in 1867 was weeks away from "civilization", an outpost of the old Asia. The McGilvarys became her first permanent Western residents, and heat was not their only problem. Milling crowds of silent, gawking visitors for months and months swarmed around the tiny open sala. People watched them eat; listened to them talk; watched them at prayer. They had precious little privacy even a year later. 
Daniel McGilvary
Although the constant attention must have weighed upon them, the missionary couple also relished this attention because it gave them an opportunity to talk with the people, to engage them in conversations that often led around to the topic of religion. They spent hours and hours in conversations. McGilvary practiced what medicine he could. They also visited and received visits from the Chaos and even the Chao Muang himself. Everywhere they
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were well received, and what appeared to be a hopeful and auspicious beginning was made in those first months in Chiang Mai. ( 16)
The excitement of those early months was soon tainted by a growing uncertainty in the McGilvary's relationship with the Chao Muang. Kawilorot was widely respected and feared as a capable but sometimes unpredictable despot who ruled his land with a firm hand. Without his support, the new mission could not have been started, and without his support, it could not continue. By the end of the year, McGilvary reported to New York that Kawilorot appeared to be less supportive than at first. He had acquired an anti-missionary Portuguese advisor who went out of his way to influence his patron to hold the same attitude. McGilvary surmised that he lost some of the Chao Muang's support when one of his grandchildren died after having been inoculated by McGilvary. (17) In light of later events, we may also assume that the Chao Muang had not expected that his people would respond so favorably to the presence of these foreigners. He observed that in Bangkok people showed little interest in the foreign religion of the missionaries. The first Siamese convert being won only after some thirty years of effort. His own people responded very differently.
That difference became more-and-more clear throughout 1867 and into 1869. There would never again be such a hopeful, exciting time in the history of missionary work in northern Thailand. In February 1868, the Wilsons arrived, and in April, as a symbol of their hope, the missionaries established the first church in northern Thailand. Although no one had yet converted at the time, the prospects were bright. By September 1868, Kawilorot became friendlier again (at least outwardly) to the missionaries, and he even selected a site for the mission compound. Sophia McGilvary held a regular Sandy afternoon class of a group of women interested in the new faith, and McGilvary found an increasingly warm response to his medical skills. Most important of all, a "tall, comely, earnest" man with a "taste for scientific information" was close to converting. (18)
He did, in fact, convert. Nan Inta spent many hours in conversation with the McGilvarys about both religion and the wider world. The things he heard were attractive to him, but what most impressed him was when McGilvary correctly predicted an eclipse in August 1868. That prediction called into question all of his own beliefs about the world, and after much personal struggle and serious thought Nan Inta became a Christian. Since he was a well-known and
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widely respected man with a reputation for sincerity in searching for truth, popular interest in the new religion redoubled with his conversion, especially as he was also a relative of the royal family. ( 19)
Sophia McGilvary
The new year, 1869, opened with great hope for the mission. The history of the church in northern Siam began on the first Sunday of 1869, January third, when Nan Inta received baptism. At that time, at least two members of the royal family also showed serious interest in Christianity, and other converts were on the way. (20) In May, Noi Sunya (* *) and Nai ("Mr.") Boon Ma were baptized. In June, Saen (an official rank) Ya Wichai was also
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baptized, and two months later, in August, another three converts—Nan Chai, Pu Sang, and Noi Kanta —all received baptism. Along with Nan Inta, three of these last six converts came from what we might consider the "middle class" of Chiang Mai society. Noi Sunya was a well-known traditional doctor and the chief herdsman for the Chao Muang's cattle herds. Saen Ya Wichai served as a government officer, lived several days' travel north of Chiang Maim and was a client of the Chao Muang of Lamphun. Years later. McGilvary wrote that in point of time Saen Ya Wichai actually accepted the Gospel before even Nan Inta, and McGilvary honored him with the title, "the first Laos believer." Nan Chai was a widely respected Buddhist scholar and a former abbot of a temple who gave up his paid position as caretaker of a temple in order to join the church. (21) Thus, four of the first seven converts were men of position and influence. People knew them, and their conversions gained increased respect for the new religion.
McGilvary and Wilson began to make definite plans for the expansion of the church in northern Siam. Among other things, they asked the Siam Presbytery in Bangkok, nominally the supervising body for their Chiang Mai church, for permission to start churches without having to wait for prior permission from the presbytery, which met only yearly in distant Bangkok. (22) The mission in Chiang Mai expected a great influx into the new faith to take place shortly, and as a further step anticipating that growth, the mission prepared a course of study to train some of the converts for the ordained ministry. The course was to start in October 1869. At the same time, Noi Sunya planned to start a second church in his village a few miles outside of Chiang Mai. (23)
In just a little over two years, the Chiang Mai mission accomplished far more than the Siam Mission in Bangkok had achieved in twenty long years. The McGilvarys and Wilsons expected great things to happen. Thus, when they heard a rumor in September 1869 that the Chao Muang was laying plans to move against the tiny Christian community they discounted the talk as nothing more than "silly rumor." (24)
(25) At least one other person agreed with the McGilvarys and Wilsons that Christianity was on the verge of making serious inroads into traditional religion in Chiang Mai. Kawilorot. We cannot be certain about his thoughts in the months prior to September 1869, but it is quite likely that McGilvary commented on the
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matter correctly: Kawilorot feared the loss of the old order and his own power. Christianity represented a new set of beliefs and allegiances, which questioned the supremacy of traditional beliefs and allegiances. Kawilorot must have followed with no little concern the problems Nan Inta's patron experienced after Nan Inta became a Christian/ In late January 1869, the patron called him for service, a traditional and mandatory obligation on the part of a client. On this occasion, Nan Inta politely refused to go because it was a Sunday. He could not work on the Sabbath and remain a Christian. The patron did not make an issue of the matter and allowed Nan Inta to makeup the work on another day. However, after this incident was repeated and the patron found that he could not call his client to work on a Sunday, the patron began to grumble. ( 26)
The right of the patron to call his client to serve him was fundamental to the social structure of Chiang Mai. The corvée labor system replaced taxation as the means by which the authorities secured their power. Nan Inta demonstrated that his new allegiance and faith meant more to him than the traditional system to which he had previously adhered. This must have been an ominous development to Kawilorot, made even more dangerous because foreigners known to be friendly to Bangkok promoted the idea. As an astute ruler, Kawilorot could not have missed the ramifications and potential dangers inherent in the popularity of Christianity.
How clearly the missionaries understood the threat they posed to the ruling powers is hard to tell. The evidence suggests that they did not understand the seriousness of the situation they created nearly as fully as did one of the converts, namely Nan Chai. In fact, in the first ten days or so of September 1869 things seemed to be going very well. Early in the month, Nan Chai applied to the daughter of the Chao Muang to receive him as her client since he had left temple employment and needed a legal patron. McGilvary went with him when he made the application, and he was closely examined by the Chao regarding his beliefs. The missionaries remembered the communion shared on the following Sunday, 5 September 1869, as a particularly happy occasion; all of the converts were present and everything seemed bright and hopeful.
But the future was not really so bright after all. On that Sunday, the first hints of rumors reached the missionaries that the Chao Muang planned to take action against the converts. Still, they did not expect any violence, especially since the rumors indicated only that the converts would be forced into exile. Such an exile might even provide an opportunity to spread the Gospel to new places. Less opti-
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mistic than the missionaries, Nan Chai grew more-and-more depressed as the early days of September passed. Nothing that the missionaries said lifted him from his despondency. On Saturday, 11 September 1869, he came into Chiang Mai to receive the papers that made him legally a client of the daughter of Kawilorot, and he paid the traditional three rupees required. This should have pleased him since it meant that he was now under her protection, but he continued to feel depressed.
That very day, the 11th, Nan Chai received word from his wife that the head man (ka ban) to his village wanted to see him immediately about collecting a piece of timber for the city wall that was required of everyone in the village. Nan Chai received the message during the evening, and early the next morning, the 12th, he rushed off through flood-swollen streams and muddied paths to his village, Mae Pu Kha, without even waiting to attend worship. After he arrived home at about noontime, further word came that he should go see the district headman (nai kwan) and collect his friend Noi Sunya on the way. Noi Sunya refused to go. Although they lived within a mile of each other, they had different village headmen, and Noi Sunya's headman had not been the one to summon him. Thus, Nan Chai went on alone, and after meeting, the district headman returned home. It was already evening, and the district headman did not have time to call Noi Sunya through "proper channels."
The next morning, Monday, 13 September 1869, an armed party marched off to fetch the two Christians. Immediately after the party seized Nan Chai, his wife ran to report to the missionaries, but as she approached the mission compound an agent of her village headman stopped her and warned her that if she saw the missionaries she would be killed. She returned. Faced with an armed party, Noi Sunya and his large family immediately understood what would happen and shared in a tearful parting.
When the Christians arrived at the district headman's home, they immediately suffered an examination regarding their beliefs. They were both asked if they had entered the "foreigners' religion" to which both replied that they had. The authorities then bound them in a particularly painful way and examined them further. In the process, Nan Chai was kicked in the eye, causing it to swell up and bleed. They remained bound without relief through the rest of the day and all of that night. Nan Chai's wife appeared and spent time with him, but they could only converse in fits and snatches as the guards prevented anything more. Nan Chai told her that if the missionaries knew their situation the two converts would not be killed. At one point, he also begged the guards not to hurt the employees of the missionaries, as none of them were Christians.
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The next morning, 14 September 1869, their captors took the two Christians into the jungle. Nan Chai died at the first blow of the executioner's club. Noi Sunya finally had to be stabbed with a spear thrust before he died.
The McGilvarys and Wilsons had no idea of what was going on. They had been lulled into a false sense of security by the Chao Muang when he left on a three-week "fishing trip." In fact, he went to Lamphun to convince the Chao Muang there to execute Saen Ya Wichai. He escaped that fate only at the behest of his immediate patron who passed him off as an ignoramus who did not understand what he was doing when he became a Christian. But the missionaries knew none of this. They did know something was wrong when the personal servants of both families deserted them on the night of 13 September (Monday). But, for two weeks afterwards they had only conjecture to go on as no one dared tell them anything.
The weeks after that were filled with fear and uncertainty for the two mission families. Rumors flew, one of them having it that a most trusted servant of the mission was executed along with his entire family while en route to Bangkok on mission business The missionaries feared for their own lives and identified their situation with that of the Jewish exiles of the Old Testament whose nation was destroyed and who were carried off into exile in Babylon. McGilvary wrote, "It has been a time of the hiding of God's face. We have had to hang out harps on the willows—to weep when we remember our former years." (27) The Christian community was scattered. The servants had fled. The highest authority in the land was moving against them in the security of his own near-absolute power. The whole future of the mission hung in the balance.
(28) The mission families lived in a state of suspense and uncertainty for over two months. Outwardly, they carried on as if nothing had happened, and they did not discuss their fears even in front of their children. They felt the sympathetic support of a number of friends in Chiang Mai including the abbot of a temple and some members of royalty. But the uncertainty remained. In the meantime, they sent word of their situation to the mission community in Bangkok where Bradley and members of the Presbyterian mission immediately arranged a conference with the Regent. The Regent agreed to send a special delegation headed by a "Commissioner" (ka luang) to accompany any missionaries who might want to go to Chiang Mai. The Siam Mission selected The Revs. N.A. McDonald and S.C. George to go.
15
The Chiang Mai missionaries knew nothing about these arrangements until they had word in late November 1869 that a royal delegation and two foreigners had reached Lamphun and were on their way to Chiang Mai. They arrived in the late afternoon of the next day. The Siamese Commissioner carried with him a royal letter addressed to Kawilorot, and arrangements for an audience were quickly made.
28 November 1869. 9:00 AM. Prior to the appointed time for the audience, the Chiang Mai missionaries and their two Bangkok colleagues met for a strategy planning session at which they agreed that the entire matter of the executions had to be brought out into the open no matter what the consequences. With that resolve, they marched off with the procession led by the royal letter to meet with Kawilorot. The audience began quietly enough although McDonald, whom McGilvary called a "naturally timid man," felt that Kawilorot looked pale with suppressed rage. However, when he read the royal letter, there was little of consequence in it; it ordered him to allow the missionaries to stay in Chiang Mai or to leave as they saw fit, and to facilitate their staying or leaving. He was ordered to not harm them.
McDonald then spoke up saying that although the Chao Muang had originally given permission for the missionaries to come to Chiang Mai and had at first received them cordially; more lately there had been some "problems." He mentioned the fact that the servants had all run away and, again, that the missionaries had unsuccessfully sought workers for building their homes. Kawilorot retained his easy manner, replying that he had done nothing to cause these difficulties. He did mention that there had been a couple of recalcitrant slaves executed recently. They disobeyed orders to bring timber to help repair the city wall. With this, Kawilorot prepared to withdraw.
McGilvary could not allow that. He quickly spoke up, accusing the Chao Muang of not telling the truth and of having murdered the two Christians for no other reason than their religion. He charged the Chao Muang with knowing that very few others had brought in their timbers by the time the Christians were killed. In fact, many had not even yet brought in the required timbers.
Kawilorot exploded in rage. In his position of supreme power, few dared speak to him in this manner. Angrily, he declared that he had, indeed, ordered the two Christians executed because of their religion. If anyone dared become a Christian again, he would have him or her executed too. The new religion was treasonous. The missionaries could stay on in Chiang Mai only if they stopped teaching Chris-
16
tianity. It must have been a towering rage, because both McDonald and the Commissioner feared that Kawilorot would attack the missionaries physically. Kawilorot withdrew. The audience ended.
McDonald, George, and Wilson agreed (as did the Commissioner and all of the Chiang Mai friends of the missionaries) that the Chiang Mai mission could not continue, as the situation was much too insecure with Kawilorot so angry. McGilvary did not agree, but he allowed the others to send a message to Kawilorot that the two mission families would leave within a few months. They sent the same message down river to the Siam Mission in Bangkok. Wilson later went to McGilvary urging that they reestablish the Chiang Mai Station at Tak on the boundary between Siam proper and the northern States. McGilvary thought that was a very good idea—for the Wilsons. The McGilvarys were not yet ready to leave Chiang Mai.
Not long after this heated confrontation at the palace, Kawilorot began to prepare for one of his months' long trips to Bangkok. In a surprisingly cordial final audience, Kawilorot assured McGilvary he could remain in Chiang Mai at least until Kawilorot returned. McGilvary assumed that this cordial attitude had something to do with his own boldness at the first audience; and, in any event, he gained what he wanted most, namely time. McDonald and George, however, returned to Bangkok convinced that the Chiang Mai mission was ended.
Kawilorot followed them down to Bangkok. During his stay, the United States Consul did everything in his power to intervene with the Siamese government on behalf of the mission in Chiang Mai. He repeatedly asked the government to force Kawilorot to give assurances that he would not harm the missionaries. As it turned out, Kawilorot was quite ill. The Siamese government did not want to "bother" him and. instead, discussed the matter with the "Second King" (maha upharat) of Chiang Mai who was known to be friendly with the missionaries. At one point, the Bangkok government decided to call the missionaries back down to Bangkok to examine their case. However, the American Consul reminded the government that the missionaries were the victims not the perpetrators of the events in Chiang Mai. He also reminded the government that if it could not protect American citizens in Chiang Mai, it would have serious difficulties with the American government, No recall was ordered. (29)
Finally, still very ill, Kawilorot left for Chiang Mai. He never reached the city, dying virtually under its walls in late June 1870. The Chiang Mai mission was saved.
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In the midst of all of these momentous events and even before his confrontation with Kawilorot, McGilvary wrote in early November 1869 of certain prospective converts and of his conviction that, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." (30) In more recent times, McGilvary's statement of faith in the midst of turmoil has become something of a semi-sacrosanct truism among Protestant Christians in Thailand. Such belief gives an aura of association with the persecution of the early church and a flavor of awe-inspiring sacredness to what was, in fact, a bloody and lawless but very effective suppression of the Christian religion in Chiang Mai. The events of the martyrdom of Nan Chai and Not Sunya and subsequent developments as they actually took place suggest that a serious re-evaluation of those events needs to be made.
First of all, the oppression of the Christians in 1869 and the political pressure put on them for years afterwards wrought a fundamental change in who was willing to become a Christian and measurably reduced the spiritual content of conversion. Four of the first seven converts to Christianity were men who already had a secure place in their society. Others of equal status showed serious interest. McGilvary and Wilson started preparations for much larger numbers of conversions because of relatively important members of Chiang Mai society having already joined the new faith.
Thus, we must observe that the murder of these two Christians had a strong effect on who became Christians. Whereas prior to September 1869, converts were being drawn from the "middle" and "middle high" as well as lower classes, after 1869 the vast majority of converts came from the distressed lower classes and converted more for social than spiritual reasons. The later converts were most often people accused of demon possession or seriously and chronically ill individuals healed by missionary medicine. They often showed little concern with spiritual growth after they had become Christians. (31)
Secondly, Kawilorot put an end to any possibility of a mass movement to Christianity taking place. By this one cruel act taken before the Christian movement had grown large enough to absorb the impact of persecution, Kawilorot shattered its gathering momentum. In this case, the "blood of the martyrs" did not lead to further conversions but rather to a scattering of the Christians and an end to any church growth for nearly a decade. From this time onward, Christianity was the religion of the foreigners and never attracted more than a tiny fraction of the total population. Considerable weight must be given to
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this second point in light of what appeared to have been happening before September 1869.
Thirdly, these events led to a change in the relationship between the missionaries and the Christian community. Before 1869, the two mission families lived in relatively humble surroundings much like those of the people themselves and closer to the people than in later years. Living in the circumstances they did, they had not yet become the power figures that they soon would be. The mission had relatively little political pull and attracted people more often out of a genuine concern for religious beliefs than for more mundane reasons.
Here we must note the importance of the audience of November 1869 in changing the missionaries' status in society and their relationship with the church. When McGilvary called Kawilorot a liar, he challenged the most powerful figure of the old order, and did so successfully. At the same time, the Bangkok government demonstrated a certain degree of concern for and willingness to back these foreign missionaries. Thus, the McGilvarys and the Wilsons allied themselves to the growing power of Slam. As time passed, the missionaries enhanced their own status by acquiring large tracts of land, building impressive homes, and hiring considerable numbers of servants. While the Christian "movement" languished, the prestige and the status of the mission grew. As we will see, in later years the missionaries took their place in the highest levels of society and became, for all practical purposes, the real patrons of the converts. In a society sensitive to hierarchical relationships, the mission and the church could not be equal, not when most converts came from the margins of society and the missionaries stood in the top most rungs of that same social system.
Fourthly, Kawilorot succeeded in delaying the development of a Christian community for a decade even as he succeeded in destroying the attractiveness of the new faith for those with a stake in society. This decade-long delay further changed the relationship between the mission and the church. The mission worked with churches that grew only slowly in a social situation that discouraged growth. Significant growth in numbers came only after the mission was well established.
An entirely different kind of church might have emerged in the North if Kawilorot had not moved against the church so quickly and decisively. Since the mission consisted of only two families and significant reinforcements were years away, the mission would have had to rely much more heavily on indige-
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nous leadership. Indeed, it was preparing to do so. It could not have dominated the churches as it later did. Nor would there have been the time to create a system of church life and government so dependent on the mission itself. It is likely that instead of the mission-focused church that actually came into being the Christian movement might have became a church-focused one.
In conclusion, then, we are struck by a number of observations. Kawilorot in fact, took decisive and effective action to secure his power in the face of the threat of the new religion. He stopped the spread of Christianity, killed some of its best leaders, and destroyed the attractiveness of the alternative faith. He did all of this before the church grew large enough to embrace martyrdom as a means of strengthening the faith. The martyrs did not become the seed of the church.
On the other hand, Christianity before September 1869 had the potential to expand rapidly in northern Siam. It became a sufficiently potent threat to drive Kawilorot to quash it. Something in the unpretentious presentation of the new religion by the mission in its first years caused a growing number of people to withdraw from traditional religion and identify with the new faith.
Finally, then, we must observe that Kawilorot brought a serious change to the course of northern Thai church history. It was an unmitigated disaster for the church, which it has not recovered from to this day. The events of September and November 1869 have shaped the modern church in the North more than any other events because they literally changed the way the church began.
And one of the reasons that Kawilorot's action against the emerging church proved to be so effective was because the repression of the church in Chiang Mai and other parts of the North did not end with his death
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Chapter 1 :