Meanwhile, the mission work at Shandia was progressing nicely. Ed and Marilou were preparing to occupy a second outstation at a place called Arajuno, an old Shell Oil exploration base. Located just across the river from a large Quichua Indian village, the base had been abandoned in 1949. The McCullys planned to establish a school and church among the Quichua there. But before they could move, a house had to be built for the family at the site. Fortunately, the Shell Oil Company had left behind a well-formed, packed-sand airstrip, and Nate had offered to fly Ed in and out of the site and help him build a house there for the family. With the new house nearly complete and the McCully family getting ready to move into it, Betty found herself confronting some difficult questions.
While Arajuno was located opposite a large Quichua village, it was also located just outside Auca territory. Long ago Jim had confided to Betty that his ultimate dream was to reach the Auca Indians with the gospel. But the Aucas were not like the Quichuas, who wore Western-style clothing and were friendly toward outsiders. The Aucas wore only a woven string around their waist and had balsa wood plugs in the lobes of their ears. They also had a fearsome reputation as vicious killers. Their mentality seemed to be kill or be killed—not only other Aucas but also outsiders, including Shell Oil Company workers. The brutal attacks were one of the reasons the company had decided to abandon its base at Arajuno.
On numerous evenings at Shandia, Jim, Ed, and Pete had sat together talking about the Aucas and strategizing about the best way to make friendly contact and take the gospel to them. Now that the work at Shandia was progressing well, Betty wondered what might lie ahead for her and Jim. What would happen if they did make friendly contact with the Aucas? Was she prepared to take Valerie and go and live with them? If reaching them was really Jim’s vision, could she embrace that vision as well?
Betty was not sure of the answers to those questions, and she was grateful that, for the time being, she did not have to make any decisions. There was still plenty of work at Shandia to keep her and Jim busy.
Chapter 15
Operation Auca
There’s been an Auca attack at Arajuno!” Jim told Betty as she hung out the laundry to dry. “Marj just sent word on the radio.”
Betty put down the clothespins and turned to face her husband. “What else did she say?”
“That they killed a Quichua mother and her two children and took off with a stolen canoe.”
The news of the attack had a chilling effect on the young missionary couples at Shandia. The men had been talking for weeks about strategies for making contact with the Aucas and reaching out to them with the gospel. The McCully family were in the final stages of preparing to move to Arajuno—the very place where the Aucas had killed a defenseless woman and her two children. No one said it, but it was easy to imagine Marilou and her two children in that same situation.
It was time for them all to seriously pray about the situation. Betty knew that everyone was aware that reaching out and making contact with the Aucas was a risky thing to do—foolhardy even—unless God specifically spoke to them and guided them forward.
After praying about the matter, the McCullys did finally move to Arajuno, but not before Nate had set up an electric fence around their new house that the family could use for protection at night. The Aucas had never encountered electricity, and an unexpected zap from the fence would surely deter them from coming any closer.
At the same time, Pete and his new bride, Olive, who had recently returned to the Oriente from the United States, decided to go and man the outpost at Puyupungu. The vision of Shandia being the hub in a wheel of mission outposts was becoming a reality.
Betty and Jim were busier than ever at Shandia running a school, church, and part-time medical clinic. In July 1955, Jim’s brother Bert and his wife, Colleen, came to visit from Peru. Jim and Betty took the opportunity to show Bert and Colleen all the things that had happened since they had moved to Shandia. They all stood and watched as fourteen people were baptized in the river, and Nate was able to fly them around to the mission outposts to encourage the missionaries there. On the trip they learned the McCullys had not encountered any hostile Aucas and that they had made many friends among the Quichua Indians in the area.
Still, at the back of everyone’s mind was the idea that one day—somehow—God was going to bring the gospel to “the neighbors,” as Ed liked to call the Aucas.
Things began to fall into place on September 15, 1955, when Nate and Ed were flying over the jungle. From the air Ed spotted a cultivated clearing ringed with thatched-roof huts. The men had found a group of elusive Aucas!
Two weeks later Jim and Betty learned that a second Auca village, only fifteen minutes from Arajuno, had been spotted from the air. It was astonishing to the Elliots that Auca settlements had been spotted twice in two weeks. Nate had spent seven years flying over the same jungle and had never seen any signs of them before. Was God trying to tell them something? Was He perhaps leading them to prepare for contact with this Stone Age tribe? Neither Betty nor Jim knew for sure, but they both were excited about the possibilities that lay ahead.
After the discovery of the two Auca villages, things began to move quickly. Ed and Nate continued to fly over the Auca settlements, even dropping gifts to the people below. To do this they used a unique spiral-line drop system that Nate had developed. This involved lowering a bucket on a line from a circling airplane. As the bucket neared the ground, its swinging motion would get smaller and smaller until the bucket was almost still while the plane circled above. This meant that gifts could be sent down to the Aucas, who in turn could place things in the bucket if they wanted to. It was a red-letter day when Nate sent word that the neighbors had sent up a parrot in the bucket!
The work at Shandia continued. Betty and Jim were in the process of discipling about twenty Quichua Christians, many of whom were now able to read for the first time. The Quichuas attended group Bible studies and one-on-one sessions with the Elliots to improve their skills. Jim and Betty hoped that soon these local Christians would be able to take over the work of preaching and teaching in the church. They realized that this was the fastest and best way to grow the local church. Also, a new building was taking shape at Shandia. A cement floor had just been poured for a new and permanent schoolhouse. In addition, keeping the airstrip in good repair was no easy task in the dense jungle.
In October, Jim made a four-hour trek to Hacienda Ila, where Dayuma, an Auca woman, lived. Betty would have loved to accompany him, but they did not want to raise suspicions about their possible efforts to make contact with the Aucas.
Ordinarily, Rachel Saint, Nate’s older sister, lived on the plantation at Hacienda Ila, where she was working with Dayuma to decode the Auca language. Nate had indicated that Rachel was away for a time, attending a conference in Quito. Rachel was a missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators. She had worked among the Shapra Indians in Peru for many years. When Ecuador’s president invited Wycliffe missionaries to come and work in his country, Rachel had made the move to Ecuador. She, too, had a deep desire to see the gospel spread among the Aucas. When she learned about an Auca woman named Dayuma living and working at Hacienda Ila, she came to live at the hacienda and learn all she could about the Auca language from Dayuma.
After much soul-searching, those involved in Operation Auca (as their plan to make contact with the Aucas was now called) agreed that it would be best to keep their plan secret. Anyone not immediately involved in it did not need to know what was going on, and that included Rachel Saint.
So with Rachel away, Jim made his trip to Hacienda Ila. He was very excited upon his return from his visit with Dayuma. He told Betty that Dayuma had fled the Auca tribe as a young child, and although she’d forgotten some Auca words, she was very helpful. Jim pulled out his black notebook and began reading to Betty a list of phrases Dayuma had taught him.
“Biti miti punimupa means ‘I like you. I want to be your friend.’ Biti winki pungi amupa means ‘I want to come near you’ or maybe ‘Let’s get together.’ I am not sure yet. And if I say Awum irimi, that means ‘What is your name?’”
Betty was fascinated by the first few words of this new language. She decided that if Jim visited Dayuma again, she would go with him. In her heart she knew that it was more a question of when than if. Jim had come back too excited to even eat dinner. All he could talk about was the way these simple phrases would help him and the other men reach the Aucas.
As December rolled around, Jim took some flights with Nate, and he was able to see the Aucas for himself. He even got to speak to the Aucas over a loudspeaker, repeating some of the phrases he’d learned from Dayuma. Betty watched as his eyes glistened when he told her about the experience.
One day Betty decided to ask her husband the question that had been haunting her for weeks now. “Jim, I understand that someone has to bring the gospel to the Aucas, but I need to ask you this: are you sure that you are supposed to go?”
“I am called,” Jim replied simply.
Betty nodded. That was all she needed to know. The mission was a dangerous one. There was no doubt that one or all of the men could lose their lives in the process. But if Jim knew beyond a doubt that he was called to go, Betty was sure she could live with whatever the outcome might be.
A few days later, Betty trekked to Hacienda Ila with Jim. She was delighted to meet Dayuma, whom she discovered also spoke fluent Quichua. Betty studied Dayuma, a short, dark woman with high cheekbones. The only thing that really marked Dayuma as different from the Quichua Indians working at Hacienda Ila was her earlobes. As young children, Aucas had their ears pierced, and small balsa wood plugs were inserted into the holes. Over time these balsa wood plugs were changed for larger plugs until by the time the children were teenagers, the holes in their earlobes were the size of a silver dollar. Dayuma’s earlobes were the same, except that she no longer wore plugs in her ears. As a result, her earlobes were loose and dangly.
Dayuma told Betty about fleeing from her tribe when another Auca killed her father. She said that she feared for her life in the bloody round of revenge killing that was sure to follow her father’s death. For the past eight years she had worked on the plantation at Hacienda Ila.
By the time Betty and Jim left the hacienda to trek back to Shandia, Jim had many more Auca phrases jotted down in his black notebook.
The Elliots spent Christmas 1955 with the McCullys and the Flemings at Arajuno. Most of the conversation during their stay centered around Operation Auca. Nate had reported to the men that he’d found a sandy beach on the Curaray River near one of the Auca settlements. He was confident that he could land his Piper Cruiser on the beach. The plan to venture into Auca territory and make first contact with the people was unfolding better than anyone could have imagined.
The plan called for Nate to fly the men to the beach, which they now referred to as Palm Beach, on the Curaray River. The men would build a house in a tree at the end of the beach in which they would sleep at night. During the day they would wait on the beach for the Aucas to come to them so that they could make contact with them. They hoped that the list of Auca phrases Jim had collected and practiced would help them communicate that they had come in peace and meant the Aucas no harm. In the evening Nate would fly back to Arajuno and sleep the night there, leaving the others to spend the night in the tree house on Palm Beach. Nate was concerned about leaving the airplane on the beach overnight. If it rained in the night, the river could flood and wash the aircraft away. Or under the cover of dark the Aucas could damage or destroy the plane.
