Then in July 1958, Betty received some welcome news. Rachel and Dayuma were back in the Oriente and staying at Limoncocha, situated in the jungle thirty miles north of the Rio Napo and close to Auca territory. Wycliffe Bible Translators’ new operational headquarters for Ecuador was located there, and once she had settled in, Rachel invited Betty to bring Mintaka and Maengamo to stay at Limoncocha with them.
As soon as the airplane pulled to a halt at the end of the airstrip at Limoncocha, Mintaka and Maengamo burst out to greet Dayuma. Betty could scarcely believe the speed at which the Auca women spoke. Their speech was rapid-fire, as if the words were being shot from a machine gun.
The three Auca women had a lot to talk about. They sat under a kapok tree and talked late into the night, reliving old times and catching each other up on what they had done since leaving the tribe. They were up again at first light, back under the kapok tree talking some more.
For their part, Betty and Rachel were able to compare language notes and solve some of the problems they each were having untangling the Auca language and reducing it to writing.
In the end, the five women all spent two months together at Limoncocha. Then one day Mintaka, Maengamo, and Dayuma came and spoke with Betty and Rachel.
“I promised my people I would come back when the kapok is ripe. It is ripe now,” Maengamo said. “I am leaving. I am going home.”
“What will you do when you get there?” Betty asked.
“I will say to my brother, ‘Don’t be afraid. I have lived with Gikari; she is good. She does not kill. Do not kill her. I will bring her to live with us. She will show us God’s carvings.’ I will tell them to clear the land for a woodbee [airplane], build Gikari a house. And not to be afraid. Do not lie, do not kill, do not be afraid.”
The next day the three Auca women were still adamant that they were leaving, and Betty and Rachel helped them plan. It was agreed that Betty and Valerie would fly with them to Arajuno and send them on their way home from there.
It was a hard parting for Betty as she watched the three Auca women who had become her friends walk off the edge of the Arajuno airstrip and into the jungle. She prayed fervently that they would soon come back for her.
Chapter 18
At Home with the Waorani
September 25, 1958, was a bright, sunny day in the Oriente. Marj Saint was visiting Betty at Shandia. She had traveled down from Quito, where she now ran the missionary guesthouse at World Radio Missionary Fellowship. The two women sat inside Betty’s small but comfortable hut and talked leisurely. Marj told Betty all about running the guesthouse in Quito, about how her children loved the city, and about the odd assortment of people who passed through the guesthouse. Of course, Marj wanted to know about Betty’s encounter with the Auca women, and Betty filled her in on all the details. They then discussed Betty’s new book, Shadow of the Almighty, which had just been published. Betty explained that she had found such a rich depository of fact, inspiration, and meditation in Jim’s diary entries. In this book she had gone back and told about more of Jim’s life, using his diary entries and letters as a foundation for the text.
It was late morning when Betty gathered up their coffee cups and then headed outside. As she lay her newly washed clothes on the grass to dry in the sun, she looked up and saw three Quichua women nervously approaching her. “Welcome,” she said. “What brings you here?”
“Nothing. We have come for no reason,” one of the Quichua women replied.
Betty nodded. She had learned that this was the standard greeting, even if they had something very important to report. “Have you seen the Aucas?” she asked the three women.
“Yes! Several of them have just come out of the jungle about half an hour’s walk from here,” one of the women said, pointing in the direction beyond the airstrip.
Betty raced into action. “Marj,” she yelled as she ran toward her hut, “the Aucas have returned. Let’s go!”
Betty grabbed her camera, scooped up Valerie, and headed toward the airstrip, with Marj close on her heels. They were partway down the airstrip when Betty heard the unmistakable sound of singing—in English!
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Betty instantly recognized Dayuma’s voice. Dayuma had returned for them!
Betty watched with elation as three women, Dayuma, Mintaka, and Maengamo, broke through the tall grass at the edge of the airstrip. Betty counted four more Auca women and two boys trailing behind them.
When she saw Betty, Maengamo raced to her and enveloped her in a big hug. Soon everyone was gathered around Betty and Marj, and the introductions began.
Betty then led the odd-looking assortment of naked and nearly naked people back to her hut. Before she had even finished feeding them, word had spread that the Aucas were back, and a small crowd of Quichuas gathered outside Betty’s hut. The crowd grew as the afternoon progressed. The Auca group stayed the night with Betty, and in the morning still more people were peering into her hut.
Betty had to admit that it was entertaining to see these Stone Age people encounter modernity for the first time. The Aucas were fascinated with electric lights; the “fire in a box” (wood stove); the music that Betty made on her tiny portable organ; and the big, throbbing noise of the generator engine that kicked in twice a day.
The Quichua Christians at Shandia who had followed Betty’s story and knew that these were members of the tribe that had murdered their missionary were very generous. They brought gifts of bananas, sugarcane, eggs, and manioc for the guests. Betty was delighted to learn that Maruja, the kidnapped wife of Honorio, whom the Aucas had killed, had been set free. The group had returned Maruja to her mother-in-law en route to Shandia. Surely that was a good sign!
As they talked into the night, Betty learned why Maengamo, Mintaka, and Dayuma had come back. The Aucas of the Curaray had invited Betty, Valerie, and Rachel to come and live with them.
“We told them you were not cannibals, and we made them believe us,” Maengamo told Betty.
Betty agreed that this was a good start.
On October 6, 1958, Betty, Valerie, and Rachel, along with the nine Aucas and five Quichua porters, set out. Each porter had a gun strapped over his shoulder. This was one of the best and one of the worst days of her life as Betty watched Valerie’s little blonde head bobbing up and down in the backpack chair ahead of her. Betty was excited that finally, after so much prayer, effort, and sacrifice, they were headed to an Auca settlement—and at the Aucas’ invitation.
But Betty’s worst fears were stirred up when they stopped to visit Maruja at her mother-in-law’s house. The Aucas had held Maruja captive for a year, and Betty was eager to hear what she had to say about their possibility for success. Maruja was blunt. “Before long you will all be dead and eaten by vultures!” she said.
Betty pressed Maruja. “But did you learn to love the Aucas?”
Maruja shook her head. “The women, yes, but not the men. They are fierce. You cannot love them.”
At the Curaray River, the group took canoes downstream and then followed the Añangu River upstream to the Tiwaeno River. When the river got too shallow for the canoes, they set out on foot again for the last leg of the journey. It took them two days, and as she traveled, Betty wondered whether she had done the right thing, especially bringing Valerie with her. If the adults were all killed, it could be years before word got out. Betty did not like to think about what might happen to her only child in such a case. She trekked on, trusting that God was watching over her and Valerie and Rachel.
Eventually, late in the afternoon, the group rounded a bend in the trail, and there was an Auca settlement, a small cluster of thatched huts set in a clearing in the jungle. An Auca man, naked except for a strip of cotton cloth tied around his waist, stood on a log and watched the group approach. Several women stood at the entrances to the thatched huts. They all stared as the group approached the village. Betty breathed deeply as she walked past the man and into the village. Finally she was standing in an Auca settlement. She had seen such settlements from the air, but now she was on the ground in the midst of one.
Soon Betty, Valerie, and Rachel were being introduced. Dayuma introduced Betty to her sister Gimari. Betty recognized her immediately. Gimari had visited the men at Palm Beach the day before they were killed. Betty had seen her in the photos developed from Nate’s camera. And Maengamo introduced Betty to the man who had stood on the log and watched them enter the village. “This is Gikari, my brother.”
At first the Quichua guides were nervous. All they knew of the Aucas was that they were brutal killers. But as everyone was introduced, the tension they felt began to lessen. It was too late in the afternoon for them to begin their return trip, so the Quichuas cautiously agreed to spend the night in the Auca village. As far as Betty knew, this was the first time in history that the Aucas had offered hospitality to strangers. At least she hoped it was hospitality.
Everyone gathered around the fire and shared a meal of fish, and then the Quichua Christians began singing some of the hymns that Jim had composed for them. It was a surreal moment for Betty. Here she was, sitting with some of the men who had undoubtedly helped in the murder of her husband, watching them as they listened intently to songs about God’s love that one of the men they killed had written. Betty realized that the Aucas had never before heard music like this or words in a language other than their own. In fact, this was most likely the first time they had ever been near a person who was not in their tribe—except to spear him.
As darkness fell, the missionary women were offered “houses.” Rachel was invited to stay in a hut with Maengamo and Gikita, her husband. Gikita was the oldest man in the group, and Betty judged him to be about forty-five years old. She soon learned that it was rare for an Auca to reach the age of forty—most of them came to a violent end long before then.
Betty and Valerie were offered a “house” beside Gikita’s. It did not take Betty long to move in. The house consisted of four upright poles with a thatched roof. It had no covered floor or walls, and absolutely no privacy. Betty slung her few possessions into the rafters. Someone offered her a hammock, and she and Valerie slept together in it the first night.
At daybreak the following morning, Betty listened as the settlement came to life. She could hear the sound of girls filling clay water pots at the river while Gimari sang a low chant as she crouched by the fire and stirred it back to life. As the first rays of the sun began to peek through the kapok and ironwood trees that surrounded the village, birds sang and monkeys chattered.
The Quichua guides planned to leave on the return trip home early in the afternoon, and before they left, they made Valerie a simple bamboo platform bed and a table for Betty. There was no chair to go with it, but at least it provided a place off the ground for Betty to prepare Valerie’s powdered milk drinks.
Finally the Quichuas said goodbye and set out for home, leaving Betty, Valerie, and Rachel alone for the first time. Betty tried not to think about the fact that the men on Palm Beach had had friendly contact with the Aucas the day before they were killed.
Betty’s fears were not realized, and Betty was surprised at how quickly her new life found a rhythm of its own. In the morning she would lie in her hammock, taking a few notes and listening to everyone waking up and greeting one another. Then there was breakfast to prepare. She tried to eat like the Aucas as much as possible but supplemented her and Valerie’s diet with a few Western foods. She had also brought plates and spoons with her to eat from and washed them in the river after each meal. The Aucas ate their food off palm leaves with their fingers and laughed at her constant need to wash plates and utensils.
