Meanwhile, back at Shell Mera, Nate had a challenge of his own. A missionary couple were planning to move to the abandoned Shell Oil exploration base at Arajuno, and Nate had offered to help them get set up there. It would also be the closest he’d ever been to Auca territory.
Chapter 11
Ruins of Arajuno
In early 1955, Nate touched down the wheels of the Piper Cruiser on the overgrown airstrip at Arajuno. Ed McCully sat in the seat beside Nate, his six-foot-two-inch frame slightly hunched over. Ed strained for a first look at his new home. Arajuno was an abandoned Shell Oil exploration base near a large Quichua Indian village. Like all Shell Oil bases, including Shell Mera, Arajuno had a wonderful packed sand airstrip. It was overgrown with weeds at present, but it could easily be reclaimed. That was more than could be said for the buildings. Arajuno was a ghost town. Once there had been brick houses boasting running water and electricity, as well as a tennis court, a bakery, a narrow gauge railroad, even a hotel. But Shell had abandoned Arajuno in 1949, and by now most of the buildings had rotted away, and a blanket of vines and creepers draped over everything that hadn’t rotted.
As Nate poked around the abandoned site, it made him think of his childhood. He and his brothers would have had a wonderful time exploring something like this. Maybe they would even have gotten the narrow gauge railroad working again. After prodding around for a while, Nate turned his attention back to Ed.
Ed and his wife, Marilou, had a lot of work ahead of them building a house from the ruins of Arajuno for themselves and their two small children. But Nate, intrigued by the adventure of rebuilding a ghost town, was already busy thinking about which of the old foundations would be best to use for the McCullys’ new home. Of course, mixed with the adventure was the sobering knowledge that Arajuno was on the Auca side of the river, just outside Auca territory. Ed and Marilou planned to work with the local Quichua Indians on the other side of the river. One day, though, they hoped they would be able to make contact with the Aucas: friendly contact, that is.
Shell Oil Company workers at Arajuno had had some “unfriendly” contact with the Aucas. Two years before Arajuno was abandoned by Shell, three workers were killed there by Auca warriors. Two of them were Quichua Indian workers, and the third was a European man. The workers had been ambushed near the settlement and speared to death. After that it became difficult for Shell to find Quichua workers willing to cross the river from their village to work in Arajuno. A year later, the Aucas attacked again. This time they speared eight workers to death. Not surprisingly, it became almost impossible for Shell to attract any Indian workers to Arajuno after that, and so the decision was made to pull out and close the base.
As Nate and Ed worked on the new house, they never forgot they were at the edge of Auca territory. They were continually watching out for Aucas, who were easy to tell apart from the Quichuas. Although both groups were short and had jet black hair and coffee-colored skin, Quichuas wore Western style clothes, while the Aucas wore only a woven string around their waist and huge balsa wood plugs in the lobes of their ears.
Rachel had told Nate that the Aucas knew the power of the white man’s gun and were afraid of it. None of the Shell Oil workers who had been killed were carrying guns. When he was alone at Arajuno, Nate worked with a small revolver tucked in his belt. At first it gave him a sense of safety, but then he began to wonder whether the Aucas would even recognize the small revolver as a firearm. It didn’t look at all like a rifle, the most common gun in the jungle. Nate also wondered how safe it would keep him, since he knew he could never shoot to kill anyone, even an Auca warrior. The most he would allow himself to consider was shooting a would-be attacker in the leg, and then only as a last resort.
When the new house at Arajuno reached the roof stage, Nate decided to use a system he’d worked out when he was back in the United States on furlough. The system provided a safe way to transport lengths of aluminum sheeting on the underside of the plane. The aluminum sheets were especially useful for roofing. Nate worked out how to rig a rope sling under the plane. A partially inflated air mattress served as a buffer between the seven-foot aluminum sheets and the plane. The rope sling was tied in such a way that if one corner of it broke for any reason, the whole sling would drop off, and the aluminum sheets would drop to the ground instead of dangling dangerously under the plane’s fuselage. However, anytime a pilot does something with an airplane that it’s not built to do, there is risk involved. Nate was willing to take that risk himself, but he never let anyone else fly in the plane with him while he was using the sling to transport aluminum sheeting: That would be an unacceptable risk.
By mid-April, the roof was on, and all the new house needed was a few finishing touches, though not the normal touches you might think. Nate rigged up an electric fence around the yard. A powerful battery-operated light was arranged to floodlight the yard. If their dog barked, Ed or Marilou could switch the light on from inside the house. Nate also installed a very loud alarm bell that he hoped would scare off intruders.
The Quichua Indians were happy to cross the river to visit the McCullys, but they never forgot they were on the Auca side of the Arajuno River. As the sun began to set over the jungle, they would say a hasty good-bye and wade back across the river to safety, leaving the missionaries to make it through the night alone.
Each week, when he flew in groceries and Ed’s Time magazine, Nate heard how the McCullys’ mission work with the Quichuas was progressing. It was quite a while before Ed became aware that Nate had been reading his Time first and then carefully slipping it back into its mailing sleeve and delivering it to Ed along with his other mail. But one time Nate forgot to put the magazine back in its sleeve and delivered an empty sleeve to Ed. Nate had to confess he’d been slipping the magazines out and reading them before bringing them to Ed. After that, Ed had a running joke with Nate about him “stealing” the mail.
Marilou, who had just found out she was pregnant again, and her two toddlers often brought cookies and lemonade out to the plane where she and Ed and Nate would talk for a while. All too soon though, Nate’s wristwatch alarm would sound, indicating it was time for him to be off to his next stop.
Wherever Nate flew, he took news from one missionary to another. Ed and Marilou McCully loved to hear what was happening with other missionaries, especially the Elliots and the Flemings. They all worked with the same Plymouth Brethren missionary society, called Christian Missions in Many Lands.
Jim and Betty Elliot, and their new baby, Valerie, lived twenty minutes by air north of Shell Mera at a place called Shandia. Jim and Betty were a high-energy couple who threw themselves into whatever work they had to do. The Elliots had met at Wheaton College, where Jim was an honor student and school wrestling champion.
Pete Fleming and his new wife, Olive, lived at Puyupunga, seven minutes by air southeast of Shell Mera. Pete had a master’s degree in English literature and excelled in golf and basketball, two sports he didn’t get to practice much in the jungle! Pete was always happiest spending his days with a sketch board and a pen teaching Quichuas to read the Bible for themselves.
There was also a large Gospel Missionary Union station at Macuma, thirty-five minutes by plane southeast of Shell Mera. Macuma station was run by longtime missionaries Frank and Marie Drown. Frank had helped Nate build the MAF house at Shell Mera, and he and Nate had become good friends. The Drowns worked with the Jivaro, an infamous head-shrinking Indian tribe. The Jivaro were called headshrinkers for a very good reason. When they killed an enemy, which was quite often, they cut off his head and shrunk it. The process they used to do this was secret, but they were more than willing to show people the results of their handiwork, which were perfectly preserved human heads, each a little larger than a baseball.
Roger and Barbara Youderian also lived at Macuma. They had been there since 1953 and helped the Drowns with their work among the Jivaro.
Nate loved to visit all of them and bring encouraging news from the other missionaries working in the Oriente.
There was one other place Nate loved to fly to as well. Unfortunately, he couldn’t land there because there was no airstrip. Even so, every couple of weeks he would point the Piper Cruiser east towards Hacienda Ila. He would fly low over the main house and drop letters and goodies for Rachel. He often prayed for her as he flew. It seemed almost impossible to think that God would make a way for her to live among some of the most violent and unpredictable people on earth. But Nate knew Rachel was stubborn, and if she believed God had called her to the Aucas, she would do whatever it took to get there.
For Nate, Monday, September 19, 1955, started out like any other day. Baskets of fruit, sacks of flour, and cans of kerosene had been weighed and loaded into the Piper Cruiser. Nate fueled the plane and examined the runway. Before long he was in the air and headed for Arajuno to deliver supplies to the McCullys. It was a beautiful, clear morning, and Nate estimated visibility was about seventy-five miles in any direction. By the time he’d landed the Piper at Arajuno, he had an idea. Why not take Ed up with him in the plane and see if they could spot an actual Auca settlement. Nate normally flew around Auca territory, but visibility was so good, it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.
Once the supplies were unloaded, Nate suggested his plan to Ed, who also was eager to see if they could spot some of their “neighbors.” Nate soon had the plane back in the air and headed east across Auca territory. Ed peered down on the sea of green trees below them. They followed a river for about fifty miles before turning north. Ed strained to see signs of life below. He saw a giant tapir sunning himself on a beach along the river. He also saw several anteaters and a flock of lime green parrots, but no sign of people. Or was there? Ed had Nate loop the plane around for another pass. Had the land below been a garden at some stage? It was hard to know, because in the jungle, within a few weeks, climbing and creeping plants swallowed up almost everything. But there was a large opening among the trees below that had probably been cleared by humans at some stage.
Nate would have liked to have stayed longer flying over the area, but he still had deliveries to make to some of the other mission stations before the day was over. It was hard to leave without having found an Auca village, but Nate finally turned the nose of the Piper westward towards Arajuno. As he did so, he thought he saw something in the distance, about five miles off the left side of the plane. He pointed it out to Ed, but Ed couldn’t see anything. Was it Nate’s imagination working overtime, or had he really seen something? He had to check it out!
It took only a few minutes before they were over the spot where Nate thought he’d seen something. His heart was racing. And sure enough, there it was, a small clearing planted with manioc and several small Auca houses. Ed and Nate whooped and hollered with delight. They had found the Aucas. They flew around in circles for about fifteen minutes, never going down too close to the ground for fear of frightening the Aucas.
On the trip back to Arajuno, Nate and Ed discussed their discovery. Ed thought there must be more than one Auca settlement, because it was a long walk from there to Arajuno. Nate wasn’t so sure; all jungle people were good walkers. In the end, they decided it would be best to keep their discovery secret. Who knew what might happen if the military, the Quichuas, or the media knew the exact whereabouts of this village.
