That night, as Nate and Marj sat in their living room and sipped lemonade, with Mt. Sangay glowing in the distance, they had a lot to talk about. They wondered what the Aucas had thought when they saw the plane flying overhead. What should the next step be now that Nate and Ed had discovered the Auca encampment? Who should be involved? Whatever happened, Nate knew he wanted to be a part of it. Reaching a tribe that had never heard the gospel message before and using his airplane to do it would be like living one of the stories from the big book of missionary stories Rachel had read to him so many years ago on the roof in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
Chapter 12
Gifts That Weren’t Spewed Up
Two weeks after he and Ed McCully had sighted the Auca village, Nate was scheduled to fly Ed, Jim Elliot, and two Quichua helpers to Villano to spend time preaching to Quichua Indians. The group had gathered at Arajuno and waited for Nate. When Nate arrived, he realized the group had more equipment than he’d thought, so he would have to make two trips. Because Villano was located on the other side of the Aucas, Nate would make a total of four trips across Auca territory. He decided he would keep his eyes peeled for more Auca settlements on each trip.
Nate flew Jim Elliot and the equipment into Villano first. He kept a sharp lookout as he flew, but he saw no more settlements. On the second trip with Ed McCully and the two Quichua helpers, Nate decided to fly a little farther to the east. The weather was clear and he was ahead of schedule, so he zigzagged the plane over the jungle valleys. About fifteen minutes out from Arajuno, they hit the jackpot! Below them were at least six Auca houses in one clearing, with smaller houses dotted around the outskirts of the clearing.
It was impossible to keep the excitement of the discovery out of their voices, and although Nate and Ed spoke in English and the Quichua helpers didn’t know what they were saying, the two Quichuas were soon peering from the plane to the village below. Fear crossed their faces as they whispered the word “Auca” to each other.
Knowing that the two Quichua Indians had recognized the clearing as an Auca settlement created a problem for the missionaries. Anything could happen if the two helpers told their friends where the Auca settlement was located. Word could spread to the families of Quichua Indians who had been killed by Aucas, and they could seek revenge through a surprise attack on their enemy. That would mean the Aucas would have to kill more Quichuas in return. The bloodbath could go on for years. Somehow Ed and Nate had to convince the Quichua helpers to keep quiet about what they’d seen. As the plane taxied to a stop at the end of the Villano airstrip, Ed explained to the helpers the danger of telling their friends where the Auca village was located. They seemed to understand the importantance of saying nothing about what they’d seen, and they promised to remain quiet about it. Nate and Ed hoped they would keep their word.
Seeing the Auca village gave Nate a lot to think about as he flew back to Shell Mera alone. The Aucas were caught in a circle of violence. They killed before they listened. How could missionaries reach people who were so violent they murdered all outsiders they came in contact with? How could they get the attention of such people and, more importantly, win their trust long enough to prove they had come in peace? Nate had no answers. And he had no idea at the time that the eventual answer would involve laying down his own life to help build that bridge of trust.
On October 2, 1955, two days after Nate had dropped them off, Johnny Keenan flew back to Villano to pick up Ed McCully and Jim Elliot and take them to Arajuno. But by the time the plane reached Arajuno, the weather had turned ugly. There was a fierce crosswind blowing that whipped the trees around Arajuno from side to side. Everyone aboard the plane could see it was too dangerous to attempt a landing. There was nothing for Johnny to do but fly Ed and Jim back to Shell Mera with him and wait for better weather the next day. That night, in the Saints’ living room at Shell Mera, Nate, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot, and Johnny Keenan held a “committee” meeting to talk about everything that had happened in the past couple of weeks concerning the Aucas.
They pored over maps of the area, and all agreed that seeing not one, but two Auca settlements in the previous two weeks was amazing. Maybe, they decided, God was trying to get their attention. Could now be the time He wanted them to reach out to their “neighbors”?
Marj brought them hot cocoa and homemade cookies as they continued to talk. Each of them knew that contacting the Aucas would be a difficult and dangerous task. In fact, they weren’t altogether sure it could be done. Nate told the others everything Rachel had managed to find out about Auca culture from Dayuma at Señor Sevilla’s hacienda. For one thing, the Auca culture was based on revenge. If a member from one tribe or family was killed, it was important for the other members of that family or tribe to kill someone from the other group. It didn’t matter whether it was the person who had done the killing or a relative of the killer or someone else from the killer’s group that was executed. What was important was that someone was killed in revenge. The cycle would go on and on. It was a case of kill or be killed. And it pointed out the danger the men would be in if they tried to make contact with the Aucas. To the Aucas, these men were members of the “white man’s tribe” and could well be seen as targets of revenge for all the bad things white men had done to them over the past hundred years or more. Aucas had long memories when it came to revenge! It was a sobering thought, and one each of the four men present took to heart.
One of the ways to reduce their chance of being killed was to be able to communicate to the Aucas that they had come in peace. What they needed were some simple Auca phrases, and there was one Auca who could help them: Dayuma.
Jim Elliot’s ears pricked up; this was a job for him. He lived only a four-hour trek from Hacienda Ila, where Dayuma was living. Not only that, but of the four men, he picked up languages the fastest. He jumped into the conversation and volunteered to go to the hacienda to learn some Auca words from Dayuma. The others agreed, and Jim Elliot had his first assignment for “Operation Auca.”
The men knew that words alone wouldn’t be enough to convince the Aucas they had come in peace. Before setting foot in Auca territory, they needed to demonstrate by their actions that they meant no harm. The question was how to do this. As they talked about it among themselves, they realized that giving gifts was a symbol of friendship around the world. If they gave gifts, perhaps the Aucas would understand they wanted to be friendly.
What better way to give gifts without putting themselves in danger than to drop them from an airplane. But Nate remembered a story Rachel had told him. After the three oil exploration workers were killed by the Aucas at Arajuno, Shell Oil Company had used a plane to drop gifts as a way to try to pacify them. The only problem was that the plane had overflown Auca territory, and the Aucas had thrown spears at the plane. Of course the plane was flying too high for any of the spears to actually hit it, but the Auca warriors believed they had hit and wounded it and the gifts that were being dropped from it were being vomited from the wounded plane’s stomach! Nate and the other men would want the Aucas to know that they had sent the gifts and that the gifts weren’t being spewed out by some wounded flying monster! The bucket drop seemed to be the answer. But would the Aucas know to catch the bucket and lift the gifts out? There had to be a way to make the bucket slide off the line when it hit the ground. Nate’s first Operation Auca assignment was to devise a way to get the bucket to detach from the line so it could be left behind with the gifts in it.
It was agreed that Ed McCully would assist Nate with the bucket drop and that Johnny Keenan would free up Nate as much as possible from his regular flying duties so he could work on the project. Johnny would also serve as backup pilot for the operation if Nate was unable to do the flying for any reason.
It was after two in the morning when they finished talking about their plan and headed for bed. But even then, Nate had a hard time getting to sleep. He had two things on his mind. One was rigging the drop line so that the bucket would drop off the end when it touched the ground. The other was Rachel. Learning the Auca language and making contact with the Aucas was what she was now devoting her life to. It troubled Nate to leave her out of their group and not tell her what they were planning. He tossed and turned thinking about the situation. Finally, he decided that while Rachel may be disappointed about not being included in their plans, in the end, their making contact with the Aucas would help her to be able to live among them sooner rather than later. Besides, the men had all agreed that the fewer people who knew about their plans the better. The plan was daring and dangerous, and they didn’t want others worrying about them. Nate decided that first thing in the morning he would explain it all in a letter to Rachel. He hoped he would be able to explain it to her in person after they’d made contact, but if something went wrong, he would leave the letter for Marj to give to Rachel. Finally he fell asleep.
Nate awoke the next morning thinking about broom handles. While Johnny flew Jim Elliot and Ed McCully to Arajuno, Nate began working on a bucket release system that involved using a broom handle. By the time Johnny returned to Shell Mera, Nate was ready for some trials. He had already taken the doors off the Piper Cruiser, and with a light breeze blowing from the southeast, he gunned the plane down the airstrip and took off. Johnny sat in the copilot’s seat, holding a canvas bucket with rope and a broom handle attached to it.
As they circled Shell Mera, Nate explained to Johnny how the gadget should work. Johnny would drop the broom handle and the bucket over the side of the plane as they approached the target on the ground. The bucket was attached to the broom handle, and when the handle hit the ground at an angle, it would slide from the rope loops, releasing the bucket.
Marj and Ruth Keenan waited by the airstrip for the first tryout of the release system. They watched as the broom handle and bucket dangled nearer and nearer the ground. The bucket was twenty feet away, then ten; then the angled broom handle rested gently on the ground, releasing the tension on the drop line. The handle then slipped from the rope loops around it, leaving the bucket sitting in the middle of the runway. Marj gave Johnny a thumbs-up sign as he began to reel the rope back into the plane. The bucket had landed without a hitch. They tried the procedure several more times that day, and each time it worked perfectly.
It was only days later, on October 6, that Nate had enough spare time to try a gift drop over Auca territory. But what gift should they drop? It had to be eye-catching and useful. The Aucas still lived in the Stone Age; they hadn’t discovered how to make metal. Nate knew if they were like the Quichua Indians, they would want metal things. Metal pots were a good choice; they were strong and didn’t break like the Aucas’ clay pots did. Machetes were good, too. A tree could be cut down a hundred times faster with a machete than with a stone ax.
Marj and Nate decided a small aluminum kettle with a lid should be the first gift. In it they put a dozen brightly colored buttons. Of course, they knew the Aucas wouldn’t use them to button up their clothes—they didn’t wear any! But Marj thought they would make nice decorations. They also wrapped some salt and put it in the kettle. Nate knew from talking with Rachel that the Aucas did not know what salt was. He decided that if he gave them some salt and they worked out that it could be used to preserve meat, it would be useful to them. Last, Marj tied fifteen lengths of colored ribbon to the handle of the kettle. She thought that ribbons fluttering from the kettle as it fell to the ground would make the kettle look like a gift.
