Wednesday also brought the news Rachel feared. Johnny Keenan had flown over Palm Beach again, and this time he had spotted two bodies floating in the river about a quarter of a mile downstream. Both bodies were clad in khaki pants and white T-shirts. Since any of the men in the group could have been wearing those clothes, Johnny could not tell whose bodies they were.
By Thursday the helicopter was up and running, and it flew out to Palm Beach to search for the men. When it returned to Shell Mera, Major Nurnberg, commander of the U.S. Air Force search team, reported that the team had sighted four partially submerged bodies in the vicinity of Palm Beach.
On Friday morning Rachel watched the helicopter take off once again and head out across the jungle. She learned that the ground party had made it safely to Palm Beach and the helicopter was going to help the men on the ground locate the bodies. Rachel, along with Marj and the wives of the other four men, waited patiently for the ground party to return and report what they had found.
Two and a half days later the ground party made it back to Shell Mera. Soon after their arrival Rachel and the five wives gathered in the kitchen of Shell Merita to hear Art Johnston describe what they had found at Palm Beach.
Art reported that Thursday, January 12, 1956, was a day the men in the search party would never be able to forget, no matter how hard they tried. The men spent the first night camped outside Auca territory, and at dawn they broke camp and headed into dangerous territory. They poled their dugout canoes down the shallow, winding Curaray River, and about midmorning they met a group of Quichua Indians making their way upstream. This was a surprise, since the Indians were coming from deep in the heart of Auca territory. Frank Drown talked to them and learned that they were Christians from Arajuno, where Ed and Marilou McCully lived. When they heard of what had happened, they had put together their own search party to go after their missionary. But the news they related to Frank was not good. The Indians had found Ed’s body downstream from the airplane. One of the Quichuas had Ed’s watch with him to give to Marilou. The men had taken off one of Ed’s shoes and carried it back upstream and left it beside the remains of the airplane.
Rachel listened intently as Art relayed how, after meeting the group of Quichuas, the hopes of the search team at finding any of the men alive began to fade. The team poled on downstream, keeping a sharp watch for any movement or sound in the jungle at the side of the river that might indicate that Auca killers were nearby.
Finally, as the skies darkened with rain, the search party arrived at Palm Beach. The U.S. military helicopter brought in from Panama swooped down near them, as planned. It headed downstream a few yards and hovered. The men knew that the helicopter was signaling where the first body was. They found the body caught in a tree branch and dragged it upstream. The helicopter moved on. Within an hour the search party had recovered the bodies of four men. The bodies had been in the water too long and were unrecognizable. But watches and wedding rings told the members of the search party who they were: the bodies of Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, and Pete Fleming.
Art reported that the body of Ed McCully was nowhere to be found. The members of the search party decided that the river must have washed it away. However, they did find the shoe beside the airplane, where the Quichuas said they had thrown it. And there was no question that it was Ed’s. Ed had enormous feet and wore size thirteen and a half shoes. The shoe also confirmed that the Quichuas had indeed seen Ed’s body. There was no doubt, reported Art, that all five of the men were dead.
Rachel sat in silence as Art went on to describe how Frank had climbed an ironwood tree to the tree house the men had built, hoping to find some clue as to what had happened to provoke the gruesome killings. But alas, Frank found none.
As the skies got blacker, the members of the search party worked nervously to dig a common grave under the ironwood tree. The thirteen Ecuadorian soldiers stood guard on the perimeter of Palm Beach, facing the jungle, their fingers at the ready on the triggers of their rifles, watching for the slightest movement of the leaves.
When the rain began to fall heavily, the search party pulled sheets of aluminum from the roof of the tree house and balanced them over their heads for shelter. There was a huge crack of thunder just as the bodies were being lowered into the common grave. Frank said a short prayer aloud over the bodies. As soon as the bodies were buried, the search party set out for home. They were worried about their own safety, and as they made their way mile by mile out of Auca territory, they were alert to the crack of even a twig in the jungle, fearing it might signal that a group of Aucas were preparing to attack and kill them.
Finally Art handed over the personal items the members of the search party had collected from the bodies. At the bottom of the river the men had also found Nate’s camera, the undeveloped film still in it. Art laid the camera on the table in front of Marj.
After hearing the harrowing account of what the search party had found, Rachel knew it was time to write to her parents. She wrote:
For you two, so far away, we pray the Holy Spirit’s comforting. I told the Lord I was willing to make any sacrifice to reach these Indians—and this is the first thing He has asked of me. As you know, Nate was precious to me. We rejoice that he is in the Lord’s presence now.…
May God yet give me the privilege of going to these same Indians and translating His precious Word for them and seeing the harvest from the five grains of wheat planted way down on the Curaray River in Auca soil.
Yes, her brother was dead, killed by the very people to whom she had devoted the rest of her life to reaching with the gospel, but Rachel would not look back or second-guess her calling. Something good would come from her brother’s death. She had to believe that.
Chapter 9
Back to the Hacienda
Rachel and her new partner, Mary Sargent, marched along the jungle path in single file. It was March 1956, and Rachel was finally returning to Hacienda Ila. Huge air plants, some with leaves two to three feet wide, dangled from the tops of the trees above. Monkeys, calling to one another, played in the branches above; toucans squawked; and tree frogs croaked. Despite the constant backdrop of noise above them, the two women walked in silence on the jungle floor.
As Rachel walked, many questions popped into her head. Two months had passed since the killing of the five men, and Rachel wondered whether Dayuma would still be waiting at the hacienda for her return. She had heard rumors of news reporters offering Dayuma money to guide them back into Waorani territory. Had Dayuma done that? And how would the killing of the five men change Rachel and Dayuma’s relationship? The photos developed from Nate’s recovered camera showed the three Waoranis who had visited the men at Palm Beach before their deaths. These pictures had been printed in every newspaper in Ecuador. Rachel was sure that someone would have shown them to Dayuma. But what if one or more of the visitors were her relatives? Would that create a gulf between Rachel and Dayuma? And if one of them was a relative, was Dayuma so steeped in the Waorani pattern of killing and revenge that she would expect Rachel to kill her?
Rachel had no answers to these questions and instead tried to divert her thoughts by praying for the five widows and their children. In the two months since the killings, each of the wives had made a decision about what to do next. Marilou McCully, who was eight and a half months pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, had returned immediately to Pontiac, Michigan, to have the baby. There, Rachel heard, she had given birth to a healthy son. Olive Fleming had stayed with Betty Elliot and her daughter Valerie at Shandia for a month before returning home to the United States, where she was in high demand as a speaker about the martyred men. Barbara Youderian and her two children were back at the mission station at Macuma, where Barbara divided her time between caring for the children and helping with various mission duties. And Marj Saint was still at Shell Mera, seated day after day in her familiar spot by the radio, only this time she was following the comings and goings of Johnny Keenan, not Nate. As soon as a replacement pilot arrived to take Nate’s place, Marj intended to move to Quito and run the World Radio Missionary Fellowship (HCJB) guest house for missionaries.
It seemed, however painfully, that each of the wives was getting on with her life. The five widows were constantly in the spotlight, with reporters coming to ask questions and photograph them. Rachel, though, often seemed forgotten in all this media attention. In truth, she was grateful for this. It had allowed her to go quietly about helping Marj with the children and waiting for the right time to rejoin Dayuma. Now, with Mary Sargent at her side, Rachel felt that the time was right, and she was returning to her plodding job of unraveling the Waorani language.
Finally, as the late afternoon sun began to sink behind the Andes Mountains and shadows crept across the Oriente jungle, Rachel and Mary rounded the last bend in the track and saw Hacienda Ila in the distance. A few minutes later a woman came rushing out of the house and began running toward Rachel. It was Dayuma.
“You came back!” Dayuma yelled gleefully. “You didn’t die. You came back!”
Soon Rachel and Dayuma were locked in an embrace, with young Sam clinging to Rachel’s knees.
“You are here!” Dayuma exclaimed, standing back to take a good look at Rachel. “Sometimes I would go out alone and call to the sky ‘Rachel! Come back!’ and you did.”
Rachel smiled. Any doubts she may have had about having a strained relationship with Dayuma as a result of the killings were erased.
Once Rachel had taken her backpack to her room and greeted don Carlos Sevilla, she sat down on the veranda with Dayuma. Their conversation turned quickly to the killings, as they were the reason Rachel had been away for so long.
As they talked, Rachel showed Dayuma color copies of the photographs developed from the film in Nate’s camera. Dayuma was impressed with the quality and clarity of the photos compared to the grainy images she had seen printed in the local newspaper. She stared carefully at each of the photos, studying the faces of the people in them.
Finally, after several minutes of this, Dayuma exclaimed, “Aunt Mintaka!” Rachel said nothing as Dayuma pointed to the older Waorani woman in one of Nate’s photos.
“She is my mother’s sister,” Dayuma explained. “And her,” she said, pointing to the young girl in the picture, “I think she is my little sister Gimari. But I cannot be sure. She has changed much. And him,” she added, pointing to the man the five missionaries at Palm Beach had nicknamed George, “I think he is a relative too.”
Rachel explained that the three Waoranis in the picture had visited Palm Beach on the Friday before the men were speared to death and had spent the day with the missionaries.
Dayuma studied another photograph closely. It was of a number of gifts the Waoranis had placed in the basket at the bottom of the spiral line in exchange for the ones Nate had lowered to them. The sight of the gifts, especially the baskets and mats woven with unique Waorani designs, seemed to stir a deep longing in Dayuma for her people. “Who knows,” Dayuma told Rachel wistfully. “If my aunt is alive, then perhaps my mother is still alive too.”
As Rachel talked more with Dayuma about the killing of Nate and the four others, Dayuma would often interrupt her to say, “I am sorry that they killed your brother and the other good foreigners.”
Each time Dayuma apologized, Rachel would remind her that God was in control and that one day, in His time, He would cause something good to come from the deaths of the men. “Besides,” Rachel would add, “Nate might be gone, but I will see him again one day in heaven.”
