Finally, after nearly a year away, Doris returned to her work among the Shapra Indians. With Doris’s return, Rachel decided it was time to take a month’s break before Loretta left for her furlough. Rather than travel all the way back to the United States, Rachel decided to return to Ecuador and stay with Nate and Marj for the month. Marj had recently given birth to a son, Steve, and Rachel was sure that she could do with some help around the mission station. Besides, Rachel wanted to find out whether anyone had learned more about the Auca Indians.
Chapter 5
“Those Are Your People Down There”
When Rachel arrived in Quito in late 1951, snow was clinging to the jagged Andean peaks that rose above the city. The slight chill in the air was refreshing after the steamy jungle heat of Peru. Nate was waiting to greet Rachel, and the two of them took some time to explore the city. As they wandered through the Mercado de Santa Clara, looking at the brightly painted balsa wood birds, cedar statues, bundles of dried herbs, and enormous bunches of freshly cut flowers, Rachel peppered her brother with questions about the Auca Indians. Had any missionary gone to live among them yet? Were they still hostile to strangers?
Nate told Rachel that the Aucas were as hostile as ever to outsiders and explained how they had recently attacked a number of Quichua Indians and Ecuadorians living on the borders of their territory. “In fact, there’s a man living here in the city who I think you’ll find interesting to talk to, Sis.”
The following day Rachel followed Nate up the winding stone pathway that led to a white, stuccoed, two-story house. “He used to be stationed at Arajuno, so he’s been in pretty close quarters with the Aucas,” Nate said.
“Thanks for arranging this visit,” Rachel told Nate as they stood in the tiled entranceway.
Nate knocked loudly on the large wooden door, which soon was swung open by a ten-year-old house girl. The girl smiled shyly and led Rachel and Nate into a wide, sparsely furnished room with polished wooden floors. A large fan whirled overhead, filling the room with a gentle breeze. Soon a stockily built man strolled into the room. He extended his hand to Nate.
“Dan Warburton,” the man said with a distinctive Texas drawl. “You must be Nate Saint. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Nate shook Dan’s hand and then introduced Rachel. Soon the three of them were sitting in overstuffed leather chairs, drinking iced tea.
Dan explained that he was an engineer with the Shell Oil Company and had been stationed at Arajuno when the company was exploring for oil there. He told them that Arajuno was located just outside Auca territory, but that had not stopped the Aucas from attacking the Shell workers. Over the years a number of European and Quichua Indian workers based at Arajuno had been speared to death.
“In the end, it just wasn’t worth it,” Dan explained. “We couldn’t keep workers anymore. Oil’s one thing, but the number of lives of Shell workers lost in the Oriente since the company started drilling there…it makes you think twice. In the end the company decided to pull out of the area altogether.”
After gulping down some iced tea, Dan went on. “After one attack I found this headdress left behind by one of the Aucas.” He walked over to the sideboard, opened a drawer, and pulled out the feathered object.
As Rachel took the headdress from Dan, her heart began to pound. She could scarcely believe it. The headdress was almost identical to the one Chief Tariri wore. Perhaps there were other similarities between the Auca and the Shapra Indians. Maybe their two languages were not that different. Could the Auca language be a dialect of Candoshi, as was the Shapra language?
The headdress filled Rachel with hope. Perhaps, she reasoned, God had sent her to the Shapras to prepare her to enter the Auca tribe. Until very recently the Shapra Indians had also been cold-blooded killers. But now their chief and many in the tribe were becoming open to the gospel, and the endless cycle of killing was beginning to die down. Would that happen to the Aucas soon as well?
“I told you meeting Dan Warburton would be interesting, didn’t I?” Nate said as they left the house.
Rachel nodded. “It gave me such hope for the Aucas.”
“So you really believe that the Lord has called you to work with the Aucas?” Nate asked.
“More than ever,” Rachel replied.
Two days later Rachel and Nate were back in the jungle at Shell Mera, where Rachel got acquainted with her six-month-old nephew, Steve.
In the evening Rachel, Nate, and Marj would sit in the lounge of Shell Merita and talk. As Mount Sangay spewed steam and lava in the distance, Nate talked excitedly about his work. He explained that when the Shell Oil Company pulled out of the Oriente, the company sold the airstrip and the land around Shell Merita cheaply to Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF). The rest of the buildings had been bought by the Gospel Missionary Union, which had established the Berean Bible Institute in the buildings to train local Indian Christians.
Nate also told Rachel how his airplane had become an indispensable lifeline to the missionaries dotted throughout the Oriente. “I’ve even worked out a way to talk to those on the ground when there is no airstrip or I can’t land for some reason,” he said.
“And what’s that?” Rachel asked.
“I call it my bucket drop. I bank the plane into a circle above the person I want to communicate with, and then I lower a telephone line. On the end of the line is a bucket with a telephone inside. Once I have played out all the cord, I put the plane into a tighter circle until the bucket hovers still at the end of the line. Then the person can pick up the phone, and we can talk. It works wonderfully,” Nate said.
“It’s an ingenious maneuver,” Marj added. “He even received a letter of commendation and 250 dollars from the general manager of the Beech Aircraft Company for what they officially refer to as his ‘spiral-line technique.’”
Rachel was most impressed.
“I have another invention to show you tomorrow,” Nate added.
The following morning, after breakfast, Nate led Rachel out to the hangar that sat beside Shell Merita. Inside was MAF’s four-seater Piper Pacer aircraft.
“The physics of flying are pretty simple, Sis,” Nate said. “An airplane’s propeller corkscrews through the air, pulling the plane along with it. As the plane is pulled forward, the movement of air over and under the wings creates lift, which keeps the plane aloft. But when the engine stops, the propeller stops, and the plane’s forward motion quickly slows. When this happens, the lift under the wings is reduced, and the plane begins to lose altitude. If a pilot is flying over an open field or a road when this happens, he may be able to glide the plane in for an emergency landing. But when it happens over the jungle, nothing can be done to avoid hitting the trees.
“Airplane engines are usually well maintained, so when an engine does stop in flight, it’s usually not a problem with the engine itself. Ninety-nine percent of the time when an engine stops, it’s because the fuel is contaminated or has stopped flowing to the engine. The fuel might stop flowing for a number of reasons, but often the biggest cause is pilot error. A pilot changes plans in the middle of a flight to answer an emergency call or for some other reason, only to discover after he’s committed to the change of plan that he doesn’t have enough fuel to go the extra distance.
“It’s a big issue out here in the Oriente, so I did some thinking about the problem. Eventually I came up with this device.” Nate walked over and laid his hand on a device attached to the wing strut. “I call it my ‘tin can lifesaver.’”
“How does it work?” Rachel inquired.
“It’s pretty simple. It’s a tank I fashioned from two of Marj’s cooking-oil cans. It holds three gallons of gas, and this copper tube leads from the tank to the intake manifold on the engine. If for some reason I run out of fuel or the engine begins to starve for fuel, I can pull a rod on the control panel inside. The rod opens this valve, and the fuel from the three-gallon tank begins to flow to the engine, bringing it back to life. It works like a charm. It’s not much fuel, but it’s enough to get you to safety in most cases. I fashioned this cowling from a piece of balsa wood to make it more aerodynamic,” Nate added, running his hand across the painted cowling.
Rachel thought about Grandpa Proctor, who would have been impressed. As an inventor himself, Grandpa Proctor would have been proud of his grandson Nate’s ingenuity.
“I even have a patent for the device,” Nate said. “And with the device fitted, I now even fly over Auca territory, ’cause I know I can make it to safety in friendlier territory. Maybe it’s time you went and saw where this tribe you feel called to lives.”
Rachel could barely contain her excitement. An hour later, after Nate had fueled the Piper Pacer and checked it out, they were winging their way over the jungle. Twenty minutes after taking off from the airstrip at Shell Mera, Nate banked the plane to the right. “That’s Arajuno down there,” he pointed out.
Rachel peered down at the cluster of abandoned buildings below. In the two years since the Shell Oil Company had abandoned the place, the jungle had been slowly reclaiming Arajuno. Tentacles of vines were swallowing up the decaying buildings.
After he had circled Arajuno, Nate leveled off the Pacer and headed east. “Sis, those are your people down there. This is Auca territory.”
Rachel felt goose bumps form on her arms. This was Auca territory. This was where she felt sure God was leading her.
“The boundaries of Auca territory are basically the Napo River,” Nate said, pointing out the left side of the plane, “the Villano River,” this time pointing out the right side of the plane, “the Arajuno River behind us, and ahead of us to the Peruvian border.”
Rachel studied the terrain below. The jungle was dense, so dense that one could not see through the trees to the ground. Occasionally there were small clearings in the jungle, and Rachel could see that gardens had been planted in several of them. However, by the time Nate banked the airplane around and began heading back to Shell Mera, Rachel had not caught sight of any Aucas. Still she was excited to have finally seen the Aucas’ home with her own eyes.
After a month in Ecuador, Rachel said good-bye to Nate and Marj and the children and began the journey back to Peru. During her stay in the Ecuadorian Oriente, she had tried to learn as much as she could about the Aucas, but she had to admit it wasn’t much. Because of their fearsome reputation, information about the Auca way of life remained mostly shrouded in secrecy.
Back in Peru Rachel went once again to live among the Shapra Indians. Chief Tariri’s eyes lit up when she finally arrived back, and soon the chief and Rachel picked up their long conversations where they had left off.
Shortly after Rachel’s return to the Shapras, Loretta Anderson left for her furlough. While Loretta was gone, Rachel threw herself into helping Doris translate portions of Scripture into the Shapras’ dialect. The work was rewarding, and it was made all the more rewarding by the fact that Chief Tariri seemed to be inching toward accepting the gospel and becoming a Christian. Rachel encouraged the chief, although occasionally she was disappointed when he lapsed back into his old ways. On those occasions she would challenge him with his behavior. She would tell him that God and His Son, Jesus Christ, were more powerful than the old ways, more powerful than the boa and all the animals and spirits of the jungle. Each time Rachel talked to the chief this way, he listened carefully and took her words to heart.
As Rachel worked among the Shapras, the Aucas were never far from her mind, and when Loretta finally returned from her furlough, Rachel decided it was time to actively pursue going to work among the Auca Indians in Ecuador. Of course she had no idea how this would all work out, since neither Wycliffe Bible Translators nor SIL worked in Ecuador.
Finally, as April 1953—Rachel’s departure date from the Shapras—approached, Rachel told Chief Tariri she would be leaving.
