As the taxi pulled to a halt in front of President Ibarra’s house, Rachel quickly pulled out the hat she had concocted for the occasion. It consisted of the headdress Chief Tariri had given her as a farewell gift, to which she had sewn at the front a black veil. She placed the headdress on her head and arranged the veil and then climbed out of the taxi. Cameron Townsend and the other Wycliffe translators who were going to be officially presented to the president were already there, and Rachel and Catherine made their way over to where the group was standing.
Soon the official ceremony got under way. Uncle Cam made a few opening remarks and then proceeded to introduce each of the translators who would be working in Ecuador. “This is Rachel Saint,” he said when it came Rachel’s turn to meet President Ibarra. “She wants to go and translate the Bible for the Auca tribe.”
As Rachel shook the president’s hand, President Ibarra stared at her headdress. Rachel quickly explained that the headdress was from the Shapra Indians of Peru, among whom she had lived for some time. The president nodded, then asked, “You are going to work with the Aucas?”
“Yes,” Rachel replied politely.
“I flew over their territory a while back. They threw spears at my plane. No white person has ever been able to live among them. Are you sure you really want to try, señorita?”
Rachel looked President Ibarra right in the eye and said, “Yes. I believe God will make a way for me to do that.”
Once again the president nodded and then moved on. Rachel hoped that her words had not sounded rude. They had just tumbled out as she opened her mouth. But as forthright as her words were, Rachel had to admit that that was exactly how she felt about the situation.
On February 2, 1955, a month after her forty-first birthday, Rachel set out with Catherine to meet the four Auca girls at Hacienda Ila. A floatplane operated by Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS), the aviation wing of Wycliffe Bible Translators, ferried them there. As the plane droned its way across the Oriente, Rachel reflected on how grateful she was to have Catherine accompanying her. She knew that Catherine’s call was not to the Aucas but to the Záparo Indians, who lived along the Pastaza River in both Peru and Ecuador. Since Western diseases had taken a terrible toll on the Záparos in Peru, reducing their population greatly, Catherine had decided to accompany Rachel in the hope of finding more Záparo Indians to work among in Ecuador. But until she was able to locate the Záparos, she was happy to assist Rachel in her research into the Auca language.
Finally the pilot banked to the right and lined up the aircraft for a landing. Moments later the plane’s floats were gliding along the Anzu River, a tributary of the Rio Napo. The plane made its way to the riverbank, right to the front door of Hacienda Ila. Rachel and Catherine climbed out and retrieved their belongings from the plane as a group of people emerged from the hacienda to greet them. Soon don Carlos Sevilla, who had arrived at the place several days before, strode out of the hacienda to greet Rachel and Catherine. “Welcome to Hacienda Ila, señoritas,” he said.
Don Carlos gave orders for his servants to carry the two missionaries’ bags as he led Rachel and Catherine into the hacienda. Rachel had to admit that she had not known what to expect, and Hacienda Ila turned out to be more impressive than she had imagined. The two-story hacienda had many rooms and was built of large logs cut from the surrounding jungle. It was furnished with Spanish colonial furniture. Large oil paintings adorned the walls, and woven rugs covered the polished wooden floors. The hacienda was surrounded by a number of smaller buildings that served as housing for the workers and as guest quarters. One of the buildings was a kitchen, and another was a small school for the children of the workers. Beyond the hacienda and its outbuildings stretched cultivated fields. Rachel marveled at the amount of work that must have been involved in cutting the fields from the surrounding dense jungle. In the fields grew sugar cane, bananas, and yucca, as well as grass on which cows and horses grazed. The whole place reminded Rachel of a medieval castle with all its various enterprises.
Don Carlos showed Rachel and Catherine to a guest room on the second floor. The room was large and lit by oil lamps. The floor was polished to such a shine that Rachel could almost see her face in it, and the bed linen was crisp and clean.
After they had settled into their new home, Rachel and Catherine joined don Carlos and several members of his family for dinner, which they ate seated at a long, wooden table in straight-backed chairs. Following dinner they moved to the veranda that ran the length of the house. As they sat talking, don Carlos finally asked, “Would you like to meet the Auca girls now?”
“Very much,” Rachel replied.
Moments later the four Auca women walked out onto the veranda. They were dressed in cotton skirts and blouses. A small boy clung to the skirt of one of the women. The Aucas, whose skin was a coffee color, had thick, straight, black hair. In the lobes of each woman’s ears were large holes, where the women had once worn balsa wood plugs.
Don Carlos introduced the women to Rachel and Catherine. Catherine then began to ask the Auca women questions in Quichua, the language spoken by the other Indians working at the hacienda and which the women understood and spoke. After a few minutes Catherine told Rachel that two of the girls were Quichuas who had lived with the Aucas for many years and that they, along with the youngest Auca girl, had all forgotten the language. Pointing to the woman with the small boy at her side, she concluded, “Only this girl—Dayuma is her name—can still speak the language.”
Rachel felt her heart begin to pound with excitement. Finally she had found someone who could speak the Auca language. “Ask her if she will help us learn her language,” she instructed Catherine.
Dayuma spoke a few words in Quichua. “Yes, she will,” Catherine interpreted jubilantly.
Over the next few minutes, Rachel learned that Dayuma’s son was three years old and his name was Sam. Rachel also learned another important piece of information about the Aucas. Dayuma explained that the Aucas called themselves Waorani, which means “the people,” and that the word Auca was actually a Quichua word meaning “savage.”
“I will use the word Waorani to describe your tribe in the future,” Rachel promised.
Because Dayuma worked all day long on the plantation, she and Rachel could meet together only at night. So, in the evenings, slowly but surely Rachel began to compile a list of Waorani words. As she looked at the words, she soon realized that the Waorani language was nothing like the Candoshi language the Shapra Indians spoke, as she had originally thought it might be.
One night Dayuma explained to Rachel how the Waorani counted. The system was simple and straightforward, until you got to twenty. Beyond that number, the Waorani had no way of counting. According to Dayuma, a Waorani counted one, two, two and one, two and two, and then he or she would say, “onompo omaempoquiae,” meaning, “as many fingers as there are on one hand.” If they wanted to say nine, they would say, “as many fingers as there are on one hand and two and two.” However, with a number like nine, Dayuma explained that more often than not a person would put his or her hands together and say, “as many fingers as there are on two hands,” because ten was so close to nine and was easier to say. To count beyond ten, a person would put both hands together and look down at his or her toes and say, “two and one,” to indicate thirteen. Rachel found it an intriguing but logical system, though she wondered how the Waorani would get on if they ever took to wearing shoes.
As Rachel worked at learning the Waorani language from Dayuma at Hacienda Ila, Shell Mera was frustratingly close, less than twenty miles away. It took only a few minutes to cover the distance by air. In fact, Nate would regularly fly overhead and drop mail to Rachel and Catherine, but he could not land, because there was no airstrip and MAF did not operate a floatplane. So as soon as it was practical, Rachel decided to trek through the jungle to visit Nate and Marj, who by now had three children. Their latest addition was a towheaded son, whom they had named Philip, after Nate and Rachel’s brother.
At Shell Mera, as usual, brother and sister had a lot to catch up on. Nate was his usual enthusiastic self. He told Rachel about how he had been able to further perfect his spiral-line technique and how he was busier than ever in the Oriente. In the seven years that he and Marj had been at Shell Mera, the number of missionaries serving in the area had risen from twelve to twenty-five. Nate was modest, but Rachel knew that the nine mission stations could not work together without her brother’s Piper aircraft, his piloting skills, and five new airstrips that had been built.
In fact, Nate and Marj had become so busy tending to the scattered mission stations that MAF had decided to base another couple at Shell Mera to help them with the workload. Nate had built a house next door to Shell Merita, in which Johnny and Ruth Keenan and their twin boys now lived. And with another pilot came another plane, this time a yellow Piper Cruiser, which Nate now flew most of the time instead of the Pacer.
Nate seemed particularly enthusiastic about the last three missionaries who had arrived in the area. He called them the Brethren boys because they were all working under the auspices of the Plymouth Brethren Church. The three, Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming, were all college graduates, and they brought with them a contagious enthusiasm as they set up mission stations in small villages throughout the area. Jim had married since arriving in the Oriente, and his wife, Betty, was about to give birth any day. Ed’s wife, Marilou, was about to give birth to their second child. And Pete had returned to the United States on furlough and gotten married. Now he and his new wife, Olive, were in Quito, where Olive was learning Spanish before moving into the Oriente. Nate explained how much he and Marj enjoyed the friendship of the Brethren boys and their wives.
Nate had other good news to relay as well. Rachel knew that her brother had worked hard to get a medical clinic up and running at Shell Mera so that patients would not have to be flown over the Andes to get medical care. Under the direction of Dr. Art Johnston, the clinic was flourishing, and that very month, with help from Jim Elliot, Nate had begun work on a large new building for the clinic.
Of course Rachel wanted to know from Nate all he had learned about the Aucas. The news was not encouraging. The Aucas’ pattern of attacking outsiders was continuing. Nate told how he had been involved in the latest incident. Early one morning he had flown from Shell Mera to the town of Villano, where an Ecuadorian army base was situated. The government had asked Nate to fly some supplies in for the soldiers. After finishing unloading the Piper Cruiser, Nate was revving the engine for takeoff when two soldiers came running toward him waving their arms. Nate explained how he had turned off the engine and heard the soldiers yelling that two wounded Quichua Indians needing medical attention were coming up the jungle trail.
Soon a Quichua man appeared, carrying a woman with a spear protruding from her lower back. The woman’s husband limped along behind, with two spear wounds to his chest, one in his hand, and another in his thigh. Only two words needed to be said: “Auca attack!”
Nate told Rachel that he had strapped the couple in his plane and flown them to get emergency medical treatment.
Rachel’s heart skipped a beat. “Were they able to tell you any more about the Aucas?” she asked.
Nate shook his head. “Not much. They figured the attack was probably a revenge killing for a raid on an Auca village years before, but they weren’t sure. They pretty much agreed with everyone else that the Aucas are an unpredictable bunch. One thing seems certain though: everyone wants some kind of revenge. The Quichua man who was wounded tried to pay one of our workers to fly back into the area and kill at least one of the Aucas for him. Our worker tried to explain that we are not interested in killing other people but want to save them through faith in the Lord Jesus. The man didn’t seem to understand that concept at all.”
