Rachel sat quietly for a moment. Then she said, “You know, Nate, I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I believe that God is going to use my contact with Dayuma to crack that tribe wide open, and I will be the first person to go in and live among them.”
Now it was Nate’s time for silence. He slipped his arm through Rachel’s, and the two of them sat peering through the window of Shell Merita, watching the sun set over Mount Sangay.
When Rachel returned to Hacienda Ila, she worked harder than ever to learn the Waorani language. Soon she was able to hold simple conversations with Dayuma. And what she learned from Dayuma about her tribe confirmed Nate’s idea that the Waorani were caught in a brutal cycle of revenge killings. Rachel’s first inkling of this came the evening Dayuma told her about her childhood.
Chapter 7
Dayuma’s Story
One evening Rachel waited an extra long time for Dayuma to come in from the fields. When Dayuma finally arrived, she was in a particularly talkative mood. She sat down cross-legged on the floor of Rachel’s room and began to talk. “Tonight I will tell you why I came to the outsiders.”
Rachel grabbed her pencil and paper and sat beside Dayuma on a low stool. The oil lamp flickered as she started to write down what she heard from Dayuma. Although Rachel could not understand every word, she understood most of what Dayuma was trying to tell her.
“It was nine seasons ago of the kapok tree bursting forth when I lived at home with my people. Returning from hunting in the forest one day, my father Tyaento told us that he had a curse on him. He had fired his blowgun at a monkey but had not killed it. That is how he knew the spirits of the forest were angry with him. ‘Now our enemy Moipa [a renowned killer in the tribe] will spear me, and I will die,’ he told me. I was only fifteen seasons old and very afraid when I heard his words.
“The next dawn my father went into the forest, and he did not return that night, or for the next four nights. I was very afraid that Moipa had speared him, and I thought to myself, Oh, when will my father come home? Then I worried more. What if Moipa had killed my father? Who will protect my mother and my younger sisters and brothers from his spear? There was no one. So I gathered some friends and convinced them to come to the outside with me. They told me, ‘The cowadi will kill you and eat you.’ But I said, ‘We shall see. It is better to run than to be killed by Moipa and lie unburied in the forest, isn’t it?’ So they came with me, and I said, ‘Let’s go! Hurry! We must pole faster than Moipa down the Curaray.’”
Rachel stopped Dayuma and asked her to explain the meaning of a couple of words, particularly cowadi. She learned that cowadi was the Waorani word for outsiders. After she had explained the meaning of the words to Rachel, Dayuma went on with her story.
“After two days we heard a noise in the jungle. We were very still, thinking it was Moipa, but it was not. It was my cousin Dawa running with her baby on her back. We stopped her, and she told us that Moipa had attacked our family. About twenty of our relatives had been speared in one night. Moipa had hacked my young sister to death with his machete.”
Dayuma’s voice broke as she spoke these words and then grew quieter as she continued.
“I asked about my mother, Akawo, but Dawa could not remember seeing her, and so I did not know if she was alive or dead. I could not go on knowing about my sister and wondering what could have happened to Akawo, so we turned around and poled our way back upriver. We went silently, and after three days I saw my mother’s footprints on a beach.”
Rachel nodded. She knew from her time living with Chief Tariri and the Shapra Indians that the natives of the Amazon jungle could read each other’s footprints like signatures.
Dayuma shifted her weight and went on. “I followed the footprints into the jungle and there found my mother. ‘Come with us, mother,’ I begged. ‘Let us go to the house of the cowadi and live. If we stay here, we will surely die.’ ‘No, my daughter,’ Akawo replied. ‘I will not be eaten by the cowadi. Don’t they kill everyone who goes to them?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I told her, ‘but peacefully I will go and see what becomes of me.’
“That was the last time I saw my mother,” Dayuma said, her voice choking with emotion. “This time my cousin Umi, who had been with my mother, and two Quichua Indian girls who were slaves in my tribe decided to come with me. They had lived with our people for six years and were willing to go to the outside once again. Finally we found our way to don Carlos Sevilla’s hacienda, and he gave us clothes and sent us to work in the fields.”
“Have you heard anything about your family since you left?” Rachel asked, putting down her pencil.
Dayuma shook her head. “Nothing. No one else has come out to the cowadi. I do not know if it is because they are all dead or because they are afraid to come and look for us.”
Rachel laid her hand on Dayuma’s. “One day, maybe, you might go back to see if your mother is alive,” she said.
Dayuma recoiled. “I will not return to be killed,” she said. “I am an outsider now. Spearing me would make them happy.”
“Perhaps God will tell us to go together,” Rachel said.
Dayuma looked up at Rachel, her eyes wild with fear. “If Moipa does not kill us, then the winae will,” she said.
“The winae? Who are the winae? Another tribe?” Rachel asked.
Dayuma looked toward the door as if she expected someone to walk through it. “The winae live in the jungle. They are little devils who come into our huts at night and suck the blood from us and kill us. My grandfather named for me once many in our family who had been killed by winae.”
Rachel did not say anything. She wished that she could translate the Bible into Waorani faster than it was obviously going to take so that Dayuma could understand that God was stronger than any winae.
As the weeks turned into months, Rachel continued to learn more and more Waorani words from Dayuma. During the day while Dayuma worked in the fields, Rachel would write copious notes on what she had learned about the Waorani language and culture.
During this time Rachel received a letter from Doris Cox. Tears of joy streamed down her face as she read the letter, which recounted how Chief Tariri had finally become a Christian and given up his old ways. Then the chief’s oldest son, Tsirimpo, had also become a Christian, followed by Tariri’s wife, Irina, and then six other members of his family. Now Chief Tariri was busy urging other members in the tribe to accept the gospel, and he had witnessed to several other chiefs in the area.
After reading the letter, Rachel decided to show some photos of her and Chief Tariri to Dayuma. When she saw them, Dayuma was fascinated to see Rachel standing with a native family. After studying the photographs for several minutes, she said that she now believed that Rachel had lived with the Shapras and was serious about going to live with the Waorani.
Dayuma then explained to Rachel more about her tribal background. She described how Umi had seen Dayuma’s father die before she fled the jungle, or, more precisely, how she had heard him die. According to Umi, Tyaento was speared by Moipa in the raid and badly wounded.
As she listened, Rachel soon learned that a Waorani’s greatest fear is to be left alone in the jungle to die and rot. This fear is so deep that a Waorani would rather be buried alive than risk not being buried at all. And as Dayuma reported to Rachel, that is what had happened to her father. When the pain from the spear wounds had become too unbearable, Tyaento said to his brother, “Dig a hole for me so I can enter it. Cover me over and I will die.” And that is what his brother did. In the traditional fashion, before covering the hole with dirt, he laid bamboo slats across it to create a breathing space. Umi had described to Dayuma how she had listened as Tyaento moaned and groaned while buried in the hole until the air in the breathing space finally ran out and he died.
Rachel felt sad for Dayuma after hearing the story. No wonder Dayuma did not want to go back to her people. Her father and sister were dead, and by now her mother probably was as well. The entire tribe was caught up in a cycle of violent, senseless killing, and Dayuma had every reason to believe that she would be the next one killed if she went back among the Waorani.
After accompanying Rachel to Hacienda Ila, Catherine Peeke had set out in search of Záparo Indians, leaving Rachel to plod on alone learning the Waorani language. Occasionally, though, another missionary would stop by Hacienda Ila, and Rachel was always grateful to have someone to talk and pray with.
One day at the end of October, Jim Elliot showed up. He had walked over from Shandia, a four-hour trek through the jungle. Since he and his wife, Betty, had also been through the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Oklahoma, Jim was interested in how Rachel was getting on learning the Waorani language. Rachel told him about spending her evenings with Dayuma, learning Waorani words and trying to understand their culture. Jim, in turn, reported to Rachel how things were progressing at Shandia. He explained that he had come to Hacienda Ila for two reasons: to buy two piglets from don Carlos and to meet Dayuma and have her translate several short sentences into the Waorani language for him. Dayuma happily obliged, and by midafternoon Jim had his two piglets and the translated sentences and had set off for Shandia so that he would make it home before sunset. After Jim, who was one of the Brethren boys, had left, Rachel had to admit that Nate was right: Jim Elliot did seem to have a contagious enthusiasm for his mission work in the Oriente.
As Christmas approached, Rachel decided that she had learned enough of the Waorani language to tell Dayuma the Christmas story in her own language. In preparation she wrote the story out in Waorani and read it word for word to Dayuma. When Rachel had finished reading, Dayuma sat and seemed to have no reaction to the story. Rachel’s spirits sank at this reaction. It was not what she had expected. They both sat in silence for a long time before Dayuma finally spoke.
“Did all the angels sing what the first one said?” Dayuma asked.
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. Dayuma had taken in the story after all and had carefully thought about it.
By Christmas Rachel needed a break, and she was happy to accept an invitation to spend a week with Nate and Marj at Shell Mera. Their time together was joyful. Shell Merita was decked out with Christmas decorations and strings of lights. In the corner of the living room was a small, artificial Christmas tree with wrapped presents underneath. Early on Christmas morning Kathy and Steve prodded one-year-old Phil awake and then dragged their parents and Aunt Rachel out of bed so that they could open their presents. As she watched the children tearing the wrapping paper off their gifts, Rachel thought how fortunate she was to have traveled so many miles from Pennsylvania yet still have family less than a day’s walk away.
Rachel was still at Shell Mera on New Year’s Day 1956. She spent some time that day reflecting on what lay ahead for her as she tried to reach the Waorani with the gospel. Indeed she had more questions than answers about what the coming year held for her. As she thought about the year ahead, she prayed, “Lord, I don’t know what the future holds. Reach the tribe with or without me, but reach the tribe.”
Rachel had no idea as she prayed these words that the next few days would change the course of not only her life but also the lives of countless other people.
Chapter 8
Tragedy
It was Rachel’s forty-second birthday, January 2, 1956. She was sitting beside her brother in the passenger seat of the yellow Piper Cruiser. Nate was flying to Shandia to drop Rachel off and pick up Jim Elliot. Jim was on his way to run a week-long series of evangelical meetings at Arajuno. As a result Betty Elliot had asked Rachel if she would come to Shandia to help with the mission work there and look after one-year-old Valerie while Jim was away. Rachel had agreed to go, glad of the opportunity to finally see firsthand all that was going on in Shandia. Things there had sounded very exciting when she had talked to Jim two months before at Hacienda Ila. And while she was at Shell Mera for Christmas, Nate had told her that Jim had recently baptized twenty-five Quichua Indians and that the nucleus of a strong local church was forming. It all gave Rachel hope that one day she would be able to report similar progress among the Waorani.
