Chapter 18
Chapter 18
At Home with the Waorani
September 25, 1958, was a bright, sunny day in the Oriente. Marj Saint was visiting Betty at Shandia. She had traveled down from Quito, where she now ran the missionary guesthouse at World Radio Missionary Fellowship. The two women sat inside Betty’s small but comfortable hut and talked leisurely. Marj told Betty all about running the guesthouse in Quito, about how her children loved the city, and about the odd assortment of people who passed through the guesthouse. Of course, Marj wanted to know about Betty’s encounter with the Auca women, and Betty filled her in on all the details. They then discussed Betty’s new book, Shadow of the Almighty, which had just been published. Betty explained that she had found such a rich depository of fact, inspiration, and meditation in Jim’s diary entries. In this book she had gone back and told about more of Jim’s life, using his diary entries and letters as a foundation for the text.
It was late morning when Betty gathered up their coffee cups and then headed outside. As she lay her newly washed clothes on the grass to dry in the sun, she looked up and saw three Quichua women nervously approaching her. “Welcome,” she said. “What brings you here?”
“Nothing. We have come for no reason,” one of the Quichua women replied.
Betty nodded. She had learned that this was the standard greeting, even if they had something very important to report. “Have you seen the Aucas?” she asked the three women.
“Yes! Several of them have just come out of the jungle about half an hour’s walk from here,” one of the women said, pointing in the direction beyond the airstrip.
Betty raced into action. “Marj,” she yelled as she ran toward her hut, “the Aucas have returned. Let’s go!”
Betty grabbed her camera, scooped up Valerie, and headed toward the airstrip, with Marj close on her heels. They were partway down the airstrip when Betty heard the unmistakable sound of singing—in English!
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Betty instantly recognized Dayuma’s voice. Dayuma had returned for them!
Betty watched with elation as three women, Dayuma, Mintaka, and Maengamo, broke through the tall grass at the edge of the airstrip. Betty counted four more Auca women and two boys trailing behind them.
When she saw Betty, Maengamo raced to her and enveloped her in a big hug. Soon everyone was gathered around Betty and Marj, and the introductions began.
Betty then led the odd-looking assortment of naked and nearly naked people back to her hut. Before she had even finished feeding them, word had spread that the Aucas were back, and a small crowd of Quichuas gathered outside Betty’s hut. The crowd grew as the afternoon progressed. The Auca group stayed the night with Betty, and in the morning still more people were peering into her hut.
Betty had to admit that it was entertaining to see these Stone Age people encounter modernity for the first time. The Aucas were fascinated with electric lights; the “fire in a box” (wood stove); the music that Betty made on her tiny portable organ; and the big, throbbing noise of the generator engine that kicked in twice a day.
The Quichua Christians at Shandia who had followed Betty’s story and knew that these were members of the tribe that had murdered their missionary were very generous. They brought gifts of bananas, sugarcane, eggs, and manioc for the guests. Betty was delighted to learn that Maruja, the kidnapped wife of Honorio, whom the Aucas had killed, had been set free. The group had returned Maruja to her mother-in-law en route to Shandia. Surely that was a good sign!
As they talked into the night, Betty learned why Maengamo, Mintaka, and Dayuma had come back. The Aucas of the Curaray had invited Betty, Valerie, and Rachel to come and live with them.
“We told them you were not cannibals, and we made them believe us,” Maengamo told Betty.
Betty agreed that this was a good start.
On October 6, 1958, Betty, Valerie, and Rachel, along with the nine Aucas and five Quichua porters, set out. Each porter had a gun strapped over his shoulder. This was one of the best and one of the worst days of her life as Betty watched Valerie’s little blonde head bobbing up and down in the backpack chair ahead of her. Betty was excited that finally, after so much prayer, effort, and sacrifice, they were headed to an Auca settlement—and at the Aucas’ invitation.
But Betty’s worst fears were stirred up when they stopped to visit Maruja at her mother-in-law’s house. The Aucas had held Maruja captive for a year, and Betty was eager to hear what she had to say about their possibility for success. Maruja was blunt. “Before long you will all be dead and eaten by vultures!” she said.
Betty pressed Maruja. “But did you learn to love the Aucas?”
Maruja shook her head. “The women, yes, but not the men. They are fierce. You cannot love them.”
At the Curaray River, the group took canoes downstream and then followed the Añangu River upstream to the Tiwaeno River. When the river got too shallow for the canoes, they set out on foot again for the last leg of the journey. It took them two days, and as she traveled, Betty wondered whether she had done the right thing, especially bringing Valerie with her. If the adults were all killed, it could be years before word got out. Betty did not like to think about what might happen to her only child in such a case. She trekked on, trusting that God was watching over her and Valerie and Rachel.
Eventually, late in the afternoon, the group rounded a bend in the trail, and there was an Auca settlement, a small cluster of thatched huts set in a clearing in the jungle. An Auca man, naked except for a strip of cotton cloth tied around his waist, stood on a log and watched the group approach. Several women stood at the entrances to the thatched huts. They all stared as the group approached the village. Betty breathed deeply as she walked past the man and into the village. Finally she was standing in an Auca settlement. She had seen such settlements from the air, but now she was on the ground in the midst of one.
Soon Betty, Valerie, and Rachel were being introduced. Dayuma introduced Betty to her sister Gimari. Betty recognized her immediately. Gimari had visited the men at Palm Beach the day before they were killed. Betty had seen her in the photos developed from Nate’s camera. And Maengamo introduced Betty to the man who had stood on the log and watched them enter the village. “This is Gikari, my brother.”
At first the Quichua guides were nervous. All they knew of the Aucas was that they were brutal killers. But as everyone was introduced, the tension they felt began to lessen. It was too late in the afternoon for them to begin their return trip, so the Quichuas cautiously agreed to spend the night in the Auca village. As far as Betty knew, this was the first time in history that the Aucas had offered hospitality to strangers. At least she hoped it was hospitality.
Everyone gathered around the fire and shared a meal of fish, and then the Quichua Christians began singing some of the hymns that Jim had composed for them. It was a surreal moment for Betty. Here she was, sitting with some of the men who had undoubtedly helped in the murder of her husband, watching them as they listened intently to songs about God’s love that one of the men they killed had written. Betty realized that the Aucas had never before heard music like this or words in a language other than their own. In fact, this was most likely the first time they had ever been near a person who was not in their tribe—except to spear him.
As darkness fell, the missionary women were offered “houses.” Rachel was invited to stay in a hut with Maengamo and Gikita, her husband. Gikita was the oldest man in the group, and Betty judged him to be about forty-five years old. She soon learned that it was rare for an Auca to reach the age of forty—most of them came to a violent end long before then.
Betty and Valerie were offered a “house” beside Gikita’s. It did not take Betty long to move in. The house consisted of four upright poles with a thatched roof. It had no covered floor or walls, and absolutely no privacy. Betty slung her few possessions into the rafters. Someone offered her a hammock, and she and Valerie slept together in it the first night.
At daybreak the following morning, Betty listened as the settlement came to life. She could hear the sound of girls filling clay water pots at the river while Gimari sang a low chant as she crouched by the fire and stirred it back to life. As the first rays of the sun began to peek through the kapok and ironwood trees that surrounded the village, birds sang and monkeys chattered.
The Quichua guides planned to leave on the return trip home early in the afternoon, and before they left, they made Valerie a simple bamboo platform bed and a table for Betty. There was no chair to go with it, but at least it provided a place off the ground for Betty to prepare Valerie’s powdered milk drinks.
Finally the Quichuas said goodbye and set out for home, leaving Betty, Valerie, and Rachel alone for the first time. Betty tried not to think about the fact that the men on Palm Beach had had friendly contact with the Aucas the day before they were killed.
Betty’s fears were not realized, and Betty was surprised at how quickly her new life found a rhythm of its own. In the morning she would lie in her hammock, taking a few notes and listening to everyone waking up and greeting one another. Then there was breakfast to prepare. She tried to eat like the Aucas as much as possible but supplemented her and Valerie’s diet with a few Western foods. She had also brought plates and spoons with her to eat from and washed them in the river after each meal. The Aucas ate their food off palm leaves with their fingers and laughed at her constant need to wash plates and utensils.
Once the morning “housework” was taken care of, it was time for Betty to get to some serious language study. She would listen to the people talk and write down phonetically what she heard. She tried to isolate the sounds that made up the language so that the sounds could eventually be reduced to a fixed, written alphabet. One thing she learned as she studied the language was that the Aucas did not call themselves by that name. That was the name outsiders had given them. Instead, they referred to themselves as the Waorani.
During the day, Betty and Rachel went their own ways and would meet together in the evening to compare language notes and discuss what they had learned about Waorani culture. During the afternoon, Betty would often take Valerie to the garden clearing, where yucca and bananas grew. On their way back to the village they would gather wood for the fire.
All the while, Betty watched for signs of danger, but she did not see any. Dayuma had told her not to ask about Jim’s death, in case the men thought she was trying to figure out who it was she should take revenge on. So Betty left that subject alone.
It was obvious from the stories Betty heard around the fire at night that the Waorani were caught in a sad cycle of killing. One of Rachel’s first jobs was to put together a family tree. She told Betty that she estimated Dayuma had two hundred relatives when she had left the tribe twelve years before, and now one hundred sixty of them were dead—most of them killed in revenge killings. Betty prayed that the introduction of the gospel to the Waorani would be instrumental in breaking this cycle of killing.
Betty was amazed at how well Dayuma complemented her and Rachel’s skills. Because neither of the missionaries was yet fluent in Waorani, Dayuma took on the role of missionary to her own people. She taught them how to count off the days in lots of seven so that on the seventh day they could have a holy day. She also got the people together and taught them from God’s carvings (the Bible) and made up simple hymns for them to learn.
Prayer was one of the hardest things for the Waorani to grasp. They had no idea what it meant to pray, and people would often close their eyes, bow their heads, and nod right off to sleep. Of course, Dayuma was right there to prod them awake again.
Bit by bit, some of the tribe began to respond to the gospel. No one but Dayuma was yet a Christian, but the people began to ask thoughtful questions about God.
After two months at the Waorani settlement on the Tiwaeno River, Betty and Valerie left to visit Jim’s parents, who were waiting for them in Quito. This was the first time the Elliots had met their granddaughter. They all spent a happy Christmas together in Quito, and after Jim’s parents left, Betty stayed on for a much-needed break.
Meanwhile, Rachel and Dayuma also took a break from the harsh reality of living in the jungle. The two of them traveled back to Limoncocha.
Betty and Valerie returned to the Tiwaeno settlement in March 1959, and Rachel and Dayuma had arrived back at the village several weeks before them. They resumed their language work and shared the gospel with the Waorani at every chance they got.
Time passed slowly in the jungle, and the everyday tasks of living took up much more time than Betty wanted them to. Still, along with keeping up her missionary work, Betty managed to keep a detailed journal of her life and the events at Tiwaeno.
In September 1959, Betty once again left the Waorani behind, this time returning home to New Jersey. After eight years away, being home was quite a culture shock for her. The American economy seemed to be booming, and new houses and roads were springing up everywhere. On what had once been rural land now sat suburbs with neat, single-story homes that lined paved streets. New Jersey presented even more of a culture shock for Valerie, who had been born and had lived her young life in the jungle.
Back in the United States, Betty found herself somewhat of a Christian celebrity. Her two books, Through Gates of Splendor and The Shadow of the Almighty, were both best-sellers. As a result, Betty had the opportunity to speak at many churches and Christian gatherings, where she urged people to look beyond their own circumstances and see God’s plan for their lives.
While Betty was at home, an editor from her publisher met with her and reviewed the photographs she had taken of her seven-month experience in the jungle with the Waorani. The editor asked her to write the text for a book to go along with the photos. Betty agreed to do so, even though it would delay her return to the Waorani. The title of the book was The Savage My Kinsman.
When Betty and Valerie finally returned to the Waorani, they discovered that many changes had taken place. Rachel had stayed on in Tiwaeno while Betty was away, and she had made substantial progress. A number of the Waorani in the settlement had become Christians, including several of the men who had taken part in the killing of the missionary men at Palm Beach.
Another big change had occurred too. The Waorani had cleared away a swath of the jungle between the river and the village for an airstrip. Betty had the privilege of standing beside the airstrip when Don Smith, the local JAARS (Jungle Aviation and Radio Service) pilot who serviced the workers with Wycliffe Bible Translators throughout the Oriente, brought his plane in to land at the airstrip for the first time. Now a trip to Arajuno, which used to take up to three days trekking through the jungle, took only ten minutes.
Despite the many advances, things did not go smoothly for Betty upon her return to Tiwaeno. While Betty was away, Rachel had lived alone, without any other Europeans. As a result, Rachel had come to a different understanding of the way forward in the village. And she was now much farther along in the study of the Waorani language than Betty was and had already begun some Bible translation into the language.
The two headstrong missionary women began to clash. Despite both of their best efforts to get along, the relationship wore Betty down. It was easy to see that the two of them were not working together, and Betty concluded it would be best for her to leave. This was not a quick decision, but once she had made it, Betty felt confident that it was the right thing to do.
Before she left, though, Betty had the joy of witnessing the first Waorani baptism. Dr. Everett Fuller from the medical clinic at Shell Mera agreed to make weekly visits to the community to take care of the various health needs of the Waorani. On his first visit to Tiwaeno, Dr. Fuller baptized nine Waorani believers in the river. Tears welled in Betty’s eyes as she watched the event. How she wished Jim and the others could have been there to see the baptism, which represented the fulfillment of what they had given their lives for.
Soon after the baptism, Betty attended Dayuma’s wedding. Dayuma married Komi, one of the recently baptized believers. Once again Betty was profoundly touched as she watched the event.
Finally it was time for Betty and Valerie, now six years old, to leave. It did not take Betty long to pack their belongings, since she had very little to take with her—just her journals, camera, film, and a few clothes.
Although it was sad saying goodbye to the Waorani of Tiwaeno, Betty knew that leaving was the right thing to do. As she made her way out of the jungle, Betty thought about the remarkable time spent among her husband’s killers, with all of its heartaches and joys. She wondered what was in store for her next.