Chapter 1
Chapter 1
She Could Not Turn Back Now
Before long you will all be dead and eaten by vultures!”
Elisabeth Elliot, or Betty, as most people called her, listened carefully to the words of Maruja, a Quichua Indian woman held captive for a year by a neighboring tribe. Betty and a group of others were on their way to the tribe’s settlement for the first time.
“But did you learn to love them?” Betty pressed, hoping for some sign of hope and encouragement.
Maruja shook her head. “The women, yes, but not the men. They are fierce. You cannot love them.”
Betty felt a chill run down her spine at the young Indian woman’s words.
Like Maruja, Betty’s life had been touched by the fierceness of this tribe. When Maruja was taken captive, her husband was killed—speared to death—by the attackers. And thirty-three months before, beside the very river they were about to set out on in canoes, Betty’s husband and four other missionary men had been speared to death by the same tribe. Both women understood what it was like to have someone you love taken away in what seemed to be a senseless act of violence.
Betty pondered Maruja’s words. Was she doing the right thing? After all, Maruja had spent a whole year with the tribe. She knew them better than anyone. And now she was telling Betty and her traveling companions that if they went ahead with their plan, the men of the tribe would kill them.
It was a not an easy choice. Betty felt the cold edge of fear. Yes, she had to admit there was a good chance that she could be speared to death just as her husband had been.
Yet she also felt a strange peace—almost exhilarating. This was the culmination of all Betty had worked and prayed for during the past several years. This was what her husband had given his life for. This was her destiny. She could not turn back now.
At dawn the group set out in canoes down the Curaray River, following it to the Añangu River, which they then followed upstream to the Tiwaeno River. Finally the river became so shallow the canoes could go no farther, and the travelers set out on foot through the jungle. It took them two days, but eventually, late in the afternoon, they rounded a bend in the trail, and there was the settlement, a small cluster of thatched huts set in a clearing. An Indian man, naked except for a strip of cotton cloth tied around his waist, stood on a log and watched as they approached, and several women stood at the entrances to the huts. They all stared as the group approached their village.
Betty breathed deeply as she walked past the man and into the village. Would she feel a sharp blow to her back next? She was living out one of those life-or-death tales she used to hear as a child back in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She recalled how she would sit at the dining room table mesmerized as she listened to visiting missionaries tell astonishing tales of faith in action. How far away that world now seemed.