CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
Missionary to the Head-Shrinking Jivaros
At Macuma, a mission station in the southern jungle served by the little yellow plane, lived Roger Youderian, his wife, Barbara, and their two children, Bethy and Jerry. Macuma, run since 1945 by Frank Drown, is reminiscent of a busy farm in the United States. As the plane comes in, chickens scatter off the airstrip, while cows continue chewing their cud undisturbed. Buildings are made, not of split bamboo, but of sturdy wooden planks, and an atmosphere of stability and permanence pervades the compound. Macuma is located in Jivaro territory. The Jivaros, whose lives are punctuated by fierce interfamily feuds, are famous the world over for their custom of shrinking human heads. They live throughout seven thousand square miles in the southern part of the jungle, independent of the white man who has nominally ruled their country for four hundred years.
Roger, tall and thin, with a shock of black hair, had been born on January 21, 1924, on a ranch near Sumatra, Montana, the seventh child of a ranching family. From his mother he received a devoted and thorough Christian training. Roger had been an active youngster, and on the way to becoming a good pianist, when polio struck him at the age of nine. This crippled him so that he not only lost his musical touch but for the rest of his life walked and ran like an old man.
In high school in Lewistown, Montana, he overcame the effects of polio sufficiently to play basketball. From high school, Roger went to Montana State College with three scholarships. He planned to become a teacher in agriculture. He was chosen the outstanding freshman of his year in 1942 and worked during the following summer drawing maps of farms around Lewistown that are still used by the Federal Land Bank. In October, 1943, Roger enlisted in the Army, eventually becoming a paratrooper. He was stationed in England where he became assistant to Army Chaplain Paschal Fowlkes, who wrote to Roger's parents: "Christian work in the Army is not greatly different from Christian work outside, in that the leader must learn to depend on a comparatively small number to carry the load and give inspiration to others. I thought you would be proud and happy to know that I count Roger one of those 'strong pillars.' " During this time in England, Roger's faith was deepened and strengthened and in December, 1944, we find him writing to his mother:
"The happiest day of my life was the day I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior for the remission of my sins, duly repented for, and with God's help I hope and pray for the faith and strength to glorify our Father through my daily living as a witness and follower of Christ. Searching the Scriptures is my greatest source of hope and inspiration, having yet to learn the full power of prayer. I used to say, 'This is a great world.' With this new faith, this feeling has increased a thousandfold and I fairly ache within from happiness and rejoicing in sharing God's manifold blessing which He gives to this world with Infinite mercy and grace."
Roger survived the Rhine jump of 1944 and was decorated for action in the Battle of the Bulge. The idea of dedicating his life totally and completely to the Lord was taking root in Roger's mind and in August, 1945, he wrote from Berlin: "I've a secret to tell you, Mother, in this more than anything in the world I want the action to precede the announcement. Ever since I accepted Christ as my personal Sav- lour last fall and wanted to follow Him and do the will of the Lord, I've felt the call to either missionary, social, or ministerial work after my release from the service. Can't say now what the calling will be but I want to be a witness for Him and live following Him every second of my life."
Roger returned to Montana in January, 1946, and during that winter his conviction that he had been called to the mission field was confirmed. He enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, where he met Barbara Orton, a quiet, fairhaired girl who was also studying Christian Education with the mission field in mind. She came from a Baptist family in Lansing, Michigan, and all her childhood she had heard of mission work, listened to missionaries speak at her church, and met them in her home. "I believe that the Lord just spoke to me, while I was a child," she says now, "and made me feel that that was what I should do." In September, 1950, Barbara and Roger enrolled in the missionary medicine course at Northwestern Schools. All winter they sat next to each other in a little classroom with nine other students, learning how to set bones, deliver a baby, give injections. They were engaged on Easter Day, 1951, and married in September. They were accepted as candidates by the Gospel Missionary Union, a nondenominational board, and left immediately for six months' probation work in Kansas City. Here they had Spanish classes, learned how to approach some of the practical problems of a mission station, took turns leading Sunday services, and worked with groups of children from the city slums.
In January, 1953, they set out with six-month-old Beth Elaine for Ecuador. After a period of Spanish study in Shell Mera, the Youderians went to Macuma. Frank and Marie Drown, senior missionaries at the Macuma station, had come to Ecuador eight years before from the farm country of Iowa. It was through letters written back to the States by Marie that Roger became interested in working with the Jivaros.
Once settled on the station to which God had sent them, Roger and Barbara plunged into a study of the Jivaro language and were soon able to help in the development of a method of teaching the Jivaros to read and write their own language. Roger made little penand-ink drawings of familiar sights-a sloth hanging upside down on a branch, a blow gun, a lizard lazing on a tree trunk-and next to the drawing he printed the sound of the Jivaro words.
Although Roger had come to preach the Gospel there is much a missionary must accomplish and learn before he can expect to make successful contact with a primitive tribe. And even after he has mastered the language, built himself a home, gained the confidence of the Indian, he still has to spend a large amount of time in what is best described as maintenance. The jungle grows with incredible speed and therefore has to be kept at bay by the constant use of the machete. The generators that are used for current at the bigger stations break down with irritating frequency, roofs leak in the hard tropical rain, and the only person who can cope with all this is the missionary himself. Roger's skill as a carpenter and his pleasure in this kind of work stood him in good stead when he first came to Macuma. Barbara wrote: "Roj is in his glory in Macuma; they have two men sawing boards, two fellows are planing, two are grooving, two more sawing and planing 2 by 4's. Roj has his power saw going and they have poured pillars to set the house on. Roj has planted 74 tomato plants from the seeds he got from the station in Costa Rica."
It was not to do construction work, however, that Roj had left his home. Soon he was driving himself to reach the Jivaro Indians with the Gospel. A fiercely independent people, the Jivaros combine warlike hostility and a boisterous sense of humor. "All they do is laugh and spit," said one missionary in describing them. They seem to laugh with little provocation, and have a way of punctuating their conversation by spitting through the second and third finger with an explosive sound. Like the Quichua, the Jivaro never tires of pressing his face to the screen of the missionary's window, watching all that goes on inside. Roj became accustomed to this after a short time, though he found their sotto voce comments and sudden outbursts of smothered giggles upsetting at first.
Wearing shorts, a sweat shirt, cotton cap, and canvas leggings and sneakers, Roger spent much of his time visiting Jivaro houses. He followed the twisting and exhausting jungle trails, more often than not knee-deep in mud. He might pause sometimes, arrested by an indescribably sweet fragrance, sweeter than orange blossom, but because of the forest, he would be unable to locate the source. The most striking flowers are found high up in the treetops, nearly smothered by the ubiquitous green foliage. He would also have to be on his guard against the most dangerous of jungle fauna, the snakes. Protective coloring renders many varieties almost impossible to detect. The tiny viper may lie in the center of the path, but the dappled pattern of its skin so blends with the pattern of sunlight on fallen leaves that the traveler seldom sees it. The bushmaster carries enough poison in his sacs to kill one hundred men. The coral snake, whose poison attacks the central nervous system and causes death without previous symptoms in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, is one of the smaller species, and therefore more difficult to see. Suddenly, the forest path would end and Roger would step into a clearing, his eyes blinded by direct sunlight after the twilight zone of the jungle. Each Jivaro house stands in its own clearing. It is oblong-shaped, a narrow slit about five feet high at either end serving as window and door, and covered with a palm-thatched roof of pointed leaves whose fringe almost touches the ground.
Strict rules of etiquette govern the behavior of the Jivaro host and the visitor who enters his clearing. A formal greeting, which may take ten or fifteen minutes, is proper. It is a series of utterances which may go something like this:
"I have come."
"You've come?"
"Yes, I've come to your house."
"You have come well."
Rol learned that no matter how many people are present, the newcomer goes through this dialogue with each one.
Bending his head to get his five feet eleven inches through the slit, he would enter the murky interior through which he could just barely see the dim figures of women moving about at the far end of the house, trailed by several little naked children. Hard-packed earth serves as a floor in these houses and small fires glow at intervals down the long thirty-foot interior, the smoke creating an acrid odor and adding to the lack of visibility. The Jivaro house is strictly divided between the men's section, the front part, known as the tangamash-somewhat the equivalent of the small-town front porch, a place where men can sit and gossip for hours on end-and the back part of the house, which is exclusively for the use of women. The women wear a long piece of cloth that hangs down straight to the knees, the two ends tied at one shoulder. The men are barechested but wear a cloth tied around their waists. Like the Quichuas, the Jivaros have long, straight black hair. It hangs loosely around the women's faces, little attempt being made at any kind of coiffure. The men, as befitting their position as superior beings, go in for an elaborate hair-do. The waist-long hair is combed and then dressed in bright red, yellow, or blue tropical bird feathers.
Roger would be invited to sit down on a bench alongside the wall, and facing him, on a low stool, sat the head of the house. If the man were trying to impress his visitor with his position, he would go through an elaborate charade for the first five minutes before he permitted conversation to begin. One of his two or three wives would bring him a bowl of water, from which he took a mouthful but not to swallow. He spat it out over his hands and then washed his face with his wet hands. After that he combed his hair slowly and deliberately. The entire performance was carried through wordlessly and with dignity and deliberation. He would then be served his chicha, the bowl offered to his guest and conversation begun. Thus Roger spent many hours talking to the Jivaros in their houses, slowly acquiring their language, absorbing their way of life, and above all, telling them the story of Jesus.
Among the Jivaros, witchcraft and sorcery, hate and murder, take deep roots early in life. Children as they fall asleep at night are taught to repeat a list of names of those they must learn to hate. Writing of the tribe, Nate said: "They aren't cruel except that they are made that way by the religion of fear and evil spirits with which they hope somehow to cope with their sin problem. For instance, a witch visited the Macuma Indians a couple of months ago. He was from another section of the forests. For some reason or other he got mad and cursed a certain woman. Usually Jivaro difficulties are over women, who are soulless possessions of the man and are frequently stolen or traded in business deals. At any rate, the woman that had been cursed died within twenty-four hours. Her husband, brothers, and father then felt duty bound to avenge her blood because the witch was as guilty as if he had shot her outright. They went over to the other tribe and brutally killed the witch and another fellow. The thing is a couple of months old now so life goes on as usual but one of these days there will be another killing. It's routine in the Jivaria. There's no end to the killings. The miserable part is that to pay off these debts, as they call them, they don't necessarily have to kill the very murderer himself-any relative will do. Their consequent fear determines even the construction of their houses which are very much like military fortresses. They often put traps in the trails for their suspected enemies. Not long ago one missionary in the Jivaria was out doing visitation work in the jungles. His barefoot carrier was in front and as they approached a Jivaro clearing, he pulled up to a sudden, painful halt. A needle-sharp palm wood spike was sticking out of the top of his bloody foot."
These were the people with whom Roger had lived for over a year. He had learned their language on the Macuma station, and helped make up primers for the literacy program. At times the atmosphere of vengeance and murder affected Roger deeply, but with typical energy he kept driving ahead. Nate Saint once said of him: "Roj is one of the few missionaries I know who display a real sense of urgency in the task of winning souls."
Now this sense of urgency was prompting Roger to consider making a move. Knowing that Frank Drown could carry on the work of this established station alone, Roj began to pray for a wider sphere of service, as the Apostle Paul wrote: "[It is] my ambition to preach the Gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man's foundation."