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The seeming openness of the Waorani and favorable weather led the missionaries to consider early January for peaceful contact. A month before the launch, they added Roger Youderian, a member of the Gospel Missionary Union who had survived the Battle of the Bulge. The date was set for Tuesday, January 3, 1956. Saint ferried the other four to their designated spot some six miles from the nearest Wao clearing. "The neighbors," two Wao women and a man, showed up on Friday, January 6. From the perspective of the five missionaries, it was a friendly visit. The Indians sampled hamburgers, and the missionaries shared their insect repellent. The man, Naenkiwi, was intrigued by the airplane, so Saint took him for a ride. The Waorani were talkative, but neither group understood the other.

The missionaries did not know that contact with these three Waorani had placed them in the middle of a potentially deadly conflict. Naenkiwi wanted to marry Gimari, the younger of the two women. Her brother, Nampa, objected, and the Waorani, who were engaged in vicious patterns of violence among themselves, often killed for less than this. The rage was deflected to the five missionaries. They were cowodi ("outsiders" or "cannibals") and traditional enemies. Years later, Geketa, a member of the spearing party, gave his perspective on what happened in a film produced by the Summer Institute of Linguistics:

"One day a plane flew over us. It circled and it circled. … They dropped clothes and knives to us from the plane. Then they called, 'Come, come, come with us.' … A few from our group went to meet them. Later, the next night, Nampa went into a rage over a wedding he was against. Nampa … grabbed all his spears and yelled to me, 'Come on, let's go and kill. Just right here close by are cowodi. Remember how our mothers warned us when we were children. Cowodi have always carried guns and shot us. Now here's our chance, let's kill them.' … [The next day] the plane … landed on the sandbar, then we went off with our spears to kill. The cowodi were on the sandbar calling to us. Nampa ran at one with a spear. The man shot Nampa, and the man fell right there. … We speared another, and even as they were running, I speared two more … The last cowodi called out to us. 'Don't spear. Don't spear.' And we understood. 'We just came to meet you. We aren't going to kill you. Why are you killing us?' He was standing on a log jutting out of the river when Kimu ran a spear through his chest, and he fell into the water."

Although the exact circumstances are unclear, further reconstructions of the event suggested that one missionary did fire a pistol, probably the shot that hit Nampa, who later died. The missionaries clearly offered no organized resistance, nor did any seek to save himself apart from his friends. By mid-afternoon, Sunday, January 8, it was all over. Nate Saint's watch stopped at 3:12 p.m.

The story of the five missionaries killed in Ecuador circled the globe and struck a deep chord among American evangelicals as well. During the 20th century, an estimated 26 million people around the world were killed at least in part because of their Christian faith. Most of these died relatively unnoticed. Yet these five became known, modeled, celebrated, almost beatified, so that at the 50th anniversary of their death, books and films continue to appear and many people remember. Why?

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March (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50