Why the River Ate the Land

“The problem that looms largest to me as a missionary,” writes Elisabeth Elliott, “is that of communication. By this I do not mean only learning the language of the country. I mean as well exploring the mind of, in my case, the Indian. Truth is light, but it does not illuminate the whole of a man’s mind at once. All of us retain areas of darkness, but it seems startling to us only when another’s unlighted area is different from ours. The following incident reminded me again that the path toward the Perfect Day is lighted gradually, ‘shineth more and more.’ ”

It was a familiar trail that ran along the edge of the jungle river. Sunlight lay splintered on the smooth sand between the reeds, reflecting a fragrant dry warmth on our faces which was whisked away every now and then by the wind from the river. It was a wet fresh wind, reminding me that the river’s source lay high in the glaciers of the Andes. The foaming milky-gray water roared past us over the boulders toward the Amazon. A few parrots shrieked in the top of a great kapok tree and lizards shot suddenly off the trail and rattled into the reeds.

The Indians in front of me walked quickly, single-file, placing their strong bare feet surely and lightly one in front of the other. One of the young men wore blue jeans, with a label which said “Big Boy” sewn on the outside of the back pocket. He had a small carrying net, woven of palm fiber, slung across the top of his head and hanging down his back. It held some plantains and the few medical supplies I had brought. The second Indian in the file was built like the first-short, broad, very muscular, with tea-colored skin and stiff blue-black hair. He carried a machete (made in U.S.A.) and an eight-foot blowgun made of two lengths of split palm, neatly fitted together and wound with a fine bark. It had a mouthpiece whittled from a deer bone.

The girl wore a narrow blue skirt and a loose gingham blouse. Her long straight hair was pinned smoothly back with a plastic barrette, and her neck was loaded with thousands of tiny glass beads, threaded on palm fiber.

As we broke out into the clearing we saw that a large slice of the riverbank was missing from Mamallacta’s dooryard.

The dogs—appalling creatures with mangy skin stretched over sharp skeletons—exploded from the house as we approached, were shouted back, and cowered off into the reeds.

It was a rather elaborate house, as Indian houses go: split-level, one level the bare earth, the other a sketchy bamboo platform a yard or so off the ground, where some of the family slept and strewed their clothes. The roof was thatched with leaves, falling steeply from a palm ridgepole. The walls were a heterogeneous collection of sticks, split palms, and bamboo slabs, stuck into the ground and held more or less parallel by a horizontal strip of bamboo. The doorway was, as usual, too low for me to enter without stooping, and I had to climb at the same time over a high sill, meant to discourage some of the chickens.

After the usual mumbled greetings in corrupt Spanish (the tribal language has no greeting forms) I squatted by the fire with the old mother. She soon had a pot boiling on three stones which stood in the fire, and I put in my hypodermic needle and syringe. Some naked children with tight round bellies and protruding breastbones eyed me tentatively, edging around from behind the woman. She was very thin, very old, and very energetic, fanning the fire vigorously with some feathers skewered on a stick. Her skirt was tucked snugly behind her knees as she sat on her heels on the ground. Near the fire stood several aluminum pots and a large clay one, moulded on the ancient pattern with a pointed bottom, resting in a hollow in the earth.

Mamallacta, the old man, lay on a few slabs of bamboo in the corner, covered by a filthy blanket to protect him from the flies, though the afternoon was hot. I knew that he had been to the witch doctor several times to be cured of his “leg lump,” a hard hot swelling in the thigh. The witch had drunk the bitter wine and blown tobacco smoke over him, wiped him with the medicine leaves and whistled the demon’s whistle in the dark. He had sucked as hard as he could to get the demon out. The lump was still there. Younger Indians had persuaded Mamallacta to let them call the white señora, who would stick him with a needle like a snake’s tooth. This was the Fourth time I had come. He was beginning to see the results of the medicine. He waited patiently as I performed the meaningless ceremony of “cooking” the needle.

“The river licked my land,” he said.

“Hmm,” I said. “It licked your land. I saw. It nearly licked away the orange trees too.”

“Almost. It almost licked my orange trees. If it had rained a little longer, it would have eaten my house too.”

“Hmm.” I made the small sound through my nose which tells the Indian that you hear. There was silence for a moment, except for the tiny rattle of the syringe in the clay pot and the intermittent beating of the fan.

“Tullu Uma did it.”

“Tullu Uma?” He was a scowling, heavily-built Indian who lived across the big river. He was one of the “knowers.” He could call demons and he knew things other people could not know.

“Yes, he did it, and I’m plenty mad.”

“How did he do it?” I asked.

“He did it when we weren’t looking. He buried some leaves in my front yard.”

“Hmm. Buried some leaves?”

“Leaves with salt on them. The river wanted to lick the salt. It licked until it reached the leaves. It licked my land away. It’s Tullu Uma’s fault. He did it. He was mad at me. Why should he be mad at me? I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I turned to the men who had come with me—the one with the blue jeans and his friend with the machete.

They knew how to read and write in Spanish as well as in their own language. They had just been to town to vote for the governor of the province. They had received the good news about Jesus Christ and believed it, and had been following him for several years. I looked at the girl with the shining black eyes.

“Is that true?” I asked.

They looked at each other and smiled shyly.

“No,” they said. There was a derisive snort from the bamboo slab in the corner. Quickly one of them added, “No, I don’t believe it. I don’t think Tullu Uma did that. But if he did, it was a very dirty trick.”

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