We Are Giving Them Back Their Culture

Twenty years ago, on January 8, 1956, five young missionaries met their deaths on an obscure river beach in Ecuador. Camping on “Palm Beach,” a sand bar on the Curaray where they had landed in a light plane, the five Americans were attempting contact with the savage Aucas. Their endeavor ended in blood and heartbreak. But soon the door to the Aucas began to open. Already a sister of one of the five, Rachel Saint, had met an Auca girl named Dayuma, who had fled from her tribe years before. Slowly Dayuma taught Rachel her language, but she was unwilling to take Rachel to her people in the jungle. Only when she saw some of her relatives in a strip of movie film retrieved from the Palm Beach slaying scene did she realize it might be safe for her to return. By then, Dayuma believed in the Christ she learned about in “God’s Carving” (her term for the Bible). In 1958 she and Rachel entered the Auca territory. The Auca village of Tiwaeno has been Rachel’s home ever since.

Question. You were already a missionary in Ecuador when the five missionaries to the Auca Indians were killed, weren’t you?

Answer. Yes. As a matter of fact, I was visiting with Elisabeth Elliot at her home in Shandia, in the eastern jungle among the Quechua Indians. I did not know it, but the other women did not want her to be alone at the time of the contact with the Aucas, so they arranged my visit to coincide with the men’s trip.

Question. How involved were the wives with this operation?

Answer. They were tremendously involved. They knew the risks and actually were the back-up team through the radio contacts. The men had only been gone a comparatively short time when the attack took place, perhaps about five days.

Question. Was there any kind of bitterness and anger or loss of spiritual vitality among the families of the men?

Answer. I remember that my sister-in-law, Marge Saint (now Vander Puy), said she didn’t know why the world was making so much of five men doing what every missionary was supposed to do. The norm of Christian living is to die for your faith. I think that the way the wives received this tragedy was what made the biggest impact on the outside world.

Question. What part did Dayuma play in this?

Answer. Dayuma had been separated from her family and the tribe for ten or twelve years. We had become friends, and she was beginning to open up to the Gospel. She felt that her family might have been involved in the killing of the five men. It would have been very risky for her to go back. If she met an enemy group, she would be killed. When the film was brought back from the destroyed camp, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that several members of her family were alive and were responsible in part for the killings. She deduced that it might have been some of her relatives who had received some of the gifts from our men. This was proven after we moved into the tribe. One day her younger brother brought out the very rope that my brother had used to let the gifts down from the plane.

But it was the sense of responsibility for the actions of her brothers and the desire to go back to her family that was the final motivation in bringing her to the Lord. She never deviated from her desire to go back in to the Aucas.

Question. Do you think now that the men were mistaken in their attempt?

Answer. There has been a lot of criticism. But I feel that they took all the precautions they were able to. I had been living on a nearby plantation studying the Auca language with Dayuma. I was hoping to get into the closed territory of the tribe myself and was not aware of the men’s plans. They came over and asked many very careful questions: Was it as dangerous as people thought? What might the Indians do? Their research was as thorough as it could have been. I think that the only further precaution they could have taken was not to be willing to risk their lives. Some have called the project a waste of manpower, but it opened the way for Betty Elliot and her daughter and Dayuma and me to go into the tribe.

You see, for us to be willing to live with them cut straight across the pattern for revenge. They killed our men. Dayuma’s brother had killed my brother. Yet we were asking to live with them instead of taking our revenge. Then one day they found that our men had had guns with them when they were attacked and that they could have defended their lives. But they chose to die rather than shoot the Indians. Nothing less than this kind of commitment would have broken the Aucas’ cultural mindset.

Question. How long have you worked with the Aucas?

Answer. I have actually lived with them for eighteen years. There were five years of language learning and preparation prior to my living in with the tribe.

Question. What are some of the major changes among the Aucas?

Answer. The Aucas have been thoroughly acquainted with demons and devil worship for many generations. The result of this is a religion of terror. The witch doctor is the central authority, and he controls the tribe. Any death is supposed to be caused by the witch doctor. Then that death has to be avenged and the feuding starts. They are afraid that they might be speared at night in their own houses. Everyone is a potential enemy. If a father loses a son, he feels he must kill his daughter. If the group loses a marriageable girl, a grandmother is killed. Why should a worthless old woman live if a marriageable girl has died? This kind of thinking permeates their culture.

Now at the time the five men were killed, there were no witch doctors left in that group, so the killing was done in a vacuum, in a sense. There was no obvious source for the killing or for vengeance. With the prayers of the people around the world for the Aucas, and for us, the Gospel took root very quickly. It doesn’t happen quite so fast in other groups.

Question. Where does the Gospel start making changes?

Answer. It is the teaching of the resurrection of the body and forgiveness of sins that gives the Indian a peace of heart that is absolutely amazing to see. I really never had a good night’s sleep until we were able to teach enough of the Gospel to make them understand that God would take care of them even in the face of their enemies. Their tremendous fearfulness has been transformed.

Question. You have been translating the Bible into the Auca language. How much has been done?

Answer. Mark has been printed and about fourteen chapters of Acts. They are reading it just as fast as we can get it to them.

Question. Did you have to teach the Aucas how to read?

Answer. Well, first of all we had to make an alphabet in order to give them words. Wycliffe Bible Translators has a system adaptable to primitive jungle tribes where a missionary has to begin with the development of an alphabet. Then I started a literacy program which was taken up by a young Auca Indian.

Question. It sounds as if the Aucas took the initiative quickly once they accepted you.

Answer. They are tremendously eager for school and want to learn. There are sometimes eighty people in four different classes in one day now.

Question. What about a church?

Answer. The Aucas have built their own churches. Of course, Dayuma and I gave them every backing and help. The first pupils that we taught now are the leaders of the fellowship.

Question. Are there missionaries among the Aucas now?

Answer. There are six altogether, not counting the pilots, medical workers, and technicians who stand in back of us. Dr. Catherine Peeke worked out and published a systematic linguistic approach to the Auca language. Pat Kelley is carrying on the literacy program. Jim and Kathie Yost are doing an anthropological study of social change among the Aucas.

Question. Why are there so few men working there?

Answer. They are still very much afraid of men from the outside. Jim Yost is one of the first to live there. They believe that men are killers. Women are not such a threat, and so it has been a natural thing to start with women. There are still people who are not satisfied that men should be living there even now.

Question. Some anthropologists and even some missionaries say that we should leave people like this alone, that we destroy their cultural patterns. What is your response to this?

Answer. I have thought about it a great deal and I have come to the conclusion that we are actually giving the Indians back that which they lost, maybe hundreds of years ago. In the stories of the Indians, they recognize one God. They do not know his Son, nor his name. But they have many of the stories that seem to be universal among primitive peoples, stories of the flood, of the personal dealing of God with man. So we are simply taking them back to their old, old stories and filling in the facts of the Gospel. We really are giving them the conclusion of their own culture, not robbing them of something pure and innocent.

Question. Primitive revelation is a fascinating study. We don’t usually hear of it from missionaries, though.

Answer. The more I study their legends, the more I find of their longing to know God. They believed that if they kept certain conditions and got past tremendous obstacles, they might finally get to heaven. But God was always angry, and might throw them out once they got to heaven.

Question. The tribe was very small, wasn’t it, when the outside world first heard of the Aucas?

Answer. When Dayuma’s family joined us, the number of Aucas was fifty-six. During twelve years of peace and stable marriages the number doubled. Then there has been a reaching out and searching the forest for long-lost relatives who had not been taught the Gospel. At the last census I wrote out the names of something like 550 Indians. That is probably all of the tribe.

Question. The evangelical missionary is often accused of not being adequately conscious of the social conditions of primitive peoples. You have strengthened the Aucas’ homes. What else have you done?

Answer. From the very first we have tried to help the Aucas catch up with the world. The day will come when the forest animals are no longer plentiful enough to support the tribe. We have brought in cattle so that they will be able to use them for food. We have also brought in chickens, ducks, and geese. They have a good agricultural program of their own and have taught us how to grow crops. So we were able to introduce papaya, citrus fruits, and pineapple.

Question. What about health education?

Answer. The immediate problem among primitive Indians is that their isolation from civilization makes them terribly susceptible to disease as soon as any outside contact occurs. We immediately started a program of vaccines and made as broad an invitation as possible. Inoculations were given to all who came.

Measles, polio, and pneumonia will wipe out a tribe in an amazingly short time if this is not done. We also have a heavy medical program with nurses and doctors from hospital facilities which are available to us. Isolation is impossible any more for the Indians, so through the work of the Gospel, they have protection that they would never get from oil companies and mining operations.

Question. Are you an agent of the United States government?

Answer. We are agents of the Lord. But I would like to think that we also operate as citizens of the United States. We have been able to help our sister country Ecuador. When I first went out, murder and spearing were terrible. There was no commerce. Now there is peace. People can live along the borders of the Auca territory. I would like to think that as an American citizen and a Christian, I have been of some help to the Ecuadorian government in a problem that they had no solution for.

Question. Why did you and the five families of the martyrs make such a heroic effort to reach such a tiny tribe when there are much larger groups still unreached even in Ecuador?

Answer. This is a good question that is still under debate. For me personally, it was the specific response to a direction that I felt was of the Lord. God needs people to work with all size groups, and this is the area where God has placed me. It is not really as much a matter of statistics as it is of personal guidance.

Question. Have there been responses to the death of those men that you can see today?

Answer. Our newest pilot on the field was a high school boy when this happened and came because of it. There is a Wycliffe mechanic there now as a result of the Auca story. At the time of their death, it was people in business who reacted. Men who were successful left their work and went to the mission field. Many people who did not go to a foreign field were won to Christ because of the men.

I found myself telling someone that if Dayuma, or Kimo, the pastor from one of the lost groups of Aucas who went to the Berlin Congress on Evangelism, or any one of those men who killed the missionaries had been the only one saved, my service would still have been worthwhile. Yet God has multiplied the fruitfulness so greatly. The Christian Aucas now pray that they will reach others. I am greatly moved at their faith as they want to be missionaries.

One day one of the Auca men felt he was called to go to a big group of Indians. He was the first one to contact them from the outside. He and his group taught them for two months, and yet they were murdered. Knowing the probability that he would be killed, the Auca fellowship stood behind him. One man said, “If you go and they kill you, I will follow you.” These Christians are willing to risk their own lives many times over as they go on the trail to reach murderers. So the Gospel has gone full circle.

Question. It would seem that your brother and the others did not die in vain.

Answer. That’s true. Apparently that was the one thing that could have reached these Indians, in whom fear and vengeance and demonism were so inbred. We need the prayers of the Christian world that the Aucas whom these Indian Christians have died for will be reached as the first group was.

Question. Do you expect to devote the remaining years of your life to the Aucas?

Answer. I’d be ready to do it. I hope that someday the Bible translation into Auca will be finished. Of course it is the native translator who is doing it, but I can help.

Question. If you were starting fresh again today to reach the Aucas, would you do anything substantially different?

Answer. I have learned a great deal through living with the Aucas for almost twenty years. I found that what I practiced at the beginning was right and I would do it again. I felt that the Aucas knew ever so much more about their own people than I could imagine. By following their leading, I was protected from many mistakes. There was nothing in my background that could ever let me imagine some of the things they know. I would advise anyone starting now in this type of work to assume that the natives are the ones who know their own culture best. Let them know that you want them to help you.

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