A New Departure
This chapter introduces two women and two closely affiliated organizations that would play a significant role in missionary contact with the Waorani. The women were a missionary, Rachel Saint (sister of slain pilot Nate Saint), and Dayomæ, a young Wao woman who was Rachel Saint’s language helper. The two organizations were the Wycliffe Bible Translators, a group raising funds and recruiting personnel to translate the Bible into the languages of tribal peoples, and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which supervised the work of linguists and Bible translators recruited by WBT abroad. Both groups were founded by W. Cameron Townsend, a controversial religious entrepreneur committed to Bible translation as key to successful missionary work. In 1957 Rachel Saint and Dayumæ were introduced to American audiences through an appearance on the television program This Is Your Life. A second version of the “auca epic” began to emerge.