Land, Literacy, and “Quichua-ization”

This chapter examines the way missionaries and the Waorani faced three issues arising from the relocations of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as from ongoing contact between the Waorani and outsiders: adequate land, literacy skills, and the Wao desire to imitate their lowland Quichua neighbors. Jim Yost and various Waorani laid the groundwork for parts of Wao ancestral territory to be set aside for Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park and for another large tract to be designated a Waorani Ethnic Reserve. SIL literacy specialist Pat Kelley worked with the Waorani to encourage literacy and native-authored literature in Wao tededo, the Wao language. While seeking to preserve their traditional territory and their language, many Waorani also began to imitate the customs of the more populous Quichuas in an effort to move up the social ladder of Ecuadorian society.

A Parting of the Ways

This chapter explores the different perspectives held by Rachel Saint and Elisabeth Elliot on what it meant to be a missionary among the Waorani, differences that in 1961 led Elliot and her daughter to leave the mission. The distinct perspectives were evident in the books associated with each woman: The Dayuma Story, written by Ethel Emily Wallis in collaboration with Saint and Dayomæ, and The Savage My Kinsman, by Elliot, with help from photographer Cornell Capa. Saint viewed the Waorani in traditional evangelical terms as a people lost in spiritual darkness and needing redemption. Elliot raised questions about how such an isolated group could understand the gospel message. The two missionary women were unable to collaborate on their primary task of Bible translation, leading to Elliot’s departure. Shortly thereafter, nine Waorani, including four of the five surviving Palm Beach killers, were baptized.

An Anthropologist Arrives

This chapter describes the initial experiences and impact of Jim Yost, an SIL staff member with a PhD in anthropology, who moved into Tewæno with his wife and daughter in January 1974. They were the first intact nuclear family of outsiders to live among the Waorani. Yost’s official assignment was to collaborate with Rachel Saint doing fieldwork among the Waorani before their culture was changed by outside contact. He immersed himself in Wao culture but soon found his data corrupted by Saint’s presence, coaching the Waorani to behave as she wanted them to. Yost also became concerned about the control exercised by Dayomæ and Saint over the inhabitants of Tewæno, control that left the Waorani dependent on SIL and ill prepared to navigate an outside world increasingly encroaching on their lives.

The Home Front

This chapter traces the transformation of the five slain missionaries from admirable but tragic victims to martyrs and paragons of evangelical spirituality. The American evangelical press emphasized the triumph of faith in the face of death, and critics were silenced. The men’s story was published in the widely circulated Reader’s Digest, and Elisabeth Elliot, widow of one of the slain missionaries, wrote Through Gates of Splendor, published in 1957 and featuring all five men as case studies of true holiness. It became an immediate bestseller and the defining missionary martyr narrative for American evangelicals during the second half of the twentieth century. Two biographies—one of Jim Elliot, the other of Nate Saint—quickly followed. All three books encouraged the sense of calling that led waves of young people into full-time Christian work, on the mission field or at home.

“Palm Beach” on the Curaray River

This chapter presents the history of an event in January 1956 that gave birth to an iconic missionary martyr narrative with a lasting impact on American evangelicalism and on the future of the Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador. It began with five young men, representing evangelical faith missions. They were determined to make peaceful contact with the Waorani (aucas), a violent and isolated tribal people who had never heard the Christian gospel. The five men used aviation as an innovative technology to locate a Wao clearing and attempt to pacify the inhabitants by dropping trade goods from the air, followed by a face-to-face encounter. After the apparent friendliness of this first meeting, the Waorani returned two days later with spears and killed the missionaries. News of their deaths was publicized in the US and around the world.

Leaving Ecuador

This chapter describes opposition to the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ecuador that had been building throughout the 1970s and that crested with the decision in May 1981 by President Jaime Roldós to issue Decree No. 1159, ending Ecuador’s contractual relationship with the Institute. The decree gave SIL a year to complete projects or turn them over to Ecuadorians. Although Roldós did not expel SIL, he curtailed the organization’s size and influence. He was responding to political supporters, to critical books by David Stoll and others, and to voices like that of Dayomæ’s son Sam Padilla Cænto, who characterized missionaries as the “worst enemy” of the Waorani. Some SIL staff, including Catherine Peeke and Rosi Jung, were allowed to stay to finish translation projects. Amid the upheaval, 1981 also marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the five missionaries’ deaths, bringing with it scrutiny and unwanted publicity.

The (Apparently) Idyllic Years

This chapter traces the years 1962 to 1968, when Rachel Saint, representing the Summer Institute of Linguistics, was the only full-time missionary among the Waorani and when the Guequitaidi (Guequita’s bunch), the name given Dayomæ’s kinship group, responded to the Christian message with miraculous openness. Evangelicals in the US were told that the Guequitaidi held prayer meetings and had received copies of the Gospel of Mark, translated by Saint and Dayomæ (though no one could read) and that some had volunteered to go as missionaries to the Piyæmoidi (downriver Waorani), who were their sworn enemies. In 1966 Saint took two Wao men to the Congress on World Evangelism in Berlin, where they captured the imaginations of delegates and the press. In 1968 Wao missionaries found their Piyæmoidi enemies. That contact and the discovery of oil in Amazonian Ecuador would forever change missionary work among the Waorani.

Peaceful Contact

This chapter describes the trek into Wao territory in the Ecuadorian rainforest, the peaceful encounter in October 1958 between evangelical missionaries Rachel Saint and Elisabeth Elliot and Dayomæ’s kin, and the missionaries’ early days living in the small Wao clearing that came to be named Tewæno. Saint and Elliot encountered a group of fifty-six Waorani, including the men who had killed their loved ones. Dayomæ continued her leadership role both as a cultural broker, giving the Wao men short haircuts and encouraging the use of clothing, and an indigenous Bible woman, telling her kin through stories that God wanted them to stop their violent spearing vendettas. Saint and Elliot tried to adapt to Wao culture while continuing to learn the language. American evangelicals were thrilled at an apparent answer to prayer. Media outlets publicized the story, and each of the missionary women signed her own book contract.

Saving the Rainforest

This final chapter argues that to save the rainforest, environmentalists created their own romanticized story of the Waorani for North American consumption. Ironically, it paralleled earlier evangelical narratives, with a representative Wao (Moi), a typical village (Cæwæidi Ono), a bestselling book (Savages), and, within a few years, a film (Trinkets and Beads). The journalist and adventure travel writer Joe Kane, author of Savages, introduced secular American audiences to the Waorani, their homeland, and the threat of Big Oil. Kane discredited Maxus Energy and blamed the failings of the Waorani on missionaries, with Rachel Saint as the authoritarian prototype. As with most critics, Kane failed to see the complexities of the missionary-Waorani encounter: at once an iconic narrative in the history of American evangelicalism and the seldom told stories of specific missionaries—their failings and their contributions to the survival of the Waorani.

David and Goliath

This chapter explores changes in Amazonian Ecuador during the late 1980s and early 1990s as oil companies and environmentalists, not missionaries, exercised increasing influence over the Waorani. In 1987 the Ecuadorian government awarded an oil concession on ancestral Wao territory to Houston-based Conoco, a decision that mobilized environmentalists and raised awareness of earlier pollution. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund argued that a small group of indigenous people, the Waorani, were threatened by “Big Oil” in the Amazon. Conoco left Ecuador, selling its concession to Dallas-based Maxus Energy Corporation. Three new voices that would oppose Maxus and introduce the Waorani story to academic and popular audiences beyond the evangelical world were Judith Kimerling, author of Amazon Crude; the anthropologist Laura Rival; and the journalist Joe Kane. All three criticized SIL, reinvigorating the idea that missions damaged native cultures, especially Wao culture.