WAORANI
The Saga of Ecuador's Secret People:
A Historical Perspective
© Adrian Warren, Last Refuge Ltd., March 2002, in association with Dr. James Yost.

Soon after the Shell company killings, at the end of the forties, yet more tales of violence emerged. Two Waorani girls, Dayuma and Ome, chose to come out of the forest of their own accord, in order to escape a spate of vengeful spearing attacks and killings on their families by Moipa, the same man who had killed the oil workers. The girls fled the violence, throwing themselves at the mercy of the first outsider they came across. That outsider, Don Carlos, was the owner of a tea plantation, Hacienda Ila, and he took the girls to live as his slaves. Meanwhile, in the forest, the deadly vendettas continued, with killings and revenge killings. Moipa himself was eventually speared to death by other Waorani. Once accepted at Ila, Dayuma and Ome started doing manual work. Some time later, Rachel Saint, an American missionary from Wycliffe Bible translators, befriended them at the hacienda and started to learn their language. Little did Rachel know at the time that the consequences of her action would trigger a series of events that would change the lives of the Waorani forever.

Dayuma, 2002

Ome, 2002

At the base of the Andes, where the mountains meet the Amazon rain forest, at Shell Mera, Rachel Saint's brother Nate, together with four other American missionaries, were making a plan to attempt peaceful contact with the Waorani. While aware of the tribe's fearsome reputation for killing all outsiders, they nonetheless felt compelled to try to take the Gospel to the free living Waorani. Realising that it would take many months of preparation, one of the men, Jim Elliott, decided to learn a little of the Waorani language beforehand, and joined Rachel Saint to work with Dayuma at Ila.