Also called Wao Terero, Wao Tededo, Huaorani. Once named “Auca” by her neighbors, a word meaning “savage.” Her own name means “the people.”
Let us have simcha and exalt in kavod to Him, for the Sudus Nisuin of the Seh has come, and His Kallah has made herself ready. Hitgalut 19:7
How a people known for spearing strangers came to read the words of the Seh in their own tongue.
At Camp Wycliffe, the linguistics training camp in Oklahoma, a young Jim Elliot meets a missionary back from Ecuador who tells him of the Aucas, a people no outsider had reached peacefully. Elliot sails for Ecuador in 1952, serves the lowland Quichua at Shandia, and marries Elisabeth Howard in 1953. The Aucas stay on his heart.
Dayuma, a Waorani girl, fled the feuds that killed her family and lived on a hacienda among Quichua speakers. In 1955 SIL linguist Catherine Peeke took Rachel Saint to meet her. Dayuma became Rachel’s language teacher, and Jim Elliot gathered his first Wao phrases from her.
Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot Nate Saint flew from Shell Mera, a former oil camp at the jungle’s edge, where his wife Marj kept the radio. With Ed McCully’s station at Arajuno as the forward base, Nate spotted Waorani clearings from the air. Five men formed the team: Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Roger Youderian.
Circling low, Nate lowered a bucket on a long line so it hung almost still over the village. The team dropped machetes, kettles, and cloth, and called out Dayuma’s phrases by loudspeaker. The Waorani began tying gifts of their own to the line: food, a feather headband, a parrot.
Nate set his Piper down on a sandbar of the Curaray River. The men named it Palm Beach and built a treehouse camp.
A young man and two women walked out of the forest. The missionaries nicknamed the man “George” (his name was Nankiwi). They ate together, traded gifts, and Nate took him up in the plane.
Around midday Nate radioed Marj that a group was coming. The widely reported words were “Pray for us. This is the day!” The next call was set for 4:30. It never came. Stirred by false stories told inside the clan, a war party speared all five men. They carried guns, and by their own agreement did not fire on the Waorani.
Five days later a search party found the bodies. On January 30, 1956, LIFE magazine carried the story to the world with Cornell Capa’s photographs and images recovered from the men’s cameras.
Years afterward, men and a woman who were at Palm Beach, among them Kimo, Dawa, and Mincaye, told Nate’s son Steve Saint that as the missionaries died they heard singing and saw what looked like many lights, a crowd above the treetops. Steve Saint published their account in Christianity Today in 1996. The witnesses said they did not understand it then. They understood it once they heard the Gospel.
Rachel Saint brought Dayuma to the United States, where she was baptized and appeared with Rachel before national audiences. In 1957 two Waorani women, Mintaka and Mankamu, came out of the forest looking for her. In 1958 Dayuma went home with them. She came back with an invitation. That October, Elisabeth Elliot, her three-year-old daughter Valerie, and Rachel Saint walked in to live among the people who had killed their husband, father, and brother.
They lived in the longhouses, ate manioc, learned by listening, and let Dayuma tell the Scripture stories in Wao Terero before anything was written. Elisabeth worked on the first spelling of the language; Rachel and Dayuma went on to translate the Gospel of Mark and the Book of Acts.
Gikita, Kimo, Dyuwi, Mincaye, and others who had held the spears came to faith. In 1965 Kimo and Dyuwi baptized Nate’s children Steve and Kathy Saint at Palm Beach. Anthropologists Clayton and Carole Robarchek later reported that the killing rate, once among the highest ever recorded, fell by more than 90 percent as the blood feuds ended.
Change came fast. Adopting clothing was part of that change. The garment the Seh gives His Kallah is another thing: fine linen, bright and clean, which is the righteous acts of the kedoshim (Hitgalut 19:8).
SIL linguists Catherine Peeke and Rosi Jung, with more than a dozen Wao co-translators, worked from 1979 to 1992. They revised Rachel and Dayuma’s Mark and Acts and translated the rest of the New Testament. It was dedicated in June 1992, and a 2009 edition is now online in text and audio.
“Edæ Wængonguï incæ inguipoga quëwënäni ïnänite në waadete pönengä inte tömengä Wengä adocanque onguïñængä ïñongante pönongä pongacäimpa. Ïninque æcänö tömengä ingante në wede pönëna ïñömö tömengä wë womönämaï inte cöwë wæ̈nämaï quëwencæcäimpa.”
Yochanan 3:16 in Wao Terero
From Wængonguï nänö Apæ̈negaïnö, the Waorani New Testament. © 2009 Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. Creative Commons BY-NC-ND.
When He ascended on high, He gave gifts to men (Ephesians 4:8, 11). The gifts He named were people.
A bridal registry keeps the guests from buying five toasters. Each gift is listed once, and each guest signs for the one they will bring. The Bridegroom keeps a registry for His Kallah from every tribe and tongue, and in this one the gifts are the people He sends. Some were given long ago, at great cost. Others are still waiting for someone to sign.
The first gifts laid on the table. They could have fired and did not.
They turned grief into witness, and their forgiveness answered the spear.
Teacher of the language, first Waorani believer, and the one who carried the invitation home.
Two women who walked out to find Dayuma and walked back with her.
They moved into the longhouse of the men who killed their family.
Mark and Acts, the first Scripture written in Wao Terero.
Doctoral research on Wao Terero and the SIL Preliminary Grammar of Auca. The alphabet and the rules the bride now reads by.
Thirteen years beside Peeke to finish the New Testament.
The native ears that made the text sound like Wao and not like Spanish.
The planes and pilots that carried people, medicine, and paper into the forest.
The 2009 New Testament, heard as well as read.
Buenas Nuevas picture lessons and Words of Life audio stories in Wao.
Wao speakers to carry the Hebrew Scriptures home. So far one Tanakh portion exists: Ootee: La Historia de José.
Someone who reads the Tanakh in Hebrew and can walk the team from the text to its meaning.
An SIL or UBS consultant to check each book for accuracy before it reaches the people.
A three-column check: Wao Terero, pronunciation, and a word-for-word English gloss, so a consultant can see what the Wao actually says.
A Bible lexicon for the bride. First entry: lamb = . Begin where the 1992 New Testament already made its choice, at Yochanan 1:29.
Someone to keep the text, the notes, and the checks in one shared, secure project.
Native readers for every new book, so those who do not read can still hear.
Wao teachers who bring the next generation into reading.
The people whose verdict matters most: does it sound right, and does it speak?
The guests who sign for the gifts they cannot carry themselves.
The registry closes on the wedding day. On that day the Kallah will not be dressed in what the missionaries brought, or in anything the world can sell. She will wear what the Seh gives her. Blessed are those invited to the Seudat Hanissuim of the Seh (Hitgalut 19:9).