Meeting in the Rain Forest

In my early 30s, I went to South America in a futile attempt to escape from myself. Another relationship had ended, and I was lonely and withdrawn.

I thought that if I put myself in the middle of an unknown and dangerous environment, I would be forced to connect with others, if only for my physical survival. And so I chose as my destination the rain forest of eastern Ecuador, home of the Huaorani people, a nomadic tribe I had read about in Life magazine as a boy in the '50s. The article told how the Indians had killed several American missionaries who had tried to make contact with them. If you're going to the extreme, I figured, why not go all the way?

Traditional Huaorani culture was extremely violent. The Huaorani viewed all outsiders as a threat (as most actually were, in one way or another), and they dealt with this by making the concept of "first strike" a tenet of their society. Their feuds would rage for decades, and they never forgot or forgave. Their neighbors called them Auca, a Quechua Indian word that means "savage."

To get around, I managed to hook up with a missionary named Jim--he belonged to the same group as those who had been killed years before--who was really more anthropologist and linguist than Christian proselytizer. By 1974, the year I showed up, few Huaorani still killed outsiders on sight, so it was relatively safe to accompany him as he visited Huaorani families in their temporary shelters hidden deep in the jungle. Just to be safe, however, Jim would alert the Huaorani of our approach by shouting "whoop, whoop"--an all-purpose Huaorani phrase signifying positive intentions--as we walked through the forest toward a settlement. Surprise guests were a definite no-no in polite Huaorani society. Unless you heard a return series of whoops, you did not approach.

So, one day Jim and I entered a clearing in which an extended family of a half-dozen or so men and their wives and children lived. The women and children scurried to the rear of the thatched-roof communal hut as the men, wearing an odd assortment of old bathing suits or leaf-and-bark genital coverings, approached us offering bowls of masato, a foul-smelling drink made from boiled and fermented manioc tubers.

They giggled and spoke nervously among themselves. One man touched my light brown hair. A third opened my hip pouch and looked inside at my note book and pen. Others fingered the stitching on my clothes, seemingly trying to figure out how they were made. I just stood there, my consciousness having been propelled into an altered state. I smiled broadly and allowed their curiosity free expression, as Jim had advised.

Then the headman--a squat fellow who couldn't have been more than five-foot-six --proceeded to ask me the sort of questions he asked all strangers, questions intended to determine whether I was friend or foe: Who were my relatives? Where did I live? Whom did I live with?

I thought it best to simplify my response. I said I lived by myself beyond the mountains and left out all details about a son living with an ex-wife, about family who were as perplexed as the Huaorani chief about what I was up to. Jim translated my words into Huaorani, and as he did the smiles that had lit up the faces of these Indians disappeared. Then the headman, his eyes locked with mine, spoke to me, and Jim again translated.

Continued on page 2: »