A different view of the Ecuadorian tribe that took, the lives of five U. S. missionaries
AUSHIRIS against the world
by L ILL IAN ROBINSON PEREZ
news, white settlers on the fringes of Aushiri territory, who had had experience with their guerilla tac tics, expressed the opinion that the photographs of Indians taken by the missionaries and recovered from the scene of the tragedy were not of Aushiri men and women at all. They seemed to be Zaparos, mem bers of another local tribe who are not hostile and who are probably the ones that befriended the mis sionaries. The people pictured did not have the unusual big-toe sep aration of the extremely primitive Aushiris, caused by climbing trees and clinging to tree trunks. It seems likely, therefore, that when the missionaries radioed their last cryptic message—“Here come a group of Aucas whom we have not known before”—they were actually getting their first and only look at genuine Aushiris. According to 17th century Jesuit missionary reports, Father Lucas de la Cueva was the first white man to make contact with the Aushiri tribe, around 1670. He persuaded them to give up their nomadic way of life and settled them at a mis sion called San Miguel de Avijires. There he started teaching them the principles of Christianity. However, after a few years Father de la Cueva was replaced by another Jes uit teacher who apparently lacked his predecessor’s tact. He con demned the polygamous practices of the Aushiris and was killed by the headman Quiricuari who burned the mission and led the tribe back CONTINUED
he dramatic massacre of five U.S. Protestant mis sionaries on the banks of the Curaray River in the
aries’ point of view. In all this sen sational publicity, the antecedents of the tribe and its possible motives for murder have been completely ignored. In the first place, auca is a Que- chua word meaning “infidel” or “unbaptized” and is widely used throughout Ecuador by Quechua- speaking people of highland origin as a contemptuous term for savage, heathen peoples. The Yumbo In dians of the eastern jungle lowlands apply this word to the hostile neigh boring tribe involved in the mas sacre whose real name is Aushiri or, in the old Spanish spelling of early Jesuit reports, Avijire. It is inaccurate to call the Aushiri “Stone Age people,” for they have had contact with whites since the 17th century and are familiar with firearms and metal weapons such as machetes which from time to time have been left in their terri tory by exploring parties trying to befriend them. Also photographs of these people do exist, notably some taken by pilots on aerial recon naissance for the Shell Company of Ecuador, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell that held an oil con cession in this area up to 1948. Some shots were made at such close range that you can see the enraged faces of the Aushiris as they ran out of their communal huts to threaten the plane with their long lances. Several Aushiri women who de serted their tribe have also been photographed. When the killing was front-page
jungles of eastern Ecuador last Jan uary spread the fearsome, if erro neous, name of the Auca Indians around the world and provoked the most varied reactions. The mission aries—Nathaniel Saint, James El liott, Edward McCully, Roger You- derian and Peter Fleming—have been hailed as martyrs and con demned as fools. Ecuadorian Cath olics were divided on the issue, some holding that the massacre was a just punishment for preaching an apostate faith, others that the shed ding of blood in martyrdom is equivalent to the sacraments of bap tism and penance and entitles the victims to God’s glory in the here after. Finally, there was a flurry among local anthropologists and students of the history of Andean America’s many Indian groups and their cultures. Both U.S. and European maga zines of international renown em phasized the false notions that the killers were “Aucas” and that they are a “Stone Age people” who have never had contact with civilized men and have no metals or metal implements. They even maintained that no white man had ever pre viously photographed them. Of course, there was no spokesman for the Indians who disappeared into the jungle after the attack, so the accounts naturally tended to be one sided, concentrating on the mission-
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DECEMBER 1956
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