We got up and packed our kit at 05:30 hrs. but we could find no sign of the bus to Rio Tiputini. Each person that we asked gave us a different story (opinion). Eventually, we got a lift on a big yellow lorry carrying dirt and pebbles for road building. We sat on the roof of the cab as we bounced along a tarmacked road through the forest.
We passed several schools with dirt playgrounds and some wooden farm buildings, many of which were for sale. Most of the wooden shacks were on stilts. The yellow/orange sun over the trees looked like the movie poster for “Apocalypse Now”. We reached the modern oil camp with it’s helicopter pad and were dropped off by the bridge over the Rio Tiputini.
Here we heaped our baggage by a stack of plastic barrels which were being loaded on to canoes. The place reeked of oil. Pedro the guide eventually materialised and gave us an unenthusiastic spiel about an uninteresting sounding four-day jungle trip. He pointed out the route on an oil exploration survey map. Unconvinced, we decided to give it a miss.
The woman in the local shop suggested we got a lift to Rio Chiripuno where she said we could get a guide to take us to visit the Auca Indians. Research today reveals that until January 8, 1956, few people had heard of the Auca Indians of Ecuador. They were just another backwater primitive tribe scratching out a mean existence in jungle clearings. But on that day on a sandbar in a river near two Auca villages, two alien cultures — one dedicated to spreading the gospel of Christ, the other to war and murder—clashed. And the Aucas' murder of five American missionaries catapulted the tribe into world-wide news.
Life photographer Cornell Capa accompanied the team which buried the missionaries on the sandbar where they had been killed. He reported, “Among the effects of the missionaries ... were three diaries in which the men had recorded, step by step, the progress of their mission”.
In these diaries, notebooks and letters to their families, the missionaries reveal their motives for jeopardizing their lives among the Aucas.Time magazine called the Aucas “the worst people on earth”.
They were, the magazine said, “A pure Stone Age people, they hate all strangers, live only to hunt, fight and kill. Their most notable products are needle-sharp, 9-foot, hardwood spears for use against human foes. . . . Even their neighbours, the Jivaros, famous for shrinking human heads, live in constant fear of the fierce Aucas”.
Murder was the most significant cause of death among the Aucas. Seventy-four per cent of all Auca men died through violent tribal warfare. When one of their number got sick or old, his relatives dug a pit beneath his hammock, toppled him in, and buried him alive.
The tribe suffered a shortage of women because mothers often strangled girl babies with a vine as soon as they were born. One Auca mother of twins said, “I was so frightened to see two babies appear, instead of just one, that I buried them”.
The Aucas killed for sport, lust, jealousy or out of simple irritation. One Indian speared both his friend's wife and mother to death as a joke.
As soon as an Auca boy could walk, his spear practice began. Toddlers jabbed short spears into a balsa-wood log carved in human shape. Six-year-olds accompanied men on raids. The adults incapacitated a victim and encouraged the little boys to finish him off.
Murder for revenge and preventative murder also played a large part in the Aucas' lifestyle. They felt it a duty to avenge the murder of a relative by spearing the killer or any member of his family, even a distant cousin.
Therefore, when an Auca suspected that someone might hold a grudge against some member of his family, he endeavoured to kill that person first.
Against such a background it is easy to understand how fear of outsiders and overwhelming suspicion of anything beyond their control motivated the Aucas to spear the five peaceful missionaries when the two cultures met.
We took the lady in the shop’s advice and took a lift on another dirt-carrying lorry. I dozed in the sun for most of the way, until we were dropped at a wooden shack by another bridge. A gang of engineers worked on the river, probably probing for oil.
We bought expensive Coca Colas and gleaned that there was very little at Chiripuno, especially not tourist guides. A French party arrived on a rickety bus to await a boat that should have been waiting there to take them into the jungle.
We paid 300 Sucres for a ride on the rough bus back to Coca, stopping at a roadside shack on the way for more Coca Cola. The proprietor tried to short-change each of us in turn, which was very tiresome.
We passed a few burning verges near Coca and pulled again into this dusty town. This time we checked into the Hotel de Auca which cost us 1,400 Sucres for a triple room, following an instant price hike from 1,200 Sucres when the hotel manager pointed out to the receptionist that we were gringos!
Peter-Paul bargained a price of 150,000 Sucres for eight days, without food, for a party of nine people. We found two Swiss people and a French man who were interested, so we had our party. We deferred the decision to take the jungle tour until tomorrow and went off to the Ice Cream Parlour for afters.
Peter-Paul excelled himself by scoffing four ice cream double-cones! We all slept well after a tiring day of travel but getting nowhere.
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