4519
Supernatural Accounts
from the Waorani After the 1956 Missionary Killings
After the January 8, 1956 killing of the five American
missionaries—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger
Youderian—members of the Waorani (Huaorani) tribe later described unusual and
possibly supernatural experiences in the aftermath.
According to accounts from the missionaries’ family and
later testimonies from Waorani survivors, the killers—many of whom were
teenagers and not experienced in warfare—were involved in an internal tribal
dispute and took out their anger on the missionaries thelineoffire.org. The missionaries had
made a covenant not to use guns in self-defense, and they did not attempt to
flee or fight back thelineoffire.org.
In the stillness after the killings, several Waorani
witnesses reported seeing and hearing things they could not explain:
- Sight of “cowodi” (angels): Dawa, one of
the three Waorani women who watched the murders, said she saw figures
resembling the foreign missionaries standing above the trees,
singing robertblincoe.blog.
- Heavenly singing: Mincaye and
Kimo confirmed they heard the singing and saw what Dawa described as a
bright multitude in the sky, which they felt should have frightened
them robertblincoe.blog.
- Recognition of music: Dawa later
learned that the singing matched the choir music heard on recordings of
Rachel Saint’s hymns, which she had never heard before robertblincoe.blog.
- Spiritual impact: These
experiences, combined with later exposure to Christian teachings from the
widows of the martyrs, are said to have drawn some Waorani women to
Christianity thelineoffire.org+1.
These accounts are part of the Waorani’s own oral history
and have been shared by Steve Saint, Nate Saint’s son, and others. They are not
part of the official historical record but are significant within the cultural
and spiritual memory of the tribe and the missionary families.
In summary, while there is no verifiable external documentation of these events, multiple Waorani survivors have described seeing and hearing what they interpreted as supernatural phenomena—“angels” singing and figures resembling the slain missionaries—immediately after the killings,
Excerpted from an internet article
