Rachel Saint was sent out by the Wycliffe Bible Translators, trained by Summer Institute of Linguistics. Her first missionary assignment was to the Piro and Shapira in Peru, but she had an interest in the Huaorani in Ecuador. In February 1955, she and Catherine Peeke went to a missionary station near Huaorani territory, where Rachel Saint's brother was working. Rachel Saint started learning the Huaorani language with the help of Dayuma, a Huaorani woman who had left her people after a dispute and was sheltered by missionaries. In January 1956, five missionaries in the area were killed by Huaorani people, including her brother Nate Saint, who had come to Ecuador in 1948. As a result, Rachel Saint considered herself spiritually bonded to the tribe. In 1957, she embarked on a tour of the United States together with Dayuma, appearing with Billy Graham at Madison Square Garden and on Ralph Edwards' television showThis Is Your Life. In the summer of 1958, Rachel Saint returned to the Huaorani in Ecuador and, together with Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of James Elliot, who had been killed by the Huaorani, continued to evangelize. In February 1959, they were able to move into a Huaorani settlement. Where the five American men had failed to gain entrance into the Huaorani society, these two unarmed women were not perceived as a threat. Rachel continued in her labor to create a dictionary of the Huaorani language that she had begun before the death of the five missionaries.
Criticism
When criticism of Rachel Saint's actions at the missionary reservation emerged, in 1973, SIL sent the anthropologist James Yost to investigate. Yost had worked for more than ten years amongst the Huaorani. His report was highly critical of Saint's work and, in 1976, SIL ordered her to retire. Rachel Saint decided to leave the SIL, but to continue her work with the Huaorani. Rachel Saint went back to the US, raised funds and returned to Ecuador to work with the Huaorani. She also appears in Joe Kane's book, Savages, in which she is criticized for the negative effects her proselytizing allegedly had on the lifestyle of those Huaorani who chose to live in her village. Rachel Saint died in Quito from cancer on November 11, 1994. She was buried in Toñampare, Ecuador, where she had lived with the Huaorani.
Film
Trinkets and beads. Documentary, Ecuador/USA 1996, 52 minutes; Director: Chris Walker; Producer: Tony Avirgan. “Chris Walker and Tony Avirgan’s films tells the tragi-comic story of the unlikely links between Maxus – a Texas-based oil company – the 79-year-old Wycliffe Bible Translators missionary Rachel Saint, and the Huaorani people of the Ecuadorian Orient, the most fiercely isolated tribe in the Amazon. First introduced to the Indians by the missionaries, Maxus is guilty of poisoning Huaorani land with its drills and flares and leaking pipelines.”
