Through Gates of Splendor

Chapter 8 provides a background historical summary of outsiders’ contacts with the Huaorani people. Although they still had no access to the message of the gospel, the Huaorani had had numerous dealings with outsiders ever since the Spanish invasions of the 16th century. The Huaorani were known by local Indigenous groups like the Jivaro and Quichua people, but the latter groups tended to steer clear of Huaorani territory because of the Huaorani reputation for hostility and violence. Spanish and Ecuadorian settlers had also come into contact with the Huaorani, and as late as the early 20th century there were still a few haciendas that bordered or overlapped with Huaorani territory. The late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, had brought the depredations of rubber traders into their area, and the abuse and violence the Huaorani experienced at the hands of these outsiders made them even more unwilling to tolerate encroachments from strangers, and more ready to use preemptive deadly violence. In the decades leading up to the missionaries’ attempt to contact the Huaorani, every outside presence—from the last hacienda to oil company outposts—had been forced to withdraw from the region.

Only one Huaorani was known to live outside the group’s territory—a woman named Dayuma, who had escaped inter-clan violence and taken up a new life with the Quichua workers who served on the hacienda of Don Carlos, one of the last remaining settler estates in the region.