Missionary grave site discovered
Martyrs leave legacy of evangelism
By
Lorna Dueck
Crossroads News Service
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| COURTESY OF STEVE SAINT |
The grave site of martyred missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian and Peter Fleming has finally been found in the Amazon jungle. The discovery was made in early June after a wind storm in Tomanpade, east of the Andes Mountains, uprooted a tall tree left standing in land that had been cleared near the site of the 1956 Palm Beach massacre.
The toppled tree pulled up a ball of earth and left a gaping hole in the ground. A hunter’s dog discovered the hole and unearthed several human bones, causing the hunter to take the find to the elders of the nearby Huaorani, formerly Auca, tribe. Upon finding the site, the elders knew immediately it was the grave site of the missionaries, said Steve Saint, son of Nate Saint. Nate Saint was the pilot of the team of five who were speared to death by 10 Auca tribesmen.
The Huaoroni contacted Steve to tell him the news, and he said there is no doubt the site is the exact location of the group burial that was hastily conducted by military and missionary personnel amid a tropical storm in January 1956.
Art Johnston, a retired physician in St.Catharines, was one of the missionaries who buried the men. "I think it’s a tremendous find," said Johnston. "We had always thought it was a shame that the river had come in and washed away the grave. Now there is something to mark the spot, it’s tremendous."
The body of the fifth martyred missionary, Ed McCully, was not found at the time Johnston and the military recovered the four missionary bodies. It was discovered later by native women downstream of the Curaray River and buried a distance away from the killing location. The site of the group burial was thought to have been long washed away by a flood in the Curaray that had swept away the shoreline.
Upon discovery of the remains of the missionaries, the older Christian believers among the Huaoroni reburied the bones and pushed in the sides of the unearthed site, said Saint. News of the discovery tumbled out during an interview at 100 Huntley Street as Saint was travelling in North America with two Huaoroni elders, Mincaye and Temente.
