On Feb. 22, BBC broadcast an interview with Valerie Shepard, daughter of slain missionary Jim Elliot. (See “Killed for Christ in the Amazon“).
Shepard told the BBC that her father went to Ecuador in March 1952 “to be a missionary to indigenous or primitive tribes in the Amazon jungle.”
“My father and the other missionaries definitely knew it was dangerous, but they were willing to give up their lives in order for the Huaorani to know the truth, what we believe to be the truth,” she said.
Another missionary told Elliot about an indigenous group known as the Huaorani. He described them as a “very violent” tribe from the Stone Age. Ecuadorians referred to as Aucas, a disrespectful term meaning “savages.”