Foreword from book below

Many people, in their late twenties and early thirties, discover that life is getting more and more complicated. For me it was getting simpler and simpler. I was living with Indians in the forest of Ecuador, and was trying very ahrd to get down to the root of things because it seemed to me that taht was where Indians lived. This process had of course its own complications for - "simple cooking over a "simple wood fire can sometimes be more difficult than fancy cooking on an electric stove - but in matters of importance the direction of my thinking was toward the bare or simple truth. I was for some years almost wholly out of touch with all that had been familiar, and I had therefore a chance to look at it from a long way foo, to question adn compare.

The tribe that gave me the best chance to do this had been called "savage." They were the Aucas, who by reputation were also "primitive," "godless," "Stone Age" people. They themselves gave me excellent reason to question the accuracy of these terms. They were wonderful people - generous and kind from the very first night of our arrival; capable and intelligent when you saw them in their jungle environment (where white men looked anything but capable and intelligent); amenable (almost touchinglyu so) to any suggestion from us; eagerly interested in all that we did or said; a people who shared lavishly all they had and were, a people who laughed uproariously most of the time when they were together, and who worked hard when they were apart (for they did their hunting and planting usually alone). I found them easy to love.

It was these very qualities that nettled me. They simply did not fit my idead of savagery. What, then, did civilization mean? Was it merely an efficient method of complicating things?

For a whole year I watched and learned and kept my mouth shut. I had to keep my mouth shut most of the time because I did not know the Auca language. For once, I listened and had nothing to say. It was a valuable exercise, and although the language itself was highly complex, the definition of my task was simple: learn it. I ahd just that one thing to do, day after day. No social engagements, other than the standing invitation to join the Indians after sundown when they were all present, talking about the day's events in exquisite (and, of course, to me usually incomprehensible) detail. I had no "outside" activities. Nothing to complicate my life.

Some of what I learned in that mostly silent year I wrote in a book called The Savage My Kinsman.

I spent a second year there, when I had a fairly workable knowledge of the language. I learned more about the Indians, about how they felt and thought, and why they did things the way they did. As a result, more questions were raised in my mind, especially about my own thoughts and feelings and ways of doing things. Often the Auca way seemed better, or at least more defensible if one were to ask, "Why do they do it this way?" It was always a sensible and simple way.

Changes were of course inevitable with the presenceon the strip the Aucas had built. Complications crept in. I watched this with misgiving, wondering if this were the way it ought to be. Could we not keep things simple? Would not God Himself speak the Word of Truth to the Indiains? And would we have the grace to let that Word operate as He wanted it to, or would we hold out our own notions of the effect it should have?

Of changes among these people which could be directly attributed to the power of the Word of Christ I could not honestly say that I knew very much. It seemed to me that this must be a hidden matter of the heart which God alone could rightly assess. I wondered, fo course, what sort of visible chyange I might look for if the Word were being spokne (as, in the last analysis, it can only be spoken) by the Spirit of God. Jesus had said that men can be known by their fruist. I knew the fruits commonly expected by those who had never tried what I was doing. But I could nto be satisfied that the changes I was seeing were true fruits. Oddly enough, they were too "simple." Then I began to ask if I were making things complicated.

My confusion drove me to the admission that I had not as many answers as I had thought. God kept back some of the ones I wanted, and had other things to say to me. I listened. I studied the Bible, prayed, and thought. Of the Aucas were away all day - hunting and planting - and the clearnign was very quiet with only the sound of the little river, the voices of children, or the screech of a parrot.

Why was I here? To "serve the Lord," of course. But what a reply! What an awesome task I had assumed. How was I to do it? What did it mean?

I wanted to give God's Word to the Indians. What, exactly, did this mean? How would that Word be revealed? I wanted desperately to get the bottom of these issues. I did not want to be misled by prejudices born of my American culture or my church tradition.

So here are "heathen" people, I told myself. And here is the Word of Truth. There must be evidenced amond them a recognition of the difference, for example, between good and evil. Would it be the same for them as it was for me? What did God say about it? What would "Christian" conduct mean to the Aucas? I came to see that my own understanding of these subjects was not nearly as clear as I had supposed. I kept balancing the Auca way of life against the American, or against what I had always taken to be the Christian. "By their fruist," Jesus had said. "By their frusit ye shall know them." How did they compare?

I have already said that I found the Aucas easy to love, generous, intelligent, happy. But what of their morals? Here, too, a comparison did not convince me of the superiority of any other group.

I had come from a society where polygamy was illegal to one where it was permissible. Here it seemed to be merely a question of taste. A man might have as many wives as he cared to support at one time, but he did not go and help himself to another man's wife without authorization. In my society a man might neglect even the one wife he had, he might play with other men's wives, and still keep his job and most of his friends. I observed faithfulness and a strong sense of responsibility on the part of Auca husbands. Was this comparison an argument in favor of polygamy? Were there scriptural arguments against it?

One expects to find savages cruel. I found cruelty among the Aucas, but they found it in me, too. In America a man who switched a naked child with nettles would be called a sadist. Aucas considered this a legitimate and effective form of punishment, and were outraged to see me spank my three-year-old child. I was, to them, a savage. I realized after a while that neither action was necessarily motivated by cruelty, nor did it do any permanent damage. In our own country certain forms of cruelty are tolerated, others are not. But were the Aucas not killers? They were, but let us not forget that in our society it is permissible to murder a man not only in one's heart, but also by verbal;ly cutting him to pieces before his friends. Aucas had not been acquainted with this method.

In my country we hold certain standards of dress to be acceptable (for a few months or a year at a time), but a costume that would have landed its wearer in jail one year might be common on the streets of a city the next. The Aucas were unhampered by clothing (or by washing, sewing, mending, or ironing) and the caprices of fashion (with the vanity, jealousy, covetousness and discontent which fashion fosters), but stuck firmly to a code of modesty which did not change with the seasons. In their nakedness they accepted themselves and one another for what they were, always abiding by the rules: men and women did not bathe together, women taught their daughters how to sit and stand with modesty, men taught their sons how to wear the string which was their only adornment. Physiological functions were discussed in public but performed in strictest privacy.

I saw the Indians live in a harmony which far suprassed anything I had seen among those who call themselves Christians. I found taht even their killing had at least as valid reasons as the wars in which my people engaged. "By their fruits..."

Could I really offer them a better way? Jesus said, "I am the Way." He, therfore, was the one responsible to show what it was for them. I was merely His representative, and I had better be very sure I knew what He did actually say about the questions of confuct and service, for it was to Him above all others that I must give account.

In an attempt to find out, and to sort out my own convictions and give clear expression to them, I studied the New Testament and espcially the Epistles of Paul. What I found seemed to me to be important not only for me in that unusual place, but for Christians everywhere, so I wrote for The Sunday School Times the series of brief articles which is reprinted here. In the six years since I elft that particular thatched house, I have been questioned and sometimes challenged on these matters. Each time my answer has been along the lines written during thsoe days in Tewaenon. But it was my husband who first taught me to question and examine, and then to act on what one believes. He first showed me what liberty in Christ mans. Perhaps now, many years after his death, I am beginning to grasp thigns he understood. He glimpsed, I think, something of the largeness of God's heart and wanted to show it to others.

I can add ntohing to the statement of the issues set forth here. This is what I believe. Why I believe, why the issues became inescapable for me at the time, I have tried to explain in the introduction to each chapter. I hope that the introductions may help the reader to gain for himself the same perspective which clarified for me the alternatives