Biography
Rachel Saint was born in 1914, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the older sister of Nate Saint. She grew up in a Christian family, in a home that valued faith and learning. Her parents were Baptists, and they taught their children the Bible. She was a quiet and capable girl. She studied at the Wheaton College, in Illinois, where she trained in languages. She was drawn to Bible translation and joined Wycliffe Bible Translators. She was a woman of determination and had a gift for languages.
In 1948, she went to Ecuador as a missionary with Wycliffe. She was assigned to work among the Quichua Indians, in the eastern part of the country, where she studied their language. She was a good student and learned the language well. Her brother, Nate, was at the same time working as a pilot in Ecuador, and the two were close. She had a desire to reach the Waorani, a tribe in the jungle that had a reputation for killing outsiders. She began to inquire about the tribe and to search for a way to make contact. She found that few outsiders had any contact with them.
In January 1956, her brother was killed with four other men on the sandbar of the Curaray River by Waorani warriors. She was devastated. In the grief that followed, she did not give up the plan. She said that she must go to the people who had killed her brother. She learned that a Waorani woman, Dayuma, who had left the tribe years before and was living on a hacienda, could teach her the language. She went to find her. She spent months with Dayuma and learned the Waorani tongue. She was joined by Elisabeth Elliot, the widow of Jim Elliot, who also felt a call to go to the Waorani with her small daughter.
In 1958, the two women, with Dayuma, entered the territory of the Waorani and were received by the tribe. It was a remarkable event. They lived with the Waorani for a time, learning their ways and sharing the gospel. Rachel stayed on after Elisabeth left. She lived with the Waorani for nearly twenty years. She worked as a translator. She translated parts of the Scriptures into the Waorani language. She also taught the people to read and to practice hygiene and health care. Over time, many of the tribe came to faith, and the killing declined. The change was striking.
She lived with Dayuma and later with a number of other Waorani as her helpers. She was a woman of strength and stubbornness. She was a strict teacher, who ran the work with an iron hand. She has been criticized by some who said that she was authoritarian and that she did not give enough room to the Waorani to lead. She also was accused of keeping a hold on the people. In the 1960s, she took a party of Waorani to the United States, and they were shown at the Billy Graham Crusade. This was criticized as an exploitation of the Waorani.
In her later years, she lived in Quito and worked with her nephew, Steve Saint, who had grown up among the Waorani. She suffered from cancer and died in 1994, in Quito, Ecuador, at the age of eighty. Some of the details of her life should be checked against fuller sources. Her life shows the effect of a sister who gave herself to the people who killed her brother, and who stayed to see them change. She is remembered as a woman of courage.