54 pages • 1 hour read
Bruchko: The Astonishing True Story of a 19-Year-Old American, His Capture by the Motilone Indians and His Adventures in Christianizing the Stone Age Tribe
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Chapters 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Using the Witch Doctor”
When Olson returns, Abaratatura concludes that he is not a threat and decides to let him stay at Corrorncayra. Olson’s main concern is how to introduce the medicine he brought. The Barí prefer the use of their traditional healers (called witch doctors in the text) for curing illness, often refusing Olson’s medicine when he offers it. Olson knows that other missionaries make a point of competing with traditional healers, viewing their influence as a demonic element in the tribes. However, he sees that they genuinely are passionate about helping their people, and view their religious rituals as praying to God in the best way they know. He seeks to support their efforts by having them distribute medicine to people.
As an epidemic of pinkeye breaks out among the Barí, Olson approaches a healer who has shown exceptional dedication. Olson gives himself pink eye and asks the healer to treat him with antibiotics to prove their effectiveness. She administers these, combining them with traditional chants and rituals. Once this cures him, he suggests she try it with others too, which works. Olson’s next plan is to educate the Barí on sanitation. He shows the same healer how he can kill germs (which she identified as evil spirits) with disinfectants. Due to this, disinfectants begin to be used in some Barí religious ceremonies. Olson also tries to improve the food supply by introducing agriculture to the Barí. Their food supply has been dependent on how much can be hunted, leading to periods of food insecurity. Olson shows Abaratatura how to grow corn and raise cattle. Within a few years, the results of his work lead to eight health stations being established, all staffed by the Barí themselves, and each communal home having its own agricultural system. Eventually, schools are established too.
To explain why these developments happened so fast, Olson gives two reasons: First, the Barí were not being asked to give up their own culture; and secondly, he believes that the Holy Spirit was active in making the Barí more empathetic toward each other, which facilitated lasting development. Before they converted, the Barí were focused on helping their own family and did not extend consideration to others. Olson wonders how he could introduce Christianity in this context without leading to the societal divisions he saw at the Orinoco River. He prays for Jesus to show himself to the Barí in a way they could conceptualize, asking, “Oh, Jesus, become a Motilone” (136).
Chapter 17 Summary: “Jesus, the Motilone”
While visiting another communal home, Olson, Bobby, and two others see two people shouting. Bobby explains that they are looking for God in the hopes that he will inhabit the body of one of the men’s brothers, who has recently died somewhere that was not his home (which is anathema to the Barí). The Barí believe that once they were deceived by a false prophet and lost God, hence the need to search for him. Olson decides that this is an opportunity God has arranged; people are searching for God, and he has a God to tell them about.
While Olson is considering how to show Christianity to the Barí, the others discuss the prophecy of a man with a banana stalk bringing God. Olson asks why the banana stalk is significant, so Bobby shows him the bisection of a stalk; its inside looks like the pages of a book. Olson grows excited at this and shows everyone his Bible, claiming it is "God’s banana stalk" (140). The people around him begin to ask questions, which Olson answers as best he can, trying to relate Christian theology to Barí beliefs. As he explains the story of the crucifixion and resurrection, Olson sees a Barí cry for the first time.
Following his first explanation of Christianity, Olson returns to his usual work of spreading medicine among the communal homes. One evening, Bobby asks him how he can walk on Jesus’s trail. Olson explains that to do this, he must put his faith in God, explaining it as tying a hammock to God and standing within it. The next day, Bobby asks Olson how he can speak to God if he cannot see him. Olson says that Bobby has “spoken” to spirits before, and this is the same. The day after that, Bobby comes to Olson and tells him he spoke a new language, which means to the Barí that he has changed his way of life; he is now a Christian. Olson says that his and Bobby’s friendship then became enhanced by their shared beliefs.
Once he converts, Bobby asks Olson many questions about Christianity but never about Jesus’s appearance. Olson believes that, to Bobby, it was obvious that "Jesus was a Motilone" (145).
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Night of the Tiger”
This chapter starts with hearing a commotion within the communal home; a man named Abacuriana is telling people that he has heard a tiger speak. Someone explains to Olson that this is bad news. The chief goes out into the jungle, and when he returns, he tells everyone that spirits will come out of the rocks and attack the home, causing deaths.
The nervousness of the tribe worries Olson, as Barí do not usually show negative emotions. Bobby asks Olson if Jesus can be taken out of his mouth and if the devil can kill him now that he worships Jesus. Olson replies that Bobby needs to get these answers from a personal connection with Jesus. Olson then goes for a long walk in the jungle, returning to see the communal home swaying and with chanting coming from inside. It turns out that all the men are swinging in their hammocks, shaking the roof, while the women are hitting rocks together in a ceremony to try to ward off the devil. However, Bobby is singing songs about Christianity by himself, placing his hope in the new faith. His dedication to Christianity stirs interest in the rest of the tribe, especially because no one has died that night.
Soon after there is to be a Festival of the Arrows (a festival in which pacts were forged) in their communal home. During the festival, Bobby and an older chief named Adjibacbayra engage in a singing competition. Bobby sings about how the Barí have lost their God and that Jesus will show them a new way. The Christian story being told in a Barí chant initially disturbs Olson but then he sees the impact it is having on the people around him. Many intently listen to Bobby for hours as he sings about Christianity. Once it is done, a wave of spiritual inspiration allegedly sweeps across the crowd, and many in attendance convert to Christianity.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Everyday Miracles”
To Olson, the conversion of many Barí seems like a miracle. He then hears from other festivals that what Bobby said was being repeated, leading to even more conversions. Olson claims that as conversions spread, miracles happen across Barí territory.
Within a year of their conversion, Arabadoyca and some other Barí seek to convert the Yuko. Olson reveals that he had spent almost a year among the Yuko converting them, a period he does not describe in the book, and that this has led to great changes in their lifestyle. He directs Arabadoyca to the lowland tribes who have not yet converted, but he has little belief they will succeed, as the Barí and the Yuko have no shared language. They return several weeks later, talking about their success: The lowland Yukos and the Barí apparently understood each other perfectly. Olson says he learnt that he could expect God to provide what was needed when the Barí were involved.
However, Olson claims that the greatest miracle is the change in the lifestyle of the Barí. Due to Christianity, they begin to move past individuality toward a culture of self-sacrifice, a development that makes their economic and spiritual development possible. Olson ends the chapter saying that his experiences taught him the best way to deal with other cultures is to promote positive change while ensuring that existing social structures are not torn apart. His most important advice to other missionaries is to ensure that those they convert find purpose in life through Jesus; without this, the change will be useless or corrupted, but with it, there can be a lasting cultural impact.
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
This set of chapters features the climax in Olson’s missionary efforts: Many of the Barí are converted to Christianity, technological advancements become widespread, and Barí culture becomes altered. The theme of The Complexities of Cross-Cultural Missionary Work is accordingly essential to these chapters, and it is linked to The Transformative Power of Personal Connections by the method of Olson’s proselytizing. The model of missionary work that Olson has been building toward throughout the book is put into practice and Olson directly recommends that other missionaries follow it in Chapters 16 through 19. The main point of Olson’s model is to use existing structures within Indigenous cultures to promote change. For Christianity, he does this through relating it to preexisting beliefs and cultural touchstones of the Barí. He presents himself as a prophesied figure of Barí legend, relates the incarnation of God into human form to Barí fables, and describes the steps to becoming a Christian to Bobby by referencing concepts he would understand, such as hanging his hammock as a sign of faith. The purpose of this is to ensure that Christianity is viewed as a religion with which a Barí person can make a personal connection while not having to sacrifice their own culture, as the people of the Orinoco River had. The result of this method is that when it is successful with Bobby, he takes it for granted that Jesus “wears a G-String, and hunted with bows and arrows” (145) as the Barí people do. It is Bobby’s personal connection to the religion that motivates him to spread it to others at the Festival of the Arrows.
Olson tacitly acknowledges that many Western Christian readers may be averse to the localization of the religion and the creation of “Jesus the Motilone” (137) as shown by his worries about Bobby’s song about Jesus. However, he seeks to diffuse criticism by emphasizing the effectiveness of his model as a method for spreading Christianity; his discomfort with Bobby’s song is outweighed by the fact that it helped convert so many. Olson’s thesis in Bruchko is that the complexities of cross-cultural missionary work can be resolved by ensuring that Indigenous people develop a personal connection to Christianity that is not disruptive to their society. The way this is done is by ensuring developments come primarily from within. He supports this argument by arguing that God “had spoken in the Motilone language, and through the Motilone culture” (153), with Bobby being the central figure in converting many instead of Olson. Bobby uses the same method that Olson uses to effectively promote medicine and agriculture, showing it as an effective way of interacting with Indigenous societies.
The other main theme, The Importance of Living in Accordance with Faith, also appears in this chapter selection, especially Chapter 19. Following their conversion, Olson presents the Barí as embodying his ideals of what makes a good Christian by proselytizing and showing charity. The faith they live with is shown to lead to divine support, as a swath of miracles follows their conversions. Olson makes the claim that living in accordance with faith leads to rewards directly when claiming God intervened to support the Barí whenever necessary. This again shows Olson’s focus on establishing the morality of his mission to Christians by stressing that God appeared to support it.
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