BARBROOKE GRUBB

The "David Livingstone" of South America

Barbrooke Grubb was born on August 11, 1865 at Liberton in Midlothian, Scotland. As a boy he delighted in wrestling and feats of strength and was filled with mischief. He completed his education at George Watson College in Edinburg, Scotland, where his interest in geography and ancient history led to his study of the habits of primitive peoples. He also took a medical course in which he and a friend both cut themselves accidentally in the dissecting room. His friend died within forty-eight hours, and Grubb remained sick for nearly a year.

In 1884 he met Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, the dynamic evangelists from the United States, and ended up devoting his life to missions. On his nineteenth birthday, Grubb decided to join the South American Missionary Society and two years later went to the Falkland Islands, where he spent four years. But he always felt called to the Indian tribes of the northern interior.

Nothing pleased him more than his assignment in 1890 to the unexplored interior of Paraguay, known as the Chaco, and the wild tribes of Indians who lived there. Initially, Grubb employed the unusual (at that time) tactic of going right into the interior, first to explore the territory and make friends, and then to live right with the Indians rather than build a large station on the perimeter of the field to which the Indians came. Though later he did set up mission stations such as Waikthlatingmangyalwa, they were in the heart of the Chaco and were designed for the sake of the Indians rather than the convenience and comfort of the missionaries. At these stations the Indians learned better agricultural techniques, industry, and the Gospel. Even at the mission stations, Grubb’s unusual acceptance by the Indians was based on his willingness to live among them in an unthreatening manner.

Grubb was not really good at foreign languages. Lengua was the only language of the Chaco that he spoke easily, and in that he broke almost all the grammatical rules. But he had a gift for picking up enough essential words and phrases in half a dozen languages to make himself understood. He communicated more by speaking from the heart than as a skilled linguist.

Grubb’s fearlessness and Christian love so won the confidence of the Indians that the government of Paraguay appointed him commissioner for the Chaco.

On May 15, 1901, Grubb married Mary Bridges in Buenos Aires. She, of course, joined him in the Chaco, but Grubb never had the assistance of more than four other Europeans missionaries in his work.

Some of his greatest challenges came from the oppressive superstitions of the people promoted by witch doctors who kept the people in bondage while living off their fears. Though Grubb was deliberately contemptuous of the witch doctors (so as to break their cruel power over the people), he nevertheless studied their mysteries and learned secrets otherwise hidden from all those outside their guild. Politically incorrect as it now may sound, he concluded that ridicule was the safest weapon to reduce a witch doctor to impotence among his own people.

Even though the number of baptized believers in the Lengua church did not grow beyond two hundred during his ministry among them, the general life for the majority of the people was profoundly transformed. Tribal wars ceased, infanticide ended, hunger (from a nomadic lifestyle and failure to plant crops and prepare for the future) was overcome, and the general health of the people was greatly improved. With the help of his assistants, Grubb also translated hymns, prayers, and most of the New Testament into Lengua.

One of his greatest concerns while working among the Indians was that the government had already divided up the Chaco into county-sized lots to sell to land speculators intent on making their own fortunes. Neither the sellers nor the potential buyers had set foot in this wilderness, but they were ready to grab it out from under the Indians for whom it had been home for countless generations. Using his own savings and all the funds he could raise elsewhere, Grubb set about to prevent this theft by purchasing the land in the name of the Indians. It was his vision that the Lengua people would become a self-supporting, self-governing community. His goal was for each family to possess its own livestock and homestead, equipped to engage in agriculture or in the arts and crafts such as woodworking, pottery, weaving, or sewing.

The mission to the Lenguas, which was started in 1890, was fully established by 1910 when Grubb had already begun work with the Toothli and Suhin tribes of the west and the Sanapana in the north. Grubb then moved to northern Argentina and Bolivia, where he established a strong mission among the Matacos of the Bermejo and a prosperous beginning among the people of the Pilcomayo. He also began tentative efforts among the Tobas and converted many among the Tapui Indians of Bolivia. It is no wonder that in his lifetime he became known around the world as the “Livingstone of South America.”

Grubb accomplished all this before he died on May 28, 1930.

© 1999 Dave and Neta Jackson