Pon and Patte run from the "Morning Star". Illustrated by Baltazar Bell.

Back in the ancient days, giants with supernatural strength inhabited the Mariana Islands. The giant men of the different villages and clans occasionally fought or argued with each other. However, they banded together when they believed their island was being threatened by foreign invaders.

One day, a ship was seen out on the horizon. The manmaga’låhi (chiefs) of the island were concerned that outsiders were trying to invade Guahan at Hagåtña Bay. They got together to figure out how to stop the invaders.

The manmaga’låhi decided that a huge rock should be placed in the channel to Hagåtña Bay. The maga’låhi from Orote declared that there were many huge rocks around his village that would be suitable for blocking the bay. The task of getting the rock and placing it in the channel was entrusted to the proud warrior clan of Agueda. When Naguadog, maga’låhi of Agueda, told his clan the size of the rock needed, the other men laughed scornfully and said, “Naguadog, you don’t need your warriors. That task is child’s play. Give the task to Pon and Patte, your sons.”

Naguadog thought for a moment, then raised his voice loud and clear and called out to his sons. The boys’ names bounced like thunder from tree to tree. Quicker than lightning, two small boys, aged three and four, came bounding up to their father, saying, “Naguadog, what do you wish of us?”

Naguadog, putting his strong arms around his sons, spoke: “My sons, go to Orote Point and get a big loose rock and quickly place it in the entrance of Hagåtña Bay.”

Obediently the boys ran off to Orote. They were proud to have been entrusted with such an important task. It was nighttime by the time the boys arrived at Orote, and the moon was full. By the light of the moon, the boys found a loose rock along the cliff which measured roughly 120 feet long, 60 feet wide and 20 feet high. Together they picked up the huge rock and headed back to Hagåtña, playing catch with the rock as they walked along the shore.

As the boys approached the village of Assan (Asan), they stopped to rest. It was about midnight, but, looking up into the night sky, they saw a bright twinkling star. The boys suddenly became nervous. They remembered that the village elders had set a curfew for the children that was strictly enforced.

When Venus, which looks like a bright shiny star, appeared in the sky, all the village children were to return to their homes. Indeed, all children could not be away from their parents or their homes between midnight and early dawn – around six o’clock in the morning.

Thinking this was Venus, they quickly dropped the rock in the water and ran for shelter in the Agueda Caves.

Because the men had given such an important task to children, the job was not completed. The boys failed to block the entrance to Hagåtña Bay, and so the outsiders entered, settled on Guahan and intermarried with the natives. The children of these unions were without superhuman strength, thereby making the natives of the Marianas ordinary human beings like you and me.

The “star” that the boys saw in the night sky has been called “Dinagi Laolao” which means “fooled by a twinkling star,” because the boys were fooled and failed to complete their task.

The rock which they dropped in the water off Assan is called Gapang Rock, which means, “unfinished task.” It is a reminder of the days long ago when people of supernatural strength lived in these islands. Today it is known as Camel Rock because of its shape which resembles the hump of a kneeling camel.

Editor’s Note: This story was adapted from “Legends of Guam.” The booklet was produced by class members of an education class at College of Guam in 1962.

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First completed in 1681

Construction of the first San Dionisio Catholic Church in Umatac began on November 12, 1680. On that same day a strong typhoon struck the island. The typhoon hit the southern part of the island producing a storm surge, which caused severe flooding to the islet where Don Joseph de Quiroga and the militia had been cutting wood to build the church of San Dionisio el Areopagita of Umatac.

The Jesuits reported that if (Quiroga and the militia) had remained in the area two hours longer they would all have been swept into the sea. The prolonged force of the wind and the furious beating of the waves washed away a portion of the islet and carried off all the logs the men had cut to build the church.

After the typhoon, residents built new houses in Umatac rather than repair their old homes, as the destruction was so great. Construction of the new church continued and was finished on February 15, 1681.

The early church buildings were of wood with a palm-thatch roof. In the year 1769 the wooden structure was replaced by a stone building using masonry techniques, but it still had a palm-thatch roof. This building crumbled in the earthquake of 1779, was then rebuilt and destroyed again by an earthquake in 1849, reconstructed and crumbled again by an earthquake in 1862. The last reconstruction lasted until the earthquake of 1902. After this the original church building was never rebuilt. Today only the ruins, partially covered with vegetation, remain as one of the legacies of the Spanish era on Guam.

The old San Dionisio is located on lot No. 163, which was formerly a property of the Roman Catholic Church, but it was acquired by the Naval Government of Guam on November 15, 1933. This transaction was recorded in Volume 2 of Certificate of Title No. 681 page 557, Department of Land Management. In 1950 this property was transferred to the Government of Guam, as mandated by the Organic Act of Guam.

The current San Dionisio Catholic Church building in Umatac was constructed by the Spanish Capuchins between 1937 and 1939, under Fr. Bernabe de Cáseda, who was also responsible for the building of San Jose Church in Inarajan.

The San Dionisio church structure was completed and dedicated in 1939. It is regarded as an example of pre-war church architecture, and is a registered landmark of historical sites. The latest restoration of San Dionisio Church was funded by the Guam Preservation Trust and dedicated on 11 February 2001.

Named for the first bishop of Athens

The first name that was given to the church in 1681 was in honor of San Dionisio el Aeropagita. St. Dionysius the Aeropagite was converted to Christianity by St. Paul in his speech at the Aeropagus in Athens (Acts 17:34). He became the first Bishop of Athens. A later legend has confused him with the holy martyr of Gaul (France), Dionysius who was the first bishop of Paris.

Ernest J. Burrus, S.J., an historian, says that “San Dionisio el Aeropagita” was the preferred saint of the Duchess of Aveyro y Maqueda who was a generous supporter of the Jesuit missions, especially the Mission of the Mariana Islands. Francisco Garcia, S.J. dedicated his book The Life and Martyrdom of the Venerable Father Diego Luis de San Vitores (Spanish edition 1683), to the Duchess of Aveyro. Garcia praised the Duchess’s spiritual and economic support for the Jesuit missions.

February 15, 2011 marked 330 years since the construction and dedication of this Catholic church in Umatac. Though the structure has been built and rebuilt many times, one thing remains certain – the devotion to San Dionisio that people of this parish have embraced. Every year residents of Umatac celebrate his feast on October 8.

By Omaira Brunal-Perry

For further reading

Burrus, S.J. Ernest, Kino Escribe a la Duquesa, (Ediciones Jose Porrua Turanzas: Madrid 1964).

Garcia, S.J. Francisco, The Life and Martyrdom of the Venerable Father diego Luis de San Vitores, S.J., RFT MARC Micronesian area research Center: Mangilao, Guam 2004.

Haynes, Douglas E. and William Wuerch, Historical Survey of the Spanish Mission Sites on Guam 1669-1800, MARC Educational Series No. 9: Mangilao, Guam 1993.

US Naval Station Guam, Memorandum from the Governor of Guam to the Judge Advocate General,  Navy Dept., Washigton DC. 25 January 1938.

Library of Thought: Voltaire – Diccionario Filosófico: Dionisio (San) El Areopagita

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Marianas a part of the Ring of Fire

Since the devastating earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan’s coastline in March 2011 and sent thousands of Guam residents looking for higher ground, questions about the vulnerability of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands to an equally dangerous tsunami have been raised.

Guam is no stranger to the effects of some of nature’s most destructive forces, including earthquakes and typhoons, but tsunamis hit only rarely.

What is a tsunami?

In simplest terms, a tsunami is a large, extensive, open ocean wave or series of waves caused by an earthquake or an underwater landslide.  Tsunamis may also be caused by volcanic eruptions, or by large chunks of ice breaking away from a glacier, or by other phenomena that cause large displacements of ocean water.

The word tsunami originates from Japan, where it means, “harbor wave.”  Japan is a country made up of many islands and the coastline is dotted by numerous harbors that, historically, are particularly vulnerable to earthquake-generated tsunamis.  As evident in the recent Japan earthquake in 2011, the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia, and the 2009 earthquake in American Samoa, tsunamis can be extremely destructive in coastal regions.

Although sometimes used interchangeably, tsunamis should not be confused with tidal waves.  Tsunamis are also different from surface tides and tidal surges, although these waves may have similarly destructive effects on coastlines.  The term tidal wave is used in reference to ocean waves caused by the gravitational pull between the moon and the earth.  Surface tides are caused by wind blowing across the surface of a large open body of water, such as an ocean, lake or river.  Surface tides range from small ripples, to large swells.  Tidal surges are particularly destructives waves caused by strong winds that are generated by typhoons and hurricanes.  When tidal surges break on shore or over land they can cause significant damage to property and endanger coastlines.

Earthquakes and tsunamis

Tsunamis are commonly caused by earthquakes.  The hard rock surface of the earth, or the crust, is made up of plates that move on top of a liquid rock layer underneath, or the mantle.  This is the idea behind the theory of plate tectonics.  When two plates come in contact with each other, they may rub against each other laterally or side by side.  This site of contact may be apparent on the earth’s crust as a fault line, like the San Andreas Fault that runs along the length of California.

Sometimes the earth’s tectonic plates spread apart, like the mid-Atlantic Ridge.  Or, one plate may sink beneath the other.  This is called subduction, and an area where this occurs is known as a subduction zone.  As one plate sinks, the other plate is lifted up.  Mountain ranges, islands and deep ocean trenches can form in subduction zones.   For example, the Mariana Islands lie on the edge of the zone where the Pacific Plate sinks beneath the Philippine Plate, forming the Marianas Trench, the lowest elevation on the earth’s surface.  Around 43 million years ago, the release of magma from volcanic activity in this area resulted in the formation of Guam, the oldest of the Mariana Islands chain.

Though not always detected by humans, the earth’s plates are continuously moving, and they experience a considerable strain at these points of contact.  When the strain becomes too great, they move in a way that can be detected at the surface as an earthquake.

Scientists measure the strength of an earthquake using an instrument called a seismograph.  The strength or magnitude of an earthquake is designated with a numeric ranking on the Richter Scale, which goes from 0-10.  Typically, stronger earthquakes that can be felt and cause damage measure between 5.5 and 8.9 on the scale.

The earthquake that caused the March 2011 Japan tsunami measured 9.0 on the scale.  The memorable earthquake that struck Guam in August 1993 measured 8.1, although some sources recorded it at 7.9.  The earthquake in American Samoa that caused a tsunami in September 2009 also measured 8.1.  American Samoa, Japan and Guam experience frequent earthquakes.  This is because they are located in a region geologists commonly refer to as the Ring of Fire.

The Ring of Fire is an area in the Pacific Ocean where the movement of the earth’s plates causes frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity.  The ring extends along the edges of the large Pacific plate, from New Zealand, through Indonesia, past the Mariana Islands and Japan, and along the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.  The ring continues further along the whole west coast of the North American continent, Central America and South America to the southernmost point in Chile.  These coastal areas are particularly vulnerable to the effects of tsunamis even if the epicenter of an earthquake is located thousands of miles away.

When an earthquake occurs in the ocean, the energy released from the movement of the plates on the earth’s crust can generate a series of waves on the ocean surface.  The waves radiate outward from the center of the quake (or epicenter).  The effect resembles the rippling waves caused by throwing a stone in a still pond.  Offshore, tsunami waves have a short height (or amplitude), but a very long wavelength (or the distance between waves).

Under normal conditions, oceanic wavelengths are about 30 to 40 meters, but a tsunami may have wavelengths several hundred kilometers apart.  In deep water, the effect of a tsunami is hardly detectable because of this huge wavelength.  However, as a tsunami approaches a shoreline where the waters are shallow, the waves slow down.  This causes the wavelength to shorten and the wave height to grow enormously.  The destructive force of a tsunami, though, occurs not only when the wave crashes into the shoreline at high speed, but also by the receding of the water as it goes back towards the ocean, dragging buildings, vehicles, trees and other debris out to sea.

According to geologists, a tsunami may feature multiple waves, and sometimes it may take several hours for the waves to travel thousands of miles across open water.  In fact, not all earthquakes will produce tsunamis that actually make it to a shoreline. Whether a destructive tsunami is generated after an underwater earthquake is difficult to detect.

Sometimes, an indicator of an impending tsunami is the drawback of water on the shore, exposing fish, coral and other features that would normally be under water. When such a drawback of the ocean occurs, it is a good idea for people to head inland or move to higher ground.  Today, sophisticated instruments are used to monitor changes in sea level, especially after an earthquake, and to alert coastal zones of impending danger from destructive tsunamis.  Guam receives its information from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which has detectors on buoys located throughout the Pacific Ocean.  The PTWC is based in Honolulu, Hawai’i, and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the United States government.

By virtue of the island’s location along the Ring of Fire, it is not surprising that Guam is the site of regular earthquake activity.  In fact, earthquakes occur every day on Guam, but the majority of them are imperceptible without a seismograph.  Occasional destructive force earthquakes occur every few years, as evidenced in the landscape and geological record, as well as in historic accounts.

The volcanic activity in the region causes much of the earthquake activity on Guam.  In addition, there are thousands of fault lines that zigzag across the island, resulting from the collision (and subduction) of the Pacific plate and the Marianas plate.   A major fault line divides the island geologically between the limestone plateau of the north, and the mountainous volcanic region in the south.  Named the Adelup-Pago Point fault, the fault line runs roughly between Pago Bay on the east coast of the island, to Asan on the west—near the location of the Governor’s Complex in Adelup.

The Tamuning-Yigo fault moves south-southwest from Mt. Santa Rosa in Yigo, along Latte Heights, past the airport and to the boundary between Tamuning and East Agana.  Further south, the Cabras Fault runs from Facpi Point (which lies about five kilometers north of Umatac) and moves northeast along the west coast toward Piti Bay.  In addition, a number of smaller fault lines run along the valleys of southern Guam.  It is no wonder, then, that Guam should experience so many earthquakes during the year.

Historic accounts of Guam’s seismic events

Accounts from the Spanish Era and the early American period provide an interesting record of historic earthquake activity on Guam, and at least one report of a devastating tsunami.  At least four earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater on the Richter scale occurred between 1849 and 1911.  Unconfirmed reports of earthquakes in the late 1700s include events in 1767, 1769, 1779 or 1799.  Major earthquakes have been reported, in 1809, 1810, 1822, 1825, 1834, 1837, 1849, 1892, 1901 and 1909.

Guam has had 3 tsunamis large enough to cause damage

A 2002 study by geologists James Lander and Lowell Whiteside of the University of Colorado and Paul Hattori from the US Geological Survey Guam Geophysical Observatory examined the history of tsunami events on Guam over the last 200 years.  Based on historic accounts, they determined that Guam has had only three tsunamis that were large enough to cause damage—in 1849, 1892 and, most recently, in 1993.  Another two to six events may have been recorded, but are not verifiable as true tsunamis.  Waves originating from further away include those produced during the 1952 Kamatchka, Russia, and the 1960 Chile earthquakes.

One of the earliest records of an earthquake and destructive wave activity on Guam was a description by Louis Claude de Freycinet, a French explorer who traveled to the Marianas in 1819.  He wrote:

“An earthquake made itself felt, on May 7 at 1:30 pm.  With surprise and fright together, we saw the earth itself undulating form north to south for a period of perhaps thirty seconds.  The residence cracked in every part, tiles came hurtling down and one would have thought that the entire structure was about to collapse around our heads.  All inhabitants fled, some into the streets, others into gardens.  No further disaster befell us all, however.  Passed on from the land to the sea, the upheaval was felt aboard in the guise of violent shakes.”

In late 1837 a series of strong earthquakes coincided with strong storm causing major flooding, landslides and damage.  Four of the Caroline Islands were submerged, forcing residents to migrate to Guam and eventually settle in Saipan.

Twelve years later, another devastating tremor struck the island.  A graphic description of the earthquake and tsunami of 1849 was presented in a letter by then-Guam governor Pablo Pérez.  The island was in the wake of a flu epidemic that had taken many lives.  In his letter, he recounted not only the earthquake and aftershocks, but also the extensive devastation caused by ground rupture and a tsunami that killed one woman and injured her niece:

“On 25 January last, at 2:49 in the afternoon, there was a great temblor, or earthquake, on this island that lasted one and a half minutes…The shocks continued all afternoon at very short intervals of approximately four, six and eight minutes.  At eleven o’clock that night, they ceased until 2:30 in the morning, then continued on the following days…In addition to the repeated shocks, we felt something like a subterranean boiling, and we thought we were atop a volcano that would send us flying though space when it exploded.  After nine days, the continual boiling-like rumbling stopped, but the tremors continued…A pilot and several seamen who were on the beach reported and swore they had seen two flashes of fire leap from the surf as it crashed on the reef off this port.  The flashes were preceded by two sharp cannon-like reports.

“The earth opened in several places.  Large fissures appeared in the center of the city; fourteen walls opened, gushing water, sand and fish… That afternoon, in my presence, the wells were sounded with a rod and found to have a depth of from one to six varas (one varas is 33 inches).  On the following day I had them filled to obliterate the horrible sight, also because four of them were beneath houses, causing some to tumble, others to tilt.  Many boulders have tumbled along the shore and from the interior hillsides.  The shaking was so severe that bottles and other small receptacles on floors and shelves fell.

“The fissures were even more frightening because of the release of fumes.

“The sole tragedy involving loss of life was the death of a woman, who was at her ranch near the beach and was swept away by one of three tidal waves.  The two-year old niece who was with her received bruises on her face when the sea carried her forty yards before depositing her among the rocks.”

The woman’s name was reported as Josefa Lujan, from the village of Hagåtña. Lujan was walking from her lancho in Talofofo toward Inarajan, when she was swept away by a giant wave which washed over the road.  Her body was never recovered, although her niece survived with minor injuries.

The vertical run-up of the tsunami was about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters).  Governor Perez described many structures being damaged, including the tile roofs on several administrative buildings, as well as the Umatac church.  The church in Hagåtña lost its bell tower, while the boys’ school, the Colegio de San Juan de Letran was almost completely destroyed.    So far-reaching were the effects that, in fact, the captain of a whaling frigate informed the Governor that he felt the quake a thousand miles east of Guam.

In the Caroline Islands, it was reported that some of the atolls were actually submerged for several hours by the tsunami caused by the earthquake.  Several survivors from the islands of Satawal and Lamotrek managed to escape, migrating to Saipan in the northern Marianas some two months later.

Father Aniceto Ibáñez del Carmen, an Augustinian priest and parish chronicler living on Guam in the mid-1800s, also wrote a description of the 1849 earthquake and tsunami, similar to Governor Perez’s account.  In addition to recounting general happenings in the island during his stay, he also chronicled a number of earthquakes that occurred.  Ibáñez, for example, noted that occasional tremors took place in 1855, which, along with illnesses and typhoons, made for a memorable year.  He was more descriptive regarding an earthquake in 1862. Ibáñez wrote:

“On 1 July 1862 at 7:48 in the morning…a small though quite perceptible quaking was felt—up and down—and then a strong oscillating movement from North to South.  The force of the earthquake was such that practically all the thatched roofs collapsed.  This tremor or earthquake lasted between forty-five and fifty seconds, more or less.”

Ibáñez also mentioned two “terribly strong” earthquakes striking on 13 May 1870 around 3:27 pm.  That same year on June 14^th, another strong earthquake was felt at 2:55 am.

In May 1892 a tsunami in Hagåtña was recorded from an earthquake that struck Guam, although no measurements of its height or damage were available.  Landers et al (2002), however, state that a drop in water level was reported and damage occurred in the old San Antonio district (near the current Chamorro Village).

Strong destructive quakes also were recorded in the early years in the 20^th century.  On 22 September 1902, a tremendous earthquake struck the island at 11:24 in the morning.  The Hagåtña church lost its bell tower and one of the church walls collapsed.  Bridges on the Hagåtña -Piti road caved in, along with many coral masonry (mampostería) structures.  The wooden Umatac church of San Dioniso was destroyed, as it was earlier in the 1849 quake.  One child was killed by falling debris.  Tremors continued for an entire week, and public schools were closed for nearly two years.

The damage was extensive enough to cause US naval governor Seaton Schroeder to issue an order implementing new construction standards to make buildings safer.  Although the Hagåtña church was rebuilt under the new standards, it was destroyed again following an earthquake in 1909.  This quake, centered on Guam, as well as one recorded in February 1903, which occurred in the Philippines, generated tsunamis, although no information was available about the vertical run-up for each event.

Other small tsunami events may have occurred throughout the 20^th century from earthquakes generated away from the Mariana Islands.  A 2008 report from the National Geophysical Data Center mentions that in March 1952 an earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan, produced a tsunami in Apra Harbor with a vertical slope of 0.03 foot (0.1 meter); eight months later an earthquake in Kamchaka, Russia, generated a similar sized tsunami that made it to Guam.  An earthquake in the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska caused a 0.03 foot tsunami in March 1957, and a May 1960 Chilean earthquake produced a 0.07 foot (0.2 meter) tsunami.  Two more quakes, one off the Kuril Islands, Russia, in October 1963, and another off the Alaskan peninsula in March 1964, each produced a 0.03 foot (0.1 meter) tsunami on Guam.

Other notable tremors include a 6.7 earthquake that occurred in October 1936, originating approximately 80 miles southwest of Guam.  More than 25 aftershocks were reported, exacerbating the damage to plaster walls and tile roofs by the original quake.  A 6.2 temblor was recorded in the same place as the 1936 earthquake in September 1970, while a 6.2 earthquake occurred in November 1975, causing almost $1,000,000 in damage.  Another 5.2 earthquake struck in January 1978 near the east coast of the island with considerable damage.  No tsunamis, however, were recorded with any of these occurrences.

Strongest quake in 1993

The strongest recorded earthquake struck in August 1993.  Although no deaths were reported, 48 people were injured and several hotels suffered extensive damage.  The southern part of the island experienced numerous landslides and rockslides, and more than $112 million in structural and property damage was sustained to roads, homes, buildings and cars.

Another seismic phenomenon as a result of earthquakes is liquefaction.  Liquefaction occurs when water saturated sediments (such as sand or soil in a manmade landfill) lose strength and stability and act like a liquid.  During the August 1993 earthquake liquefaction occurred at the commercial port in Apra Harbor and in downtown Hagatna causing large cracks and fissures in the ground.

Interestingly, there were reports of individuals who witnessed unusual wave activity and a minor tsunami in Pago Bay.  In the Pacific Daily News Sunday edition Tony Guerrero recounted walking to his parked truck and noticing the calm waters about 15 yards beyond the normal water line.  As he tried to enter his vehicle, the waves came in and covered his legs.  A second wave rising as high as his windshield swept him and his truck about 30 feet from the shore, making him unable to open his door until the water receded.

Risk of tsunamis on Guam

Because of the recent devastating earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Samoa and Indonesia, the question of Guam’s risk of tsunamis has been raised.  The notion that Guam is largely protected by the deep waters of the Marianas Trench and the reefs surrounding the islands is commonly accepted, although this idea has been refuted by some geophysicists for a number of reasons.

According to Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, in an interview with the Pacific Daily News shortly after the Japanese tsunami he stated that the depth of the trench gives islanders a false sense of security.  The deep waters along Japan’s east coast, for example, did little to protect that country from the devastating tsunami.  In addition, he stated that while the presence of strong, deeply sloping fringing reefs do provide some protection by causing tsunami waves to reflect off them and dissipating their energy before they can get to the shore, gaps in the reef still may provide an opening for destructive waves to come through and cause coastal damage.  Furthermore, the wavelengths of tsunamis are usually very long; if a large enough tsunami were to strike Guam the waves potentially can wrap around the edges of the island, causing flooding on exposed shorelines.

The authors of the 2002 Lander et al. report also considered the risk of destructive tsunamis on Guam.  They asserted that a locally generated tsunami would most likely occur on the east coast of the island, where the Marianas Trench is situated and the known origin of many earthquakes felt on Guam.  Additionally, a tsunami that originated further south could possibly impact both the east and west coasts of the island with the wrap-around effect.

However, the Lander report argues that because of the age and relatively slow rate of subduction of the Pacific plate underneath the Philippine plate, there should be fewer earthquakes and therefore, less chance of tsunami.  This has been the case for most of the Marianas archipelago.  Guam, though, is situated along the trench where, nearby, there are differences in depth and heights of the subducting plates.  It seems in areas where the waters are shallower, there is an increased amount of seismic activity, which may account for some of the earthquakes felt on Guam.

In the models Lander et al cite, there are other factors to consider—the steepness of the fault lines, for example, or vertical vs. horizontal movements of the plates, as well as the occurrence of secondary movements from liquefaction and landslides during a seismic event. Nevertheless, they assert, the incidence of destructive tsunamis is rare because of the extreme depth of the trench and the slow rate of subduction, and that the two significant tsunamis of 1849 and 1993 were the result of quakes that centered on the more shallow dipping areas of the plates.  In these cases, the earthquakes occurred on the eastern side of the island, producing waves that impacted Guam’s east coast.

Although the likelihood of tsunamis is low, if they do occur, it is more likely they will occur on the east coast of Guam.  Southern Guam may be vulnerable, but more heavily populated areas in the central, western parts of the island are less likely to be negatively impacted by tsunamis.

Cultural responses

In the course of the long history of human habitation of the Mariana Islands, the people who live in this part of the world have adapted to survive a host of potentially hazardous forces of nature.  Along with the physical challenge of surviving earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis they dealt with the human need to understand and give some kind of cultural meaning to these phenomena.

The ancient Chamorros, for example, explained wind, waves and fire as part of the activities of the spirit-god Chaifi.  Prayers to ancestral and natural spirits were invoked to ensure success in human projects of navigation, farming and fishing, as well as protection from the earth’s destructive forces.  When Christianity was introduced, the power to control the forces of nature was placed in the hands of God, and the Virgin Mary became the great intercessor to turn to for protection and aid.

American anthropologist Laura Thompson, who studied Chamorro culture on Guam in the late 1930s, documented two solemn novenas, a type of Catholic prayer devotion and ritual that takes place over the course of nine consecutive days, specifically for protection from earthquakes.  According to her informants, the Nobenan I Promesa pat I Nobenan I Linao originated in fulfillment of promises made by the people of Guam after a destructive earthquake that occurred in April 1858 and the 1902 temblor that destroyed the cathedral in Hagåtña.  Although most people on Guam understand and accept plate tectonics theory, it is not uncommon for many to return to rituals of prayer when natural disasters occur.

Typhoon and earthquake connection under study

Interestingly, the Lander report also considered the seemingly apparent connection of large earthquakes and typhoon activity on Guam.  For example, the August 1993 earthquake was closely associated with Typhoon Steve.  Perhaps, the authors suggest, the winds generated from typhoons, along with appropriate high stresses in earthquake regions, can trigger an earthquake.  Or, pressure changes from the extreme low pressures associated with typhoons can hypothetically cause the land to rise under a reduced load and result in an earthquake.

The model for this seems to work for an earthquake that occurs under land, but for an earthquake under the ocean, there may be another mechanism involved.  In the case of the August 1993 quake, the eye of Typhoon Steve, an area of relative calm, passed 80 km north of the island, with winds pushing Guam and the Philippine plate to the northwest.  This movement, the Lander studies asserts, may have reduced the friction between the Pacific and Philippine plates which resulted in the strong earthquake.  Furthermore, in a look at the history of earthquakes and typhoons on Guam, Lander et al observed that far more earthquakes occur within one day of the arrival of typhoons, than any other day in the 10 days before or 10 days after a typhoon has passed Guam at its nearest approach to the island.

Regardless of the risk of tsunamis on Guam, the Government of Guam has tried to secure a tsunami preparedness program and warning system which includes signage and public announcements, but no sirens as found in other tsunami-prone areas.  Although there are criticisms of the warning system currently in place, in an island that has experienced periodic natural disasters including typhoons and earthquakes, residents are always at a level of preparedness that exceeds other locales vulnerable to such phenomena.

By Dominica Tolentino

For further reading

Farrell, Don A.  History of the Mariana Islands to Partition.  Chalan Kanoa, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Public School System, 2010.

Freycinet, Louis-Claude de. Voyage autour du Monde … Execute sur les Corvettes de S.M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne: Atlas Historique Paris: Chez Pillet Aine, 1825.

Martratt, Joyce.  With all the recent earthquakes, has Guam ever experienced tsunami? Andersen Air Force Base News, October 1, 2007.

Rogers, Robert.  Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.

Tolentino, Dominica, MA,  Nobena: Novena (Catholic Devotional Prayers), referenced May 12, 2011, © 2009 Guampedia.

US Geological Survey, Plate Tectonics and Sea-Floor Spreading, Subduction Zones, “Hot Spots”, and the “Ring of Fire”, referenced December 12, 2011

US Navy, Final EIS Geological and Soil Resources Guam  and  CNMI  Military  Relocation, 2010.

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Rich reef life

Echinoderms are members of a phylum (i.e., a major group) of common, often large and colorful shallow-water invertebrates seen on the reefs around Guam.  The phylum is comprised of five classes: sea stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, brittle stars and sea lilies.  The first three classes need little introduction and have been recognized since ancient times.

Brittle stars resemble starfish, but their arms are thin and can writhe independently.  Deepwater sea lilies resemble their namesake, stalked with their petal-like arms spread into the current.  The shallow-water cousins of the sea lilies are stalkless, and often go by the name of feather stars and may be seen by divers at night perched atop coral heads.  These five classes are united under the phylum Echinodermata (from the Greek for “spiny-skinned ones”) by the presence of hydraulically powered tube-feet, an internal skeleton of crystalline chalk, and the unique ability to change their skin from leather hard to gelatinous ooze at will.

Cultural history

Throughout Micronesia, sea urchins are collected and their gonads eaten.  Their skeletons, called tests, are known from the refuse middens of prehistoric Chamorros, suggesting that the animals were also eaten in the Marianas.  Sea cucumbers are also eaten on other Micronesian islands today, but there is no evidence of these animals from archaeological deposits, though it is doubtful that anyone has thought to look.

The other three classes of echinoderms have too little flesh to be eaten.  Chamorro call the sea stars and brittle stars puti’on tåsi, which means “star of the sea.”  Sea urchins go by lå’on, while sea cucumbers are called balåti.  Neither of these terms are translatable.  No Chamorro names for sea lilies or feather stars has been identified, perhaps because in Guam waters, the animals are uncommon, nocturnal and restricted to deeper reef slopes.

Economically, sea cucumbers are the most important echinoderms.  They are a gourmet food item in northern Asia and several commercially valuable species were exported from Guam by the Chinese during the Spanish and American administrations of the island in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  A red secretion from the skin of a common black species Holothuria atra is still used on Guam to evict octopus from their holes.  Another species, Bohadschia argus, releases sticky, white collagen tubules (“bubblegum balåti”) when disturbed that are placed over coral cuts to stem bleeding.

Diversity and systematics

There are more than 200 species of echinoderms known to inhabit the shallow waters around Guam.  There are about thirty-six species of sea stars, fifty-three sea urchins, forty-seven sea cucumbers, forty-seven brittle stars and twenty-one sea lilies.  While echinoderms are relatively well known for invertebrates, new species, even large, plentiful ones, are constantly being discovered on coral reefs, including those around Guam.

Currently, there are at least a dozen species that have been found recently around Guam that cannot be identified to species and may be new to science.

While new species of echinoderms have been discovered around Guam, very few, if any, are likely to be restricted to the island or the Mariana Archipelago, as nearly all species have potentially widely dispersed eggs and larvae.  The most common family of tropical sea stars, the Ophidiasteridae, have fifteen representatives on Guam, including the distinctive large, blue Linckia laevigata, often seen while wading.

Reproduction and development

Most animals inhabiting tropical oceanic islands are broadcast spawners.  These species, including most echinoderms on Guam, spawn annually or biannually en masse at night.  Eggs and sperm are released into the water, where the eggs are fertilized.  The larvae will stay in the water column, drifting amongst the other plankton, feeding and growing, until metamorphosis into a miniature adult form and settlement onto the reef.  Each class of echinoderm has a distinctive larval form.  Developmental times may be longer than a month among broadcast spawning species or as short as a few days for those, like the sea lilies, that have forsaken a feeding Odyssean larvae.

Ecology

Guam echinoderms have distinctive distributions around the island.  Some species are restricted to the shallow reef flats, where they may be particularly abundant.  These species must be able to tolerate the harsh conditions there, where water temperatures may reach over 40 C (120 F) during spring low tides or where salinity may drop to only twenty-five percent of that of ambient seawater because of rain runoff.

Common reef-flat species include the large blue sea star Linckia laevigata, the black, long-spined sea urchin, Diadema setosum, and the black, sand-covered sea cucumber Holothuria atra.  This latter species sometimes reaches densities of 20/m2 on some protected, west-facing reef flats.  Some species like the white-mottled chestnut sea cucumber Actinopyga mauritiana or the plated sea urchin Colobocentrotus mertensi prefer the wave-battered outer reef margin.

Other species, such as many of the sea lilies, are restricted to the deeper forereef slope and may only be seen at night with the aid of SCUBA.  Occasional large waves from severe storms and typhoons may also account for the fewer large echinoderms seen on shallow, east-facing windward shores.

By Alexander M. Kerr

For further reading

Allen, G. R. and R. Steene, Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Guide. Tropical Reef Research, Singapore, 1996.

Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources of the Department of Agriculture. Fish & Wildlife Fact Sheets. Mangilao, 2002. (access Fact Sheets via Guampedia.com)

Gosliner, T. M., D. W. Behrens and G. C. Williams, Coral Reef Animals of The Indo-Pacific. Sea Challengers, Monterrey, California, 1996.

Colin, P. L. and C. Arneson, Tropical Pacific Invertebrates. Coral Reef Press, Beverly Hills, California, 1995.

Cunningham, L. J. and J. J. Beaty, Guam: A Natural History. Bess Press, Honolulu, Hawai’i, 2001.

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Photo Library. The Coral Kingdom. Sept. 30, 2009. Accessed Dec. 12, 2011.

Kerr, Alexander M. Holothuroidea. Sea Cucumbers. Tree of Life web project. Accessed Dec. 12, 2011.

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Six classes of spiders found on Guam

There are eleven classes (i.e., major groups) of living arachnids in the world.  Of these, only six are likely to be encountered on Guam: the Acari (ticks and mites), Pseudoscorpiones (pseudoscorpions), Scorpiones (scorpions), Solifugae (sun spiders), Opiliones (harvestmen or daddy long-legs) and Araneae (spiders).

The pseudoscorpions are only at most a few millimeters long and usually live in the leaf litter of the forest floor.  They resemble scorpions with their clawed pedipalps (crab-like pincers), but the end of the abdomen is rounded and lacks a stinger.  Sun spiders are quite spider-like in overall appearance, but rather more hairy, with close-set eyes and a large smooth head bearing formidable chelicerae (fangs).  They live under rocks and rotting wood where they prey on other small arthropods.  Harvestmen live in the forest and are seen in openings to caves and moist limestone karst.

By far the most commonly encountered arachnids on Guam are spiders.  Unless otherwise noted, animal size indicates body length.

Cultural history

In Chamorro spiders are called sanye’ye, apayu’ak or, its apparent variant, payu’ak.  None of the mites, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen or sun spiders are poisonous.  The sole species of scorpion from Guam is small (to 4 cm or 2.5 in), dark and has a sting that feels like that of a small ant.

While the North American black-widow spider is occasionally seen in shipments of material from the mainland, it has not established itself on the island.  There is, however, a native spider Chiracanthium diversum whose bite, though not as venomous as that of the black widow, can still induce nausea.  This spider is whitish to greenish, to 1 cm in body length with a somewhat flattened, crablike appearance.

The largest spider on Guam Heteropoda venatoria, brown with a leg-span to 10 cm (4 in), is often seen on walls or in outdoor kitchens, especially at night.  This species’ bite is not particularly toxic, but is painful because of the spiders’ large size.

Diversity and systematics

There are no comprehensive surveys of Guam’s arachnids, hence the number of species from the island is not known.  The pseudoscorpions are good dispersers, being small and hitching rides on insects and birds, and species can be broadly distributed in the Pacific.  Hence, Guam likely has a good representation, over a dozen species, of at least the geographically widespread forms.

The small size, good dispersal ability and high ecological and geographic diversity of mites also indicate that Guam possesses a diverse fauna of these arachnids. There is one species of scorpion on Guam Hormurus australasiae, which is also widely distributed throughout Micronesia and the western Pacific.  The diversity of harvestmen and sun spiders is low and they are seldom seen.

Of Guam’s arachnids, spiders have been relatively more studied.  Commonly encountered families include Araneidae (the orb-web weavers), Salticidae (jumping spiders) and Theridiidae (cobweb weavers).  These families probably include spiders either endemic to the Mariana Islands or western Micronesia.

Ecology

At certain times of the year Guam’s jungles can seemingly become a maze of spider webs.  These large webs belong to the communal-living spider Cyrtophora mollucensis also found on many other islands in the Pacific.  The spiders build their webs adjacent to one another in groups of 2 to over 20 spiders.  These group webs can be over 3 m (10 ft) in height and inadvertently ensnare even moderately sized birds, which, however, are not captured or eaten by the much smaller spiders.

Further, the webs, unlike those of most other orb weavers, are not sticky.  This appears to be an adaptation to a rainy climate.  The webs are not as efficient snares as sticky webs, but only the latter become completely ineffective during frequent tropical rains.  Upon closer inspection, these webs are seen to house other species of spiders, as well.  These are species of Argyrodes, tiny (to 4 mm body length) web invaders that do not build their own web.  The most common one has a high, silvered abdomen and may be found in the orb webs of another common Guam spider, Argiope appensa.  Argiope is a large (to 3 cm), yellow spider that builds a flat vertical orb, often on roadsides or beach strand.  Its web may also contain to four zigzag swatches of white silk radiating from the hub.  Sometimes over ten silver Argyrodes may invade an Argiope web, stealing its prey and occasionally even eating the much larger host.

Travelers often comment on the seemingly high number of spider webs in Guam’s jungles.  It has been speculated that this is an indirect effect of the demise of Guam’s bird fauna due to predation by the brown tree snake.  It is thought that spider numbers have increased to take the niche formerly filled by insect-eating birds.  However, episodically high densities of spiders are known from other islands whose bird faunas are relatively intact.

By Alexander M. Kerr

For further reading

Cunningham, L. J. and J. J. Beaty, Guam: A Natural History. Bess Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2001.

Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources of the Department of Agriculture. Fish & Wildlife Fact Sheets. Mangilao, 2002. (access the Fact Sheets via Guampedia.com)

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Whaling brought trade, travel opportunities and disease

Eleven Chamorro men, kidnapped on Guam by Alonso de Salazar’s crew of the Victoria on September 10, 1526, to work the ship’s water pumps, became the first Pacific crew members of a European based vessel. The Victoria was the only surviving ship of a seven ship fleet dispatched by Spanish Emperor Charles V.

Although the mission of the Victoria and the other ill-fated ships of the expedition was to seize the Molucca Islands trade, the enslavement of these Chamorro men represents the beginning of a long indigenous association with European ships plying the Pacific initially for exploration’s sake.

Later, however, they became successful in tracking and killing whales from which valuable oils were used for lighting lamps and making candles and quality lubricants for machines that produced cotton and woolen goods. Whalebone was also widely used for making women’s corset and skirt rings that had become popular by the early 18th century as well as for umbrellas and other household items.

Initial American whaling ventures had concentrated in the 1700s along the eastern coasts of North America where the “right whales” were found. They were “right” whales because they didn’t sink when killed, didn’t put up a vigorous fight, and were relatively close to shore. However this relatively easy availability of the right whale practically led to its extinction in these areas. Whaling ventures subsequently branched out into whale migration patterns of the northern summer months involving the North Pacific near Japan and the Arctic with Hawai’i providing a replenishing source during the fall.

Winter whaling tracks generally concentrated on the central Pacific and the north and south American coasts. In the spring, Hawai’i again offered ship replenishment and crew rejuvenation before whalers again headed to the North Pacific and Arctic in the summer. These whaling ships were predominantly from the New England coast area of the United States. The destruction of some whaling ships during the American Civil War and the growing prominence of uses of petroleum eventually hastened the decline of the whaling industry by the late 1870s.

Humpbacks, Grey and Blue Whales

This history of whaling in the Pacific involved the harvesting, in some cases almost to the point of extinction, of a number of whale species including (besides the right whale) the humpback, grey, and blue whales – all of which became more accessible by advances such as the invention of the explosive harpoon. These technologies and a greater awareness of whaling opportunities in the Antarctic were to usher in, over a long period of time, the commercial whaling industry of today.

Honolulu, Hawai’i functioned as the most prominent whaling port. Apra Harbor, Guam and Pohnpei also served as important ports for whaling ships plying the waters of Micronesia. Because of the seven mile distance between Apra Harbor and Hagåtña, whalers were likely given several days leave to accommodate this distance. Thirty to sixty whaling ships visited the Mariana Islands by the 1820s.

Meeting the provisional needs of these whalers would naturally have had a positive economic impact on Guam although the degree of its impact is not consistently clear from the historical record although by its peak, the whaling industry provided approximately 18,000 pesos to the Spanish administration on Guam according to historian Don Farrell.

This revenue was however controlled by a few elite individuals and thus unavailable to the majority although informal transactions between crew members and local people could have resulted in some unrecorded financial benefits. Researcher Peter E. Patacsil put the expenditures of whalers at about 40,000 pesos per year during the 1840s through the whalers’ purchasing of aguardiente (a local coconut toddy) and other local “products” and “entertainment.”

Whaling ships provided Chamorro men with opportunities to venture from Guam although unsavory captains sometimes left Chamorro crew members stranded on other islands once they were no longer needed as Pablo Pérez, governor from 1848 to 1855, complained.

Some Chamorro men, frequently praised by other captains for their work ethics, migrated to Hawai’i via their whaling experiences, including José and Luís Custino (their original surname was Castro), early Chamorro converts to Protestantism who returned to Guam and made substantial contributions to the development of the Protestant church on the island. They enlisted the help of Protestant convert and Guam resident Jose Mendiola Taitano (familian Cueto) who had also worked on a whaling ship.

As elsewhere in the Pacific, whaling ships provided Guam with beachcombers, prompting some whaling captains to seek provisions at Saipan instead where the incentive to desert was thought to be less and supplies cheaper to obtain.

Influenza, bibles came by whaling ship

As had other ships before them, whalers could also bring disease as was most markedly the case when influenza was deposited at Guam on January 7, 1849, from a whaling ship that had sailed from Hawai’i. At its height the disease was killing as many as twenty-six people a day in Hagåtña alone with a final death toll of more than two hundred people. The epidemic killed a disproportionate number of young women, a few elderly people but no young children.

Governor Pablo Pérez wrote that during the epidemic, “the Santisimo (Holy Sacrament) was carried through the streets at all hours of the day and night.” Because the Hagåtña cemetery was considered too small, most of the victims were buried in the yard of the Hospital de lazarinos in Adelup. The influenza scourge was recorded as having ended on January 25, the same day that a large earthquake, at four minutes to 3 p.m. and lasting a minute and a half, struck the island, causing substantial damage to the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán and causing a newly constructed tower to collapse onto the San Ignacio church.

Francis M. Price, in describing his involvement in establishing the Protestant church in direct opposition to the well established Catholic Church on Guam, lamented the Catholic Church’s restrictions on access to Bibles which he conjectures arrived on Guam before 1850 through whaling ships. Price maintained that when word of Chamorros actually reading the Bible reached Catholic Church officials, three large baskets of these Bibles were publicly burned in 1856.

French explorer and scientist, Antoine-Alfred Marche also noted that whalers regularly visited Sumay village “whose inhabitants, and especially the women, trade with the whalers coming there every year to replenish their food supply.” He considered the whalers who landed at the village of Umatac when he was there to have been “the scum of San Francisco’s population, and along with these, there were a few real sailors morally no better than the rest.”

Two Frenchmen from this whaler jumped ship and joined ten other whalers who had deserted from other whaling ships “without means of support” because of bad treatment by the ships’ captains and bad food. Marche noted that the governor gave them “a real fuerte per day, sixty-three centimes” while Marche himself sponsored passage for one of the Frenchman on a mail ship bound for Manila.

By Nicholas J. Goetzfridt, PhD

For further reading

Farrell, Don A. History of the Mariana Islands to Partition. Saipan: CNMI Public School System, 2011.

Ibáñez del Carmen, Aniceto, Francisco Resano and others. Chronicle of the Mariana Islands Recorded in the Agaña Parish Church, 1846-1899, translated and annotated by Marjorie G. Driver. Mangilao, Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1976.

MacDonald, Barrie. “Whaling.” In: The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia, edited by Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000.

Marche, Antoine-Alfred. The Mariana Islands, translated by Sylvia E. Cheng. Mangilao, Guam, Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1982.

Patacsil, Peter E. Coinage in Guam during the Spanish Era. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Professional Press, 1998.

Polack, Joel Samuel. The North Cape, New Zealand, and sperm whale fishery. 1838. Engraving. Collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. National Library of New Zealand. Accessed Dec. 12, 2011.

Price, Francis M. “Lights and Shadows in Guam.” In: The Pacific Islanders, from Savages to Saints: Chapters from the Life Stories of Famous Missionaries and Native Converts, edited by Delavan L. Pierson. New York: Funk & Wagnall Company.

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Iron used for tools

The matao fashioned the iron they acquired from trading with visiting ship crews into traditional tools, including punches, drills, fish hooks and adze blades. The most prominently mentioned application was canoe construction, a major preoccupation of high status men.  The Marianas outrigger canoe played a vital role as the integrating mechanism for the islanders’ cultural unity, connecting their tano’ tasi (land of the sea) via inter-island transportation, communication and trade.

The craft also functioned as a major subsistence tool, providing the means of harvesting near-shore and pelagic fish, gathering shellfish and other marine and seabird products from distant reefs and shoals, as well as transporting foodstuffs and raw material between villages and islands.  The ubiquity and beauty of these canoes, painted with an orange ocher, white or black, and propelled by triangular mat sails, led early Spanish visitors to call the islands Islas de las Velas Latinas – Islands of the Lateen Sails.

High-ranking men organized canoe construction but gathering and preparing the materials required extensive community time, effort and teamwork.  The sakman, the largest ocean-going craft observed by visitors, was typically 26 to 28 feet long.  There also were other smaller types of sailing and paddling canoes. Traditional sakman construction used wood from the breadfruit tree (Artocarpus mariannensis and Artocarpus incisus); palo maria (Calophyllum brasiliense); as well as bamboo cane.  Men felled, dressed and shaped these raw materials into hulls, side planks, masts, booms, spars and outrigger poles and floats.  Women processed pandanus fiber for the sails and wove them so finely that the Spanish compared them to “coarse linen” and the Dutch likened them to “dressed sheepskin.”

The islanders drilled, punched and gouged holes in the edges of hull sections and side boards and secured them to adjoining pieces with coconut fiber sennit, looping this binding through the holes and securing the joint tightly.  A paste of lime and coconut oil sealed the holes and seams.  The abundance of stone and shell perforators and drills as well as bone awls and augers in Marianas archeological sites attest to the widespread use of boring tools in pre-contact society.  Because large nails, clusters of smaller ones and pointed metal could more efficiently accomplish the multiple hole-boring needed for canoe construction, the matao reinterpreted them as punches, perforators and drills.

Islanders on Rota also made fishing hooks of nails they acquired from the Santa Margarita, according to Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora, a Capuchin friar who sojourned there in 1602.  The cleric also noted that islanders who previously used flint knifes had iron ones from the Santa Margarita to cut open fish.

Knives, machetes and cutlasses were also used to clear fields for swidden gardens of yams, plantains and taro.  The Franciscan friar Antonio de los Ángeles, who sojourned on Guam in 1596, noted the islanders “value iron very highly to work their fields with, to sow their rice and a few local vegetables, which they use to sustain themselves.”  Iron knives, machetes and cutlasses also were added to the islanders’ array of armaments.

Toolmakers on Rota shaped and sharpened iron without forging in the early 17th century, Fray Juan Pobre reported, describing how they worked the metal:

“with pure force in accordance with what they need, by taking some very strong cobblestones and with pounding they make their hooks and knives without fire [forging] and they know very well how to grind them so that they can use them to make their ships and things they need.”

Islanders learned blacksmithing

Forging was likely in use by the 1640s.  A few Concepción beachcombers reportedly made a living forging iron, and a Chinese castaway who arrived in 1648 on a ship plying the Manila-Ternate trade “earned a tolerable living by making knives and axes from iron hoops, for he operated a forge.”

The introduction of forging enabled the islanders to more efficiently adapt hoop iron to their most commonly used wood-working tool – the hafted adze.  As an account in the 1640s noted, the islanders “desire … iron because with it they build their boats, turning the iron into hatchets for cutting the wood.” The shouldered adze, typical of the Marianas, used blades of sharpened segments of basalt or giant clam (tridacna) shell, which were slotted into the head, with their cutting edge perpendicular to the line of the handle, and firmly secured by a sennit binding.

Forging allowed the matao to heat and cut barrel hoops into segments, as well as flatten and shape pieces of hoop iron into adze blades and knives.  A Jesuit chronicler described part of the process in the 1660s: “So as not to be short of building tools, they sharpen pieces of iron hoops to a polish with a hard stone…and then they place it into a [fire] hardened stick and tie it tightly.”

Iron-bladed adzes were especially useful in hewing and shaping canoe sections and planking.  As the same Jesuit noted, “whatever is to be built, it is a lengthy process, for they sweat at the task for years with slow blow [and] obstinate patience. Because they lack [metal] tools, especially the saw, they can make only one board out of a whole tree [log], the rest flying off as chips.”  Iron tools probably were also used for felling and dressing timber and bamboo for community buildings and family residences.

Iron became an exchange item

All forms of iron also were regarded as a valuable commodity that could be offered along with traditional exchange mediums, such as sea turtle shell and rice, in reciprocal exchange customs, alliance-building gifting and compensation for goods and services.  Accumulating iron goods as “a stock of working capital” could allow kin-groups to use gift presentations to produce a range of services, from traditional labor to the creation and maintenance of political alliances and assistance in warfare.

The acquisition of iron became a measure of personal prestige and status during this period.  The clerical sojourner de los Ángeles noted that trading with Spanish ships for iron was counted as a major life achievement.  When relatives honored a deceased matao:

 “[t]hey praise him for his skill at fishing and the great strength with which he used to throw spears and shoot the sling, that he would go to the Spanish ships passing by there and bring back iron, that he built canoes, gave feasts to which he invited the town people, and that he owned many tortoise shells….”

The possession and manipulation of iron goods by members of the matao was a manifestation of their status, reflecting the existing social order, but may have intensified indigenous dynamics, including social differentiation, within this social strata.  As a Jesuit reported from a village on Guam’s northwest coast in 1669:

“So far nothing precious has been discovered in these islands. What they accumulate here is iron and tortoise shell; he who has the greatest quantity of them is the most powerful.”

Trade opened the way for colonialism

Because the iron trade and repatriation services were the matao’s sole regular source for iron goods, the islanders’ relationship with the galleon trade offered a receptive milieu for missionaries dedicated to religious conversion, social transformation and political consolidation.  And the Royal Patronage of the Indies, or Patranado Real, provided a tool for missionaries to gain the material and organizational resources for colonial intrusion.  This arrangement between the Papacy and the Spanish Crown provided for the promotion and defense of the Roman Catholicism in the New World (and the Philippines), requiring Spanish officials to support the Church but also allowing them to use missionary work as an arm of the state to acquire and administer new colonies.

The chief architect and driving force behind the 1668 Spanish mission, Father Diego Luis de San Vitores, employed images, resources and practices generated by the iron trade “culture of culture contact” to help persuade Spanish officials and island leaders to support his initiative.  A high-born Castilian with influential family and Jesuit connections at Court, San Vitores was a talented and visionary evangelist, seeking to emulate Jesuit pioneers in Asia such as Francis Xavier and eager to proselytize non-Christian people.  In the Philippines, he felt unfulfilled ministering to the spiritual needs of established Christian communities, disappointed by what he viewed as Manila’s retrenchment from the Moluccas and Mindanao, and saw little opportunity for direct mission initiatives in Japan or China.

San Vitores had witnessed the matao iron trade on the 1662 Acapulco ship San Damián and learned about the islanders from officers and crewmen who had lived among them.  Aware of earlier Spanish exploration in the region, including failed colonization attempts in the Southwest Pacific, San Vitores developed a proposal for opening a new frontier for missionary activity and imperial expansion.  He argued that the conversion and consolidation of the Marianas, which he believed was long overdue, would not only provide for the islanders’ spiritual salvation and material advancement, but also allow the islands to serve as a base to extend Christian dominion and Spanish rule to other “unclaimed” archipelagos of Oceania.

The Marianas and islands north of them might also serve, San Vitores suggested, as stepping stones to re-enter Japan, where the Jesuits had developed thriving Christian communities until the Tokugawa suppression and seclusion policies closed that nation to European clergy in the 1630s.

To counter the many officials who viewed a mission to islands without precious metals or valuable spices as a drain on resources needed for the Philippines, San Vitores downplayed the expense and danger of the enterprise, saying it required only a small contingent of priests and assistants and could be delivered and supported by the regular visits of the Acapulco ships.

He emphasized the kindly and peaceful image of the matao that had emerged from castaways and clerics, stressing how the iron trade had made the islanders well-disposed toward the Spanish.  He asserted the islanders’ fear of losing “their well-established friendship and trade with our galleons, the sole source of iron and other necessary goods,” would assure safe treatment.  The Acapulco ships, he added, could provide whatever “just punishment” might be needed if missionaries were harmed.

San Vitores’ allies at Court helped to win a royal decree in 1665, ordering officials in Mexico and Manila to provide the resources and assistance for the mission.  He recruited two repatriated Filipino survivors of the Concepción wreck who had spent decades among the islanders  – Francisco Mendoza and Estevan Diaz, who taught San Vitores what they knew of the islanders’ language and customs. They joined his mission and Mendoza became its principal interpreter.  A few Concepción beachcombers also joined the mission as translators, cultural informants and assistants.

San Vitores, whose fifty-member mission reached the Marianas on 15 June 1668 on the Acapulco ship San Diego, chose Guam because it was the largest, most populated island in the archipelago and offered anchorages on its western coast.  His choice of Hagåtña may have been based on its reputed high status and because its paramount chief, Kepuha, had a history of friendship with the Spanish.  Pedro Jiménez, the Concepción beachcomber who had become a favorite of several chiefs on Guam, came aboard the galleon the day after it arrived and reportedly assured the Jesuits that their request to establish a mission would be favorably received.

To officially broach the proposal, San Vitores selected an unarmed contingent of two priests, the interpreter Mendoza and a Spanish galleon officer.  Kepuha received them in a large canoe-house near the shore, where the priests “kissed” (nginge’) the chief’s hand and passed their hands over his chest, signs of customary respect, and presented gifts “from the King of Manila” who wished to be Kepuha’s friend. The interpreter told the chief the missionaries wanted to teach them the way to heaven.

The presence of the 300-ton San Diego, anchored off their village, may have seemed favorable to Hagåtña’s leaders.  Hundreds of villagers were trading with the ship’s crew and passengers during the visit.  Missionaries and galleon officers, including the captain, had gifted barrel hoops, knives and hatchets as well as highly valued sea turtle shell to chiefs and other members of the matao during the initial meetings.  If the chiefs accepted the mission, other Spanish ships might regularly make port at Hagåtña to resupply the group, deliver and repatriate clerics, provide rewards for the safe treatment of the priests, and barter with their kin groups and associated lineages and villages.  If the annual trade were conducted in their territory, the Hagåtña chiefs would effectively control the archipelago’s access to the iron trade.  Moreover, with their trade goods and superior weapons, the Spanish would make powerful friends and allies in Hagåtña’s rivalries with other villages and districts.

Conversely, if the chiefs declined to host the mission, a rival village, district or island might seize the opportunity and gain the advantage.  As historian Francis X. Hezel has noted, “The Spanish, with the prestige that their muskets and persons conferred, were a potentially lucrative possession, a force that invited manipulation by Chamorro political factions for their own political ends.”

Many chiefs reportedly regarded San Vitores’ request as a positive overture, avidly requesting priests for their villages, possibly interpreting their arrival within the tradition of caring-for-and-returning well-behaved castaways and clerics.  Because the Jesuits were closely associated with the Acapulco ships and galleon iron trade, other chiefs may have viewed the mission as a trading colony, envisioning Hagåtña, which had grown in prestige during the 17th century, as a commercial hub for the islands.  Though the exact calculus is unknown, Kepuha granted the missionaries permission to reside in Hagåtña under his protection.

Warm welcome turns into sporadic resistance

Despite the auspicious welcome and an initial flood of infant baptisms and adult conversions, sporadic resistance soon developed.  Viewing themselves as civil administrators as well as religious proselytizers, the missionaries’ social and political agenda grew intrusive, attacking customs and institutions and intervening in village disputes and wars. Conversions among several kin-groups was countered by violent confrontations with others and the deaths of laymen, priests and islanders.

After San Vitores’ was killed by a matao chief on Guam in 1672, the Jesuit mission evolved from a non-violent conversion and consolidation effort, which had used its few weapons for self-defense, into a militant colonizing agency backed by a governor and garrison of troops who used arrests, executions and village destruction to force conversion and compliance.

By the 1680s, the islanders’ give-and-take relationship with the Spanish had become predominantly a process of forced acculturation.  Islanders were gradually resettled in several barrio-villages, where Spanish conquest culture reshaped their way of life and epidemics of introduced diseases decimated the population, reducing it from about 40,000 in 1668 to fewer than 4,000 by 1704.

Throughout this struggle, however, a significant number of converts from both high and low status groups voluntarily adopted Christianity, staunchly supported the missionaries, played pivotal roles in saving the mission from annihilation and laid the foundation for a transformed society.  The ostensible benefits of conversion and Spanish rule, as asserted by missionaries, colonial officials and some converts, have weighed heavily in traditional interpretations of the Marianas’ European contact period.

The process of accommodation, it is argued, melded introduced ideas and practices with indigenous beliefs and customs, “civilizing” the islanders; transformed a highly stratified social structure into a less rigidly hierarchical society; shielded converts from brutal colonial soldiers and rapacious governors; and brought them into the international community as members of Spain’s regional empire and the global communion of the Roman Catholic Church.

In polar opposition, anti-Spanish and anti-colonial interpretations emphasize the religious oppression, military conquest and subjugation, which led to the loss of indigenous rights and generated radical social disruption that contributed to drastic demographic decline.

Earlier encounters shaped by trade, not conquest

Both of these paradigms seek to encompass the extensive period of pre-mission cultural interaction.  But the Spanish colonization of the Marianas was not implicit in the first 150 years of European contact. Rather than a violence-dominated prelude to conquest or an era of nascent interest in Christianity, the early period of encounter was shaped by the iron trade – a time of dynamic cultural interaction during which the matao eagerly appropriated this new resource and integrated its products into indigenous production and exchange systems.  The islanders vigorously defended their territorial control and prerogatives during this interaction. This was exemplified by their dealings with aggressive or violent officers and crew (such as the situation of the Santa Margarita), resisting armed incursions and punishing the threatening or violent behavior of ship visitors and castaways.

The matao functioned as a creative elite, receptive to external influences via trade interaction, and as cultural innovators, eager to adopt and integrate new imported technology and willing to adjust attitudes and behavior to accomplish that goal.  Significantly, this process of islander-led adaptation did not require subordinating indigenous rights and customs to European demands and impositions.

The unforeseen consequences of the iron trade, however, were entanglements — engendered by the matao’s dependence on the galleon trade for iron and complicated by indigenous sociopolitical dynamics — that provided preconditions for the missionization of the Marianas.  The belated recognition by many kin-group leaders that the mission’s goals were hostile to their interests is understandable in light of their enculturated experience with the iron trade and the caring for-and-return of castaways tradition that had accommodated previous religious sojourners and galleon castaways.

The Jesuits’ diplomatic entrance and proselytizing strategy further masked the missionaries’ ultimate goals. Yet, even after the colonial challenge became apparent, the islanders’ responses were varied, fragmented and often ambivalent.  Armed confrontations responded to Spanish actions or incidents affecting a specific kin-group or village, rather than the overall destabilizing presence of a colonizing agency.

There was no island-wide unified armed resistance, even on Guam, the colonizers’ base of operations. The islanders’ decentralized politics, with its inter-village and inter-island rivalry and shifting networks of kin, village and district alliances, some of which sought to exploit the Spanish presence for advantage, virtually precluded a centralized, coordinated response.

However, kin-groups that responded with an “accommodation by appropriation” strategy, that is, conversion, adaptation and co-optation, survived the conquest period and their descendants prevailed over the centuries.  Their adoption of Hispanic, Filipino and American cultural elements, while maintaining a distinct language, ethnic identity and adaptive culture, is reflected today in the islands indigenous Chamorro people.

Part I: Contact and Commerce
Part 2: Galleon Trading and Repatriation

By Frank Quimby

For further reading

Campbell, I.C. ‘The culture of culture contact: refractions from Polynesia’, Journal of World History, 14:1, 2003.

Cunningham, Lawrence J. Ancient Chamorro Society. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1992.

Diaz, Vincent M.  Repositioning the Missionary: rewriting the histories of colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam (Honolulu 2010); and ‘Simply Chamorro: telling tales of demise and survival in Guam’, Contemporary Pacific, 6:1, 1994.

Driver, Marjorie G.  ‘Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora and his account of the Mariana Islands’, Journal of Pacific History, 18 (1983). And Driver, Marjorie G. ‘Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora: hitherto unpublished accounts of his residence in the Mariana Islands’, Journal of Pacific History, 23, 1988.

Driver, Marjorie G. ‘The account of a discalced friar’s stay in the Islands of the Ladrones’, Guam Recorder, 7 (1977), 17–21. And Driver, Marjorie G. ‘Cross, sword and silver: the nascent Spanish colony in the Mariana Islands,’ Pacific Studies, 2:3, 1988.

Garcia, Francisco SJ. The Life and Martyrdom of Diego Luis de San Vitores, SJ, tr. Margaret M. Higgins, Felicia Plaza, MMB, and Juan M.H. Ledesma, SJ, ed. James A. McDonough, SJ, Guam 2004.

Hezel, Francis X. ‘From conversion to conquest: the early Spanish mission in the Marianas’, Journal of Pacific History, 17 (1982). And Hezel, Francis X. and Marjorie C. Driver, ‘From conquest to colonisation: Spain in the Mariana Islands 1690–1740’, Journal of Pacific History, 23, 1988.

Lévesque, Rodrigue. History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents. Vols. 1-5. Gatineau, Québec: Lévesque Publications, 1992-1995.

Quimby, Frank. “The Hierro Commerce: Culture Contact, Appropriation and Colonial Entanglement in the Marianas, 1521-1668.”  The Journal of Pacific History Vol. 46, No. 1, June, 2011.

Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge 1991.

Images

Spanish begin visiting the Marianas sporadically

Between 1565 and 1665, Guam’s southwest coast received sporadic visits from Spanish vessels, including the first wreck of a trade galleon (San Pablo, 1568), as well as the first encounters with Dutch and English mariners.  However, a more significant exchange venue was established in the 30-mile wide Rota Channel to trade with the Spanish ships crossing regularly from New Spain (Mexico) to the Philippines.

Trading on the southwest coast replicated the pattern set during Miguel Lopez de Legazpi’s visit but this anchorage did not meet the early requirements of Spain’s silver ships from Acapulco. The navigation route of the Spanish trade galleons was prescribed and westbound vessels were directed to avoid the coral-rimmed coasts of the Marianas, probably as a result of the San Pablo disaster. The 30-mile wide Rota Channel became the major arena of iron trade interaction during the 1570s.

Islanders learned to expect visitors around June

The Acapulco ships usually hove-to (slacken sails to slow movement) and drifted through the channel and several miles off Guam’s northwest coast.  Islanders anticipated the galleon’s arrival, which usually occurred in June, as southwest monsoon winds began blowing across the Philippine Sea, signaling the annual transition to the islands’ rainy season.  Some islanders prepared goods in advance and launched their canoes as soon as the ships came into view.  They sailed out en masse, larger craft carrying up to a dozen islanders, including women.

Accounts note 150, 200 or 300 canoes, carrying as many as 1,000 islanders, sailing ten to fifteen miles offshore to meet the galleons, virtually covering the sea around these towering, multi-decked vessels, some of which were among the largest ships in the world at that time.  Crewmen and passengers would line the deck rails or lean out of portholes and stern windows, ready to barter or just observe the encounter.  Some islanders were cautious, remaining out of harm’s way, shouting “arrepeque! arrepeque!” (Don’t shoot!) and coming closer only when assured of peaceful exchange.

Others came directly alongside or anchored their canoes to cables that some captains ran off the stern to accommodate traders.  Occasionally, islanders called out a greeting, which different observers transcribed in several ways, such as “Chamarri, Her, Her,” or “Chamori, Hierro, Hierro” or “Charume, heoreque!”

These islanders reportedly rubbed the palm of their hand along the side of their heart or repeatedly drew their hand across their chests, while repeating these words. They were likely identifying themselves as members of the ruling elite, using customary body language and the indigenous term for their elevated status (chamorri); while indicating they wanted to trade for iron, using the Spanish hierro.

Most islanders did not board the galleons, using ropes and cords to exchange goods. Occasionally, some islanders boarded the galleons when repatriating clerical sojourners or castaways, recognizing former castaways or tempted by a prospect of gaining more iron or acquiring a sword or arquebus.  Galleon officers were generally wary of allowing islanders on board because of incidents in which some had snatched weapons from unsuspecting crewmen.  The trade went on day and night in all weather conditions, causing some islanders to become hoarse, with sore throats and colds and exhausted from exposure and physical exertion.

Food, mats, rope, boxes offered for trade

In addition to food staples, islanders also offered finely-woven mats and baskets, coils of coir sennit, dove-like birds in wooden cages and small turtle-shell boxes.  Some accounts mention “hens” or “fowls” which could have been edible land or seabirds, such as those islanders harvested from the Uracas rookery.  A few accounts, circa 1630s, mention “chickens” which could have been the offspring of Gallus gallus brought to the islands by trade or shipwrecks.  After the loss of the Santa Margarita (Rota, 1601) and Concepción (Saipan, 1638), some islanders offered gold neck chains and ivory carvings salvaged from the wrecks, leading observers to marvel that the islanders valued iron more than gold.

The matao traded for nails, knives, hatchets, scissors, and cask hoop iron.  Islanders also recovered a spectrum of these goods, including cutlasses and machetes, as salvage from the Santa Margarita and Concepción wrecks.  The Spanish occasionally traded machetes and cutlasses but did not offer swords, though some accounts note the islanders’ desire to acquire these.  Arquebuses (early guns) were not traded.

Trade tactics emerged

Sometimes islanders would take the iron of several European traders but only compensate a few. Occasionally, food baskets were filled with sand and rocks and the coconut oil would be a thin layer floating on seawater, as had occurred in Legazpi’s visit.

Some crewmen and passengers were so angered by these practices that bartering sessions occasionally ended when irate traders fired arquebuses at the islanders who returned fire with sling stones or dived into the water for protection.  Other visitors, however, saw the tricks as a tactic to win favorable terms of trade.  A Legazpi chronicler noted:

“Every day that the fleet was anchored there, there were [canoes] alongside to sell, but with such an art that each day they were selling dearer, doubling the prices, and on top of that, they were playing very pretty and even sad jokes with what they were selling.”

Visitors who experienced a difficult crossing were at a disadvantage when they arrived at the Marianas, as a Legazpi officer noted:

“All of this was tolerated on account of the necessity that the fleet had of all the things they brought ….”

Despite these tactics, some Europeans felt they were getting a bargain.  A 1632 trader who had bartered a section of barrel hoop for:

“a couple of chickens” observed, “[T]hey [were] thinking that they were fooling us, [but] they were those who were being fooled, given the large quantity they would give in exchange for a few trifles of iron.”

The exchange tactics that angered galleon traders were not characteristic of the islanders’ normal social behavior, however.  Accounts of clerics and ships’ officers who lived among them testify that the matao were generous in gifting, customary exchanges and sharing community resources.  Theft was considered reprehensible conduct and socially censured.  But the transactional ethos underlying indigenous exchange protocols, including customary obligations and social indebtedness, was not necessarily operative when islanders were dealing with transient foreigners.

Because they were interacting beyond their spheres of prescribed behavior for kin-group, fellow villagers and neighboring islanders, some island traders sought to maximize benefit at the expense of strangers by using haggling, whatever the market will bear, caveat emptor and seizure by stealth.  The absence of social censure governing this new category of galleon exchanges led to behaviors that were the product of this new sphere of contact with visitors. They were not a typical indigenous exchange practice.

Care given to stranded mariners and clergy

The care and return of clerical sojourners and shipwreck survivors provided the islanders an additional means of acquiring iron, which led to more intensive cross-cultural interaction as well as generated positive images of the matao among Spanish officials.  Beginning with the beachcomber Gonzalo de Vigo, a cabin boy from Ferdinand Magellan‘s Trinidad, and then the wreck of the San Pablo in 1568, the islanders had learned that helping stranded Spanish mariners could reap rewards of iron and other goods from grateful Spanish castaways and the ships repatriating them.

These developments are reflected in the accounts of clerical sojourners Fray Antonio de los Ángeles and Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora.  The former arrived on the Acapulco ship Santo Thomas in 1596 and jumped into an islander’s canoe during a trading session.  Joined by a Flemish soldier and Spanish sailor, de los Ángeles stayed for several months with a matao family in northern Guam.  The cleric reported that they were well treated, noting that because the islanders placed such a high value on iron:

“the natives are eager to welcome the Spaniards who pass that way.  Knowing that each year they will make port, they will prepare presents of vegetables because they want very much to trade and although they have no dealings with them, they hold a great affection for them.”

He described the islanders as loving and industrious people who showed great respect to their elders.  Though they were called ladrones (Spanish for “thieves”), he noted, “they consider it evil to steal.”  Despite their easygoing nature and hospitality, de los Ángeles “had not found a single fruit of his desire” [converts] during his sojourn.  His treatment, however, favorably impressed Spanish officials, prompting the governor of the Philippines to report that the cleric’s island hosts were “tractable and kindly people [who] regaled him and his companion[s] and showed them much respect.”

Hosting clerics or shipwreck survivors had a prestige value for the matao, Pobre noted when describing how Santa Margarita castaways were treated.  High status households on Rota “consider it a great honor to have a Spaniard in their home; also because they can expect to receive a substantial ransom in iron for one of them,” the cleric wrote.  “They hold Spaniards who are …. well behaved in high regard.” Santa Margarita survivors confirmed Pobre’s view, reporting that “[t]he Indians of that island make a fuss over and entertain the Spaniards …without having them do work.”

There were an estimated forty to fifty survivors of the Santa Margarita and thirty to forty from the Concepción, who were distributed among several villages to high-ranking families, sharing the burden of housing, food and care as well as return of the castaway rewards among the leading kin-groups.  Pobre’s host was a village leader named Sunama, from Rota’s northwestern coast, who was trading with the 1602 galleon when the cleric enticed him near with the gift of a large iron knife. Another cleric, Fray Pedro de Talavera, joined them in Sunama’s canoe. The chief and his wife, Sosanbra, regarded the clerics as sons, showed concern for their welfare and treated them kindly.

Though about twenty-five Santa Margarita castaways were repatriated by the galleon that brought Pobre, more than twenty remained, including eighteen slaves who refused an offer to be returned to the Philippines, choosing to remain in the islands. When the galleon Jesus Maria arrived off Rota in October 1602, islanders alerted Pobre and Sunama transported the cleric to the vessel, where the entourage was warmly received and amply rewarded.

Sunama reportedly received knives, scissors, and several iron hoops as well as a monkey. Galleon officials reported the return of the castaways was accompanied by “joy, great friendship and goodwill” and the parting with “weeping and great sorrow”.  Two other religious men and a Spanish soldier remained in the islands along with other Santa Margarita castaways.  The clerics and soldier were safely repatriated several months later on the next Acapulco ship.

Some islanders who had hosted castaways looked for them during subsequent trading sessions with the galleons, perhaps reflecting an expectation of social indebtedness from those they had helped.  Nearly a decade after the Santa Margarita wreck, for example, a “robust youth” from Rota came to look for a man who had lived with his family. “As soon as the [islander] saw him, he boarded our vessel fearlessly,” an officer reported. “And still with no signs of fear he went among our men and threw himself into the arms of the man whom he knew, and who had eaten his bread and lived in his house.”  The crewman “knew something of their language and customs because of his stay among them” and helped to make sure the youth was “loaded down with scissors, knives and iron.”

Not all castaways warranted generous treatment, however.  About a dozen Santa Margarita officers and crewmen were killed, Pobre was told, because “their savage threats had led [the islanders] to believe they had come to seize their land.”  The cleric also heard that four other wreck survivors living on Guam were killed because they had repeatedly struck the children of matao and done other terrible things.  In addition, due to their dire physical condition, several severely debilitated passengers on the ill-fated vessel were dragged ashore and killed when the wreck was abandoned.

Islanders on Saipan reportedly killed several officers and crewmen from the Concepción, but a number of the castaways made their way to other islands where they were well-treated and distributed among families.  Six “persons of account” among these survivors sought immediate repatriation, leading some chamorri to make special efforts to return them to Manila.

Taga, a principal chief (maga’ låhi) of Tinian, reportedly assisted a number of these castaways, protecting them and arranging for their transport to Guam, where Kepuha, the maga’ låhi of Hagåtña, arranged for the repatriation passage of six “persons of account” in two ocean-going canoes manned by islanders.  The group crossed the Philippine Sea in about two weeks, reaching Samar on 24 July 1639.

The islanders told officials “that the Spanish are good men, and leave us iron when they pass there.”  Manila authorities reported that:

“[t]he Indians of Uan [Guam] sent those Spaniards so that they could give the news and send a boat for the other twenty-two Spaniards who are alive there, with some Indians and negroes, and carry them iron.”

Another special repatriation effort in 1640 returned additional Concepción survivors, including the ship’s pilot Esteban Ramos, in a modified island canoe that made the crossing in 18 days.  Ramos later became a galleon captain and made an official declaration in 1665, supporting a mission for the Marianas.  He described the islanders as “a docile and affable people” and asserted the mission could be carried out for very little cost.  “No other escort will be needed nor garrison, for these people are most peaceful and of good disposition.”

Other Concepción castaways were repatriated to passing ships over the next two decades, including four Tagalog-speaking men as late as 1664.  Several other castaways chose to remain in the islands.  A few of these beachcombers became cultural informants and interpreters for the 1668 Jesuit mission, including Pedro Jiménez and Francisco Maunahan, from the Philippines; and Lorenzo de Morales, a native of India’s Malabar Coast.

Part I: Contact and Commerce
Part 3: Appropriation and Entanglement

By Frank Quimby

For further reading

Campbell, I.C. ‘The culture of culture contact: refractions from Polynesia’, Journal of World History, 14:1, 2003.

Cunningham, Lawrence J. Ancient Chamorro Society. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1992.

Diaz, Vincent M.  Repositioning the Missionary: rewriting the histories of colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam (Honolulu 2010); and ‘Simply Chamorro: telling tales of demise and survival in Guam’, Contemporary Pacific, 6:1, 1994.

Driver, Marjorie G.  ‘Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora and his account of the Mariana Islands’, Journal of Pacific History, 18 (1983). And Driver, Marjorie G. ‘Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora: hitherto unpublished accounts of his residence in the Mariana Islands’, Journal of Pacific History, 23, 1988.

Driver, Marjorie G. ‘The account of a discalced friar’s stay in the Islands of the Ladrones’, Guam Recorder, 7 (1977), 17–21. And Driver, Marjorie G. ‘Cross, sword and silver: the nascent Spanish colony in the Mariana Islands,’ Pacific Studies, 2:3, 1988.

Garcia, Francisco SJ. The Life and Martyrdom of Diego Luis de San Vitores, SJ, tr. Margaret M. Higgins, Felicia Plaza, MMB, and Juan M.H. Ledesma, SJ, ed. James A. McDonough, SJ, Guam 2004.

Hezel, Francis X. ‘From conversion to conquest: the early Spanish mission in the Marianas’, Journal of Pacific History, 17 (1982). And Hezel, Francis X. and Marjorie C. Driver, ‘From conquest to colonisation: Spain in the Mariana Islands 1690–1740’, Journal of Pacific History, 23, 1988.

Lévesque, Rodrigue. History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents. Vols. 1-5. Gatineau, Québec: Lévesque Publications, 1992-1995.

Quimby, Frank. “The Hierro Commerce: Culture Contact, Appropriation and Colonial Entanglement in the Marianas, 1521-1668.”  The Journal of Pacific History Vol. 46, No. 1, June, 2011.

Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge 1991.

Images

Trade between Chamorros and Europeans

Members of the matao, the highest-ranking strata of Mariana Islands society in the 16th and 17th centuries, carried on the first sustained cultural interaction and commercial exchange between Pacific Islanders and Europeans.  From Ferdinand Magellan’s 1521 visit through the establishment of the 1668 Spanish Jesuit mission, these island traders, primarily from Guam and Rota, regularly bartered food staples and craftwork for iron goods with Spanish exploration and trade vessels, Dutch expeditions and English privateers.

Major maritime crossroads

The Mariana Islands was the major maritime crossroads of the Pacific Ocean during this period.  In 1565 the Spanish Galleon Trade Route between Manila, Philippines and Acapulco, Mexico, was established.  More than 100 foreign ships stopped at the islands for food and water, to refit their storm damaged and weather-worn vessels and rest their weary and ailing crews after grueling months-long transits of the world’s largest ocean. Three Spanish trade galleons, crammed with the products of East Asia, were wrecked in the islands, stranding scores of castaways for extended stays.  The first of these occurred in 1568 on the southwest coast of Guam; another in 1601 on the northwest coast of Rota; and the third in 1638, on the southwest coast of Saipan.

A number of crewmen and Spanish black slaves from these wrecks chose to remain in the Marianas, forming the Pacific’s first beachcomber community.  In addition, a few priests and friars voluntarily sojourned in the islands for several months at a time in 1596 and 1602, attempting to win converts to Christianity.

Working relationship developed

Though violence accompanied many of the earliest contacts between Chamorros and Europeans, leading to the injury, abduction and death of many islanders, efforts by both the matao and the Spanish to avoid these clashes (while gaining the material benefits of exchange) helped to structure a working relationship in spite of their cultural differences.

Over several generations, the interactions created by these trade encounters allowed for the emergence of what Pacific historian Ian Campbell has called,“a culture of culture contact,” which occurs spontaneously when two distinct peoples with no prior norms of behavior or conduct find themselves having to interact with each other.  The result is a kind of “medial culture” within which the two peoples conduct themselves to the benefit of both groups.

In the case of the Marianas, the interaction between the matao and the Spanish generated positive relationships for people previously unknown to each other.  Furthermore, a corresponding group of values and attitudes, along with behavioral and social adaptations, enabled the islands’ ruling lineages and Spanish visitors to manage the iron exchange and other aspects of their relationship, including the return of castaways and clerics and the reception of the 1668 Jesuit Mission.

In key ways the matao encounter with Europeans can be viewed as a continuation of adaptive and dynamic traditions, rather than a rupture with the past.  After all, the people of the Marianas had maintained trade relations with each other as well as with other people of Micronesia over the course of many generations.

Occupied by 2000 BC, probably from Island Southeast Asia, the Marianas were settled by Austronesian cultural groups, whose complex of maritime, horticultural and ceramic technologies was gradually modified in response to environmental and demographic challenges as well as contact with Island Southeast Asian and Oceanic societies.

The island’s extended matrilineal kin-groups controlled the land, offshore areas and other natural resources of largely autonomous villages; ruling lineages were occasionally allied in multi-village district confederations. Villages and districts competed for resources and status, using an array of social, economic and political strategies and tactics.  Inter-village disputes often rose to the level of large-scale but short-lived conflict.

Matao controlled trade

Because they also were mariners and craftsmen (as well as kin-group leaders and warriors), the matao controlled intra-archipelago transport, trade and communication; reportedly traded with Caroline Islanders; and likely acquired iron and other goods from sporadic visits of Southeast Asian vessels.

The interaction with Magellan’s (March 6-9, 1521) expedition reflected the matao’s passion for trade. Several European eyewitness accounts recalled extensive peaceful exchange despite the violence initiated by Magellan’s men, noting that throughout the encounter scores of islanders came to the ships in their outrigger canoes.  They brought fish, coconuts, plantains and yams as barter and gifts for the starving, scurvy-ridden crews.

Though a melee erupted when some islanders boarded the vessels and began taking items (from unknown voyagers who had entered offshore areas controlled by matao), islanders continued to bring food staples to the ships during the fighting.  When Magellan saw that the number of canoes bringing food was increasing, he ordered his men to stop firing.  An officer on the Trinidad, one of Magellan’s vessels, noted that:

“consequently, the hostile natives also stopped, so that eventually all of them turned once more to selling us food as they had begun in the first place – coconuts and fish in abundance in exchange for a few glass beads from Spain.”

After Magellan’s onshore attack to recover the ship’s skiff, during which he reportedly killed seven men and looted two villages, burning fifty houses and several canoes, islanders in forty to fifty canoes from nearby villages continued to barter with the visitors. Other eyewitnesses recalled that islanders “came many times to us” to trade during the three-day visit. When Magellan sailed away, an estimated 100 canoes followed the vessels several miles out to sea and the islanders held up fish, offering trade.

When the Trinidad returned to the Marianas the following year, stopping twice during the vessel’s unsuccessful attempt to find an eastward route across the North Pacific to the Americas, trading occurred in both brief encounters in the northernmost islands.  The vessel also deposited the Pacific’s first European beachcomber, Gonzalo Alvarez de Vigo, who helped to launch the iron trade when his reports noted that the islanders were both familiar with iron and avidly desired to acquire as much as they could.

The 1526 ship that repatriated Vigo traded off Guam’s southwest coast for six days, as hundreds of villagers brought drinking water in gourds as well as fish, yams, coconuts, salt, rice, plantains and other fruit.  “They did not wish anything other than iron, nails or things with metal tips in exchange for them,” reported Andres de Urdaneta, a Vittoria officer.  Some of the islanders who boarded the vessel also grabbed machetes, knives and daggers from crewmen’s waistbands and fled to their canoes. The captain, whose decrepit ship was leaking badly, abducted eleven island men to work the pumps and sailed for Mindanao.

Strategies developed to reduce danger

Informed by these early encounters, matao traders’ interaction with the pivotal 1565 expedition of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi reflected strategies aimed at structuring interaction to reduce the inherent dangers of these intense cross-cultural encounters while gaining the material advantages.

For example, as many as 400 canoes carrying 1,200 islanders from southwest coastal villages came out on the first day to barter fish, coconuts, gourds of fresh water, yams, plantains and other fruit, but they refused to board the galleons and resisted subsequent Spanish onshore incursions. They were seeking to control the foreign visitors, to keep them as much as possible offshore and at arm’s length, while trading for iron in a more secure venue.

During the visit which lasted from 21 January to 3 February 1565, the Spanish attempted a peaceful approach by offering gifts, unusually strict officer and crew discipline, an experienced intermediary (Urdaneta) and copious amounts of iron goods to secure needed supplies.  Urdaneta was chief navigator and senior Franciscan on the voyage that launched Spain’s Pacific galleon commerce by establishing a Philippine colony and charting a return route to New Spain.  He also was designated “Protector of the Indians” and the expedition made a concerted but conflicted effort to avoid provoking violence.

Ropes and cords had to be used to lower and raise trade items because throughout the encounter, “not one of them [the islanders] would come on board or show us any trust,” an officer noted.  Islanders asked specifically for iron through signs, gestures and the Spanish word hierro and traded everything they had brought when iron was offered.  When nails were shown, the islanders bartered only for those.

“So great was their desire to obtain nails, in fact, that they gave every article they had for them,” one officer wrote, “clearly giving us to understand that they wanted them for the construction of canoes.”

Legazpi claims islands for Spain

Legazpi’s onshore actions, however, precipitated conflict.  He claimed the islands for Spain, recognizing Guam’s value as a navigational checkpoint and provisioning stage on the three-month, trade-wind crossing from New Spain to the Philippines.  He also sent armed parties ashore for water and firewood and conducted coastal surveys and inland searches for gold, silver and spices.

These incursions usually met spirited resistance.  In one of the earliest, islanders tried to repulse a watering party supported by the expedition’s vessels, ringing the cove and attacking the ships’ crews and shore party with sling stones and lances.  Survey parties met similar confrontations, one officer noting, “[a]t each village the frigate came to, islanders met them with the slings, hurling a shower of stones at us to prevent our landing.”

Despite this resistance, soldiers forced their way ashore at a few villages, where they skirmished with islanders who “attacked with such spirit” before arquebus (an early portable gun) fire “forced them to retreat in disorder.” More than 500 islanders reportedly were dispersed in these encounters and “a few of them lost their lives.”  In a culminating episode, after a Spanish watering party had been ashore, a young crewman who missed the return boat was killed by islanders who mutilated his body.  Legazpi retaliated with 150 soldiers who captured and killed several island men, hung their bodies from trees and burned nearby villages.

The Spanish noted the islanders traded during periods of conflict as well as peace, a practice also reported during Magellan’s visit.  In one instance, while some islanders were fighting onshore with Legazpi’s men, others who were trading at the Spanish ships “after leaving aboard their canoes would go ashore to fight with our men, to be replaced in the canoes by those who had been fighting who then came alongside to trade.  At all times, they kept their weapons in their hands.”

Elements of the strategies displayed during the Legazpi expedition became key practices between islanders and visitors in the coming years.

Part 2: Galleon Trading and Repatriation
Part 3: Appropriation and Entanglement

By Frank Quimby

For further reading

Campbell, I.C. ‘The culture of culture contact: refractions from Polynesia’, Journal of World History, 14:1, 2003.

Cunningham, Lawrence J. Ancient Chamorro Society. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1992.

Diaz, Vincent M.  Repositioning the Missionary: rewriting the histories of colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam (Honolulu 2010); and ‘Simply Chamorro: telling tales of demise and survival in Guam’, Contemporary Pacific, 6:1, 1994.

Driver, Marjorie G.  ‘Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora and his account of the Mariana Islands’, Journal of Pacific History, 18 (1983). And Driver, Marjorie G. ‘Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora: hitherto unpublished accounts of his residence in the Mariana Islands’, Journal of Pacific History, 23, 1988.

Driver, Marjorie G. ‘The account of a discalced friar’s stay in the Islands of the Ladrones’, Guam Recorder, 7 (1977), 17–21. And Driver, Marjorie G. ‘Cross, sword and silver: the nascent Spanish colony in the Mariana Islands,’ Pacific Studies, 2:3, 1988.

Garcia, Francisco SJ. The Life and Martyrdom of Diego Luis de San Vitores, SJ, tr. Margaret M. Higgins, Felicia Plaza, MMB, and Juan M.H. Ledesma, SJ, ed. James A. McDonough, SJ, Guam 2004.

Hezel, Francis X. ‘From conversion to conquest: the early Spanish mission in the Marianas’, Journal of Pacific History, 17 (1982). And Hezel, Francis X. and Marjorie C. Driver, ‘From conquest to colonisation: Spain in the Mariana Islands 1690–1740’, Journal of Pacific History, 23, 1988.

Lévesque, Rodrigue. History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents. Vols. 1-5. Gatineau, Québec: Lévesque Publications, 1992-1995.

Quimby, Frank. “The Hierro Commerce: Culture Contact, Appropriation and Colonial Entanglement in the Marianas, 1521-1668.”  The Journal of Pacific History Vol. 46, No. 1, June, 2011.

Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge 1991.