Another important tradition to Guamanians and other Pacific Islanders was canoe building, or carving. For the ancient Chamorros, navigation of rough waters was a spiritual undertaking as much as it initially served other purposes in hunting, fishing and travel. Modern day Pacific Islanders again embrace the tradition as another part of restoring their cultural history.
Inafa'maolek, or interdependence, was at the root of Chamorro culture, and was passed on even to modern generations who left the island.
Guamanians working to help defend America from the Japanese during World War II demonstrated this spirit in their concern for not only their own welfare, but that of the United States.
The following proverb sums up these various customs: "I erensia, lina'la', espiriitu-ta,"— "Our heritage gives life to our spirit. Native island delicacies constituted the original simple diet of the Chamorros.
The island provided fresh fish, escabeche, shrimp patties, red rice, coconut, ahu, bananas, bonelos, and other tropical fruits. A hot sauce native to Guam, finadene, remained a favorite spice alongside fish.
The sauce is made with soy sauce, lemon juice or vinegar, hot peppers, and onions. As Asians settled on the island, Chinese and Japanese food combined with other ethnic cuisine provided a variety of foods. Guamanian celebrations throughout the island and the United States usually include fish, or the dish kelaguen, made from chopped broiled chicken, lemon juice, grated coconut, and hot peppers.
The Filipino noodle dish, pancit, along with barbecued ribs and chicken, have become popular among Guamanians during celebrations. Native costumes were typical of many other Pacific islands.
Natural fibers from the island were woven into short cloths for the men, and grass skirts and blouses for the women. In celebrations, Chamorro women also adorned their hair with flowers. The Spanish influence appears in the mestiza, a style of clothing village women still wear.
The music of the Guamanian culture is simple, rhythmic, and tells the stories and legends of the island's history. The Belembautuyan, made from a hollow gourd and strung with taut wire, is a stringed musical instrument native to Guam.
The nose flute, an instrument from ancient times, made a return at the end of the twentieth century. The Chamorros style of singing was born from their workday.
The Kantan started with one person giving a four-line chant, often a teasing verse to another person in the group of workers. That person would pick up the song, and continue in the same fashion. The songs could continue this way for hours. Other contemporary songs and dances also represented the many cultures that settled in Guam.
The folk dances of the Chamorros portrayed the legends about the ancient spirits, doomed lovers leaping to their death off Two Lovers' Point Puntan Dos Amantes or about Sirena, the beautiful young girl who became a mermaid. The official Song of Guam, written by Dr. Ramon Sablan in English and translated into Chamoru, speaks of Guamanians' faith and perseverance:.
Guamanians are U. On the island itself, due to the dominance of Roman Catholicism, the feast of saints and other Church holy days are observed. Each of the 19 villages has its own patron saint, and each holds a fiesta, or festival, in that saint's honor on the feast day.
The entire village celebrates with Mass, a procession, dancing, and food. The incidence of ALS among Guamanians is disproportionately high when compared to other cultural groups— enough so to have one strain of the disease called "Guamanian. According to Oliver Sacks in The Island of the Colorblind, even the Chamorros who had migrated to California showed the incidence of lytico-bodig, the native term for the disease that affects muscle control and is ultimately fatal.
Sacks noted that the researcher John Steele, a neurologist who had devoted his career to practicing throughout Micronesia during the s also noted that these Chamorros often did not contract the disease until 10 or 20 years after their migration. The non-Chamorros immigrants seemed to develop the disease 10 or 20 years after they moved to Guam.
Neither the discovery of the disease's origins or a cure for it had been occurred by the end of the twentieth century. Although many causes have been hypothesized regarding why the incidence is high among Chamorros, a conclusion has yet to be made. Pacific Islanders over age 65 show a higher incidence of cancer, hypertension, and tuberculosis; the study did separate the various cultures represented to indicate the validity of those figures specific to Guamanians. An explanation for the higher incidence of these diseases is that older Pacific Islanders—due to financial reasons and ancient customs and superstitions—are less likely to consult a physician at a time when these diseases might be controlled.
Chamoru, the ancient language of the Chamorros on Guam, and English are both official languages in Guam. Chamoru remains intact as younger generations continue to learn and speak it. The Guam Society of America is responsible for heightening awareness of the language in the United States. Chamorus' origins can be traced back 5, years and belongs to the western group of the Austronesian language family.
The languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Palau, are all included in this group. Since Spanish and American influences merged on the island, the Chamoru language has evolved to include many Spanish and English words. Besides Spanish and English, other immigrants to Guam brought their own languages, including Filipino, Japanese, and many other Asian and Pacific Islander tongues.
An important Chamoru expression is Hafa Adai, which is translated as "Welcome. Guamanians in the United States and on the island view family as the center of cultural life, and extend that to the community surrounding them. As expressed, the notion of interdependence among everyone in a community is vital to the cooperation that runs a society.
Chamorro culture is a matriarchy, meaning that the women are central to the culture's survival. In ancient times, men were traditionally warriors, leaving women to run the operation of daily life. In modern culture, especially in America, where education has offered the Guamanians greater opportunity to improve their economic status, women and men work together to support the family.
Due to the Catholicism practiced by most Guamanians, weddings, baptisms, and funerals are celebrated with solemn significance. The Chamorro customs have blended with the customs of other cultures settled there, and those of the mainland United States.
The respect of elders remains a time-honored practice observed among Guamanians. Some ancient customs linger into modern day culture, including those related to courtship, burial, and honoring dead ancestors.
Modern-day Guamanians are a blend of several different ethnic groups and cultures. Education is required among islanders between the ages of six and Guamanians living in the 50 states, have fostered a strong appreciation for education among the younger generations as a means to improve their economic status. An increasing number of Guamanians have entered the professions of law and medicine.
The University of Guam offers a four-year degree program. Many Guamanian Americans also enter colleges and universities from parochial Catholic schools with the intention of entering a profession, or the business sector. Guamanians have become a vital part of the Asian-American community. In January of , the group met at the University of Florida for their ninth annual conference. They include all Asians and Pacific Islanders. The ability of such a diverse group of cultures to find common bonds proved challenging, but rewarding, according to students who participated in the conference.
The purpose of the group is to present images different from the often negative stereotypes of Asian Americans, in addition to making people laugh at those aspects of the culture that are not stereotypical. The majority of Guamanians are Roman Catholic, a religion that represents approximately four-fifths of the population on the island, as well as that of Guamanians living in the 50 states.
Since the first Spanish missionaries settled the island in the seventeenth century, when the Chamorros converted at the encouragement and sometimes mandate of the Spanish, Catholicism continued to dominate.
As with other primitive cultures converted to Catholicism, the rituals of the Roman Catholics were often found suitable in the environment of their own ancient native superstitions and rituals. Some ancient customs were not abandoned, only enhanced by the new faith. It marked the first papal visit in the history of the island. The Pope concluded remarks upon his arrival with, " "Hu guiya todos hamyu," in Chamoru "I love all of you," in English and was warmly received by natives and other residents.
Congregationalists arrived on Guam in , and established their own mission, but were forced to abandon it in , due to the lack of financial support. The following year, Americans who were with the General Baptist Foreign Missionary Society moved into the abandoned Congregationalist mission. In , the Baptists built Guam's first modern Protestant church on a grander scale than the previous missions. A Baptist church built in in Inarajan was still in use in the mids.
The first congregation consisted entirely of military families, except for the family of a local woman of Dededo. The Seventh Day Adventists, who were well known for much of the twentieth century for their attention to health and well-being, also set up a clinic in Agana Heights.
The Adventists operate hospitals throughout United States. They are considered at the front of treating various eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Half of the economy on the island of Guam emerged from American military establishment and related government services.
A majority of Guamanians have been employed by the U. The tourism industry is the second largest employer on the island. Other industries include agriculture mostly for local consumption , commercial poultry farming, and small assembly plants for watches and machinery, brewery, and textiles.
Thirteen percent of Asian and Pacific Islander women over 65 live in poverty, in contrast to 10 percent of white American women over At the end of the twentieth century, the issues of politics and government were complicated, both for those Guamanians living on the island, and for those living in the mainland, who felt loyalty to their native land. The Guam Commonwealth Act was first introduced in to Congress in , following two plebiscites by the people of Guam.
A plebiscite refers to an expression of the people's will by a direct ballot, usually, as in this case, a vote that calls for independent statehood, or affiliation with another nation. Underwood: "The core, American democratic creed is that the only legitimate form of government is by consent of the governed.
How do you deal with the fact the people on Guam are not participants in the legislative process? The representative they elect to Congress can vote only in committees. Underwood published the document, along with an explanation, on his official website. By early , commonwealth status had not yet been determined.
Opposition from President Clinton, and other non-Chamoro Guam residents to the particular point of Chamoro self-determination of the island remained an obstacle. Guamanians are well represented in the military as enlisted men, officers, and support personnel. The military is the primary employer of residents on Guam. Among those Guamanian Americans living in the Washington, D. Cecilia, an indigenous poet from Guam, captures the Chamoru history, culture, and spirit in her compilation Signs of Being—A Chamoru Spiritual Journey.
Guamanians can learn about their history and culture, and keep in touch with current topics through websites that focus on Guam and Chamoros. Some of the many sites include:. A website devoted to Guam culture, history and tourism.
Website featuring stories and news of Guamanians off and on the island, providing the source of news for the Guam Society of America, along with photos, armed forces news, poems, and short stories. Representative Robert A. Underwood's website featuring news from the U. Congress, current news stories, and other links to various Guam sites.
Chartered in as a non-profit, C3 tax exempt, corporation in the District of Columbia. Beginning in , such trips were made regularly each year by Carolinians, assembling a fleet of their outrigger canoes at Lamorek in April, sailing to Guam in five days, trading for iron, and returning to the Carolines in May or June. Later, groups of Carolinians stayed and settled in the Marianas, remaining separate from the Chamorros and retaining their distinct language and customs. A small colony of Hawaiians was established on Saipan by American traders about , but was obliterated, it is said, by the Spaniards, in ?
Rota had already been re-occupied, a parish church having been established on that island by In the Filipinos on Guam numbered 1,; the Spanish group only Most of the population must have been listed as "natives," although no doubt only partially of Chamorro descent and largely mixed with Spanish, Mexican, and Filipino elements.
European visitors during the first part of the nineteenth-century included the Russian expedition sent out by the imperial Chancellor Prince Rmanzoff, [ 31 ] headed by Lt. Kotzebue and including the naturalist Chamisso, in the brig Rurik, which visited Guam in ; a French traveler, Louis de Freycinet, in ; and a French scientific group, including particularly botanists, headed by M.
Dumont d'Urville, in the Astrolabe in and again in intended for ?? The many activities of Governor Villalobos included encouragement of commerce, improvement of agriculture, segregation and supporting of lepers, vaccination of the natives, construction of bridges, and establishment of a pottery kiln.
In the field of agriculture, Villalobos tried to promote cultivation of coffee and to substitute! A violent hurricane laid waste the island the night of August 10, There was a severe earthquake on January 25, , which badly damaged churches and government buildings.
Small colonies of Carolinians had already been settled in the Marianas, on Saipan and Tinian as well as Guam. Guam was by this time used occasionally as a penal colony for the Philippines. In a group of about 50 Filipino convicts were scattered freely over Guam as farmers, by a trustful governor, Don Pablo Perez; they rose in conspiracy to seize the island, were rounded up and sent back to Manila. Captain Ewer describer briefly Umatac, Apra, and Agana.
In the parish on Rota was re-established, and a mission was established on Saipan by the Augustinians to attempt conversion of the Caroline Islanders colony there. About this time there were people on Rota, in one town of two streets intersecting at a little plaza. The hospital physician was an American.
A ship chandlery had been established at Guam by Messrs. There were four other foreigners resident, all Englishmen. No foreigner was allowed to live or stay in the Marianas without specific permission obtained from the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands at Manila.
Another very active governor of the Marianas was Don Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderon, , whose interests ranged from attempting unsuccessfully the introduction of sugar cane on Guam as a commercial crop to writing a general history and description of the islands. In ,the Governor was assassinated by a native soldier as the first step in an otherwise completely unsuccessful plot of a group of 40 soldiers to seize the island. Four of the conspirators were executed, shot on the beach at Agana, on April 10, In , a break-out attempt by Tagalog prisoners was suppressed; 80 of the Filipinos were killed in the prison.
The garrison of Guam at this period consisted of one artillery company of 60 officers and men. At the sudden end of the Spanish period in , the total "native" population had risen to about 9, on Guam, and slightly over 1, on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota; there was one small colony of Carolinians on Guam, in Tumoning in ; pressed by the new American administration to wear clothes, they moved up to Saipan.
On June , , to the considerable surprise of the Spanish governor, Guam was occupied by the United States Navy; the treaty of December 10, , transferred Guam as well as the Philippines to the United States. The rest of the Marianas and the Carolines including Yap and Palau were promptly purchased from Spain by expanding Imperial Germany, which had already occupied the Marshall Islands in At this time, in , the Augustinian friars were succeeded by Capuchin fathers; Guam still is a "missionary diocese" or vicariate, equivalent of a missionary province in old New Spain, administered by a titular bishop who is actually a Vicar Apostolic at present the Most Reverend Apollinaris Baumgartner, O.
For the next 43 years, Guam was controlled by the United States and administered by the Navy. The other Marianas, like the Carolines and Marshalls, were controlled by Germany from until the First World War, when Japan seized all of German Micronesia; after the war, in , these islands except Guam were assigned to Japan as a mandated territory under the League of Nations. In November , as the Japanese moved in, S. The first direct contact with enemy forces, consequently, when the United States entered the war on April 8, , was a formal surrender demand on the commanding officer of the Kormoran by the United States Navy commandant and Governor of Guam.
As the American lieutenant bearing the message left the vessel, she began to go down, scuttled rather than surrendered, in the honorable tradition of the German Navy; the crew was collected, now as prisoners of war instead of internees, except for a half-dozen who died and who were buried with full military honors in the United States Naval Cemetery on Guam. Guam was primarily a United States naval base until , when, as part of the then current disarmament program, the fortifications were dismantled and guns removed, the Marines withdrawn, and the base abandoned; but the island remained under naval government until after the next war.
In December , the coordinated explosion of rapid Japanese attack over the Pacific area in fast, hard blows against United States forward positions included, along with the strike at Pearl Harbor, the assault on Wake Island, and the destruction of United States air strength in the Philippines, the seizure on December 11 of virtually defenseless Guam, which remained under Japanese occupation for two and a half years. Actually, there is no absolute certainty as to which of the southern Marianas was Magellan's landfall, much less the exact spot.
Una era piu alta e piu grande delle altre due [we discovered to the northwest a small island, and two others to the southwest. One was higher and bigger than the other two. Magaglianes negli anni , ora pubblicato per la prima volta, tratto da un Codice MS. MS British Museum ". The all-too-brief statements do sound rather like going between Saipan, with its greater size and high mountain, and Tinian, and swinging around Tinian, perhaps to a point near the present harbor, Aguijan being recognized as a separate, third, island.
Amoretti nevertheless says Guam, in his notes in the first printed edition Milan, of Pigafetta pp. The most logical argument for Guam so far encountered is in F. Fuller, more detailed, analysis might settle the point; for the present it must be left as undetermined. Guam is specified for Salazar in secondary works, as in the case of Magellan; I have not seen primary sources on the Loayza expedition. James Burney, R. Burney, , says that "To the great surprise of the Spaniards there came to them from the island named Borta one of their own countrymen, Goncalo de Vigo, a native of Galicia, who acknowledged that he had sailed from Spain in the fleet of Magahaes and had deserted from the Trinidad when Espinosa stopped at one of the islands to the north [i.
A fascinating historical novel was based on the story of Gonzalo de Vigo but has the entire action go on around Talafofo Bay, and has him picked up by Saavedra a few years later : Death Sails with Magellan , Charles Ford, New York Random House , Ulithi and Kusaie, it is reported. Salazar is said to have discovered one of the Marshalls in , after the deaths of Loayza and Cano.
Palau and Yap, and perhaps others of the Carolines, were found by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in , and by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in , secondary sources state.
There is also "the grim story on the south coast of Ponape of iron men who came up out of the sea and fought with the men of Kiti until overwhelmed with slingstones and spear thrusts. This might, I suppose, derive from one or both of the two Ships of Saavedra's expedition known to have been lost and presumed to have been wrecked in or , which also has been assumed, and fairly widely believed, to be the basis of the Hawaiian tradition of a Spanish?
Saavedra's outfit is also credited with having "probably" discovered islands in the Marshalls. Alvaro de Mendana is also listed as a discoverer of the Marshall Islands in as well as having discovered the Solomons in , and the Ellice Islands; then on his second voyage, in , Mendana discovered the Marquesas and the Santa Cruz Islands.
Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, one of Mendana's captains, is listed as having discovered Ngatik, south of Ponape, in later, Quiros, on his voyage of , discovered Tahiti and the New Hebrides; one of Quiros' captains, Luis Vaez de Torres, in sailed through the strait, since named for him, between Australia and New Guinea, both of which had been sighted by Portuguese navigators between and For both Saavedra and Gaetano ?
Even the date of Gaetano's expedition apparently is uncertain, occasionally given as or instead of Gaetano is thought to have discovered the Hawaiian Islands; but this, as well as the wreck of one of Saavedra's ships, is highly uncertain, to say the least. See, among others, J. Beaglehole, The Exploration of the Pacific , London, Justamond, F.
Actually four priests and a student friar not yet ordained: Fr. Tomas de Cardenoso, who had come from Manila with Fr. Luis de Medina, leader of that entire group, Fr.
Pedro de Casanova, Fr. The basic source, Garcia's Life of Sanvitores cited above , says they sailed at last from Acapulco only on March 23 page and sighted "Zarpana" an old name for Rota on June 15, then soon saw Guan sic; usually Guan or Guahan in the older, Spanish writings , and arrived off Guam at nightfall page This last is interesting in connection with Guillemard's s theory on Magellan's landfall, outlined in Note 1 above.
On Tumon Bay, perhaps not very far from the spot where stands a monument to his memory, dedicated in January , accompanied by a small chapel, at the northeast end of Tumon Beach.
The figure of 50, people was given by Fr. Sanvitores himself, for Guam alone, and 40, for the other islands; and one may suspect a pious exaggeration, to emphasize the size of the problem and the glory of the achievement and perhaps help justify the estimates for the next fiscal year , as has happened elsewhere with ardent missionary leaders.
But later writers, from Kotzebue in to Oliver in , have accepted or worked out similar figures. A reconstruction by Freycinet in Thompson, , p. Probably all these are based on the same single original source, Fr. He also speaks of settlements , those on the coast being of 50 to houses each: say, 18, or so dwellings and at least 3 individuals to a family well over 50, people! Actually four new friars, but three leaving at the same time; a net gain of one. Casanova and Morales and Lorenzo Bustillo were sent on to the Philippines on the same ship.
According to a document, "Victims sacrificed by the natives of the Marianas Islands because of their propagation of the Holy Catholic faith among them," translation published in the Guam Recorder , April , without giving source and identification; it sounds authentic and corresponds with other data. Unless otherwise noted, the discussion of the period is based on Garcia's Sanvitores full citation in Note 7 above and on Charles Le Gobien, Histoire des isles Marianes nouvellement converties a la religion chrestienne et de la mortglorieuse des premiers missionnaires qui y ont preche lafoy , Paris, Information given actually is drawn largely from quotation, and paraphrases, in later works, or partial published translations; I have not used the original of either of these basic source versions Gobien's work being also based on Garcia's Sanvitores , with added notes on later developments of into the 's; Burney's work of , cited above in Note 2, draws extensively on Gobien.
People arriving from islands off Southeast Asia, most likely Taiwan, settled Guam and the Marianas more than 4, years ago. One could sail west-to-east from the Philippines to the Marianas just by following the sun. A clan-based society arose by A. Archaeological evidence indicates rice cultivation and pottery making prior to European arrival in the 16th century. By then, the Chamorros had developed a complex, class-based matrilineal society based on fishing and agriculture, supplemented by occasional trade visits from Caroline Islanders.
The Mariana Islands proved not terribly useful to the Spanish. He definitely viewed them as pagans, as savages…. Magellan's characterization of the Chamorros as "thieves," discouraged further European intrusion; and while some ships still visited, the Chamorros lived in relative isolation for the next century or so. The nearby Philippines, where traders found an entryway to the Chinese market, attracted most of the seafarers from abroad. That all changed when an aggressive Jesuit missionary, Father San Vitores , arrived in the Marianas in Relations were tense with occasional violence.
His death was the turning point that transformed this hitherto-ignored Spanish outpost into a subjugated Spanish colony. Twenty-six years of Spanish - Chamorro wars ensued that, along with introduced diseases, decimated the population. By , just 5, Chamorros — some 10 percent of their former number—remained. The Spanish then began transporting Chamorros from the northern islands to Guam, where they could control them—a process that took nearly a century, as the fast native canoes could outrun the larger and slower Spanish ships and elude capture.
Canoe culture was then banned to keep them from escaping. Once on Guam, the Chamorros were resettled into newly created villages , each under the watchful eye of a Spanish priest. And so began the assimilation of the Chamorros. They lost their millennia-old connections to the land, their traditions and their stories. Today, the Chamorro language retains its traditional grammar, but 55 percent of the vocabulary borrows from Spanish. Nonetheless, indigenous culture continued in other ways—in values , in traditions surrounding weddings and funerals , in housing styles , and many other forms not obvious to the outsider.
Small-island living requires a system of codes and practices, evolved over millennia, which no outside culture can replace, even today. The Spanish maintained a lazy rule over the islands for the next century and a half.
0コメント