National Geographic Magazine/Volume 16/Number 5/Our Smallest Possession—Guam
OUR SMALLEST POSSESSION—GUAM
By William E. Safford
Mr Safford was formerly a lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, and his cruises took him to many of the islands of the Pacific, where he made many notes and collections. He so felt the want of a handy volume describing the luxuriant tropical plants, a large number of which are very useful, that when he later joined the botanical staff of the Department of Agriculture he resolved to write a book on the subject. This book, a volume of 4.20 pages, profusely illustrated, and with an introduction by Mr Frederick V. Coville, Curator of Botany, has fist been published by the U. S. National Museum under the title "The Useful Plants of the Island of Guam." In it the author describes the principal plants used for food, fiber, oil, starch, sugar, and forage in our tropical islands, and he further includes much interesting information about the people of Guam and their descendants. The following article is based on this report:
Guam is considerably larger than Tutuila, the most important of the Samoan Islands owned by the United States, though its chief port, San Luis de Apra, cannot be compared with Pango-Pango, our naval station in the South Pacific, and perhaps the finest harbor in the world. The advantage of Guam as a station for repairs and supplies is evident, forming, as it does, a stopping place for vessels between Hawaii and the Philippines. Its strategic importance has been greatly enhanced since j it has been made the landing place of the trans-Pacific cable, and the completion of the Panama Canal will make it still more valuable to our government.
The extreme length of the island from north-northeast to south-southwest is 29 statute miles. Its width is from 7 to 9 miles, narrowing at the middle to a neck only 4 miles across. On the north-west coast of this neck is situated Agana, the capital, a city of over 6,000 inhabitants. The entire population of the island, according to the census of 1901, was 9,676.
THE COMING OF MAGELLAN
The Island of Guam was discovered on March 6, 1521, by Magellan, after a passage of three months and twenty days from the strait which bears his name. An account of the privations and suffering of his crew, many of whom died on the way across the hitherto unexplored ocean, is graphically given by Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's historian. He describes how the expedition arrived at Guam with the crews suffering from scurvy and in a starving condition, having been compelled on the passage to eat rats and even the leather from off the standing rigging to keep soul and body together. In comparison with Magellan's feat of crossing the vast Pacific, the first voyage of Columbus from the Canary Islands to the West Indies seems insignificant. The natives of Guam came to meet the Spaniards in strange "flying praos" (canoes provided with outriggers and triangular sails of mats). The Spaniards had dropped anchor, furled their sails, and were about to land, when it was discovered that a small boat which rode astern of the flagship was missing. Suspecting the natives of having stolen it, Magellan himself went ashore at the head of a landing party of 40 armed men, burned 40 or 50 houses and many boats, and killed seven or eight natives, male and female. He then returned to his ship with the missing boat and immediately set sail, continuing his course to the westward.
The natives did not fare much better at the hands of later visitors. Missionaries came in 1668.
From W. E. Safford, U. S. National Museum
The Forest, Island of Guam
Showing epephytal vegetation (airplants which grow on other plants but do not derive their nourishment from them). The young carabao is carrying water in bamboo water jugs.
From W. E. Safford, U. S. National Museum
On the Main Road Across the Island of Guam
A Fish Intoxicant; the Fruit of the Barringtonia speciosa, Natural Size
The natives of Guam, and of a number of other tropical islands of the Pacific, use this fruit to stupefy fish (see opposite page). The species does not occur in the Hawaiian Islands, but it is found in the Malay Archipelago, the Andaman Islands, and Ceylon. The fruits are light, and as the tree grows down to the very edge of the sea, they often fall into the water and are carried by currents and cast upon other shores. The dried fruits are used by the natives as floats for their nets.
The mean annual temperature is about 80° F. in December, the coldest month, to 82° F. in May and June, the hottest months. The highest absolute temperature recorded in 1902, 90° F., occurred in June and July, the lowest, 66° F., in December.
Though the mean monthly temperature varies only 2° on either side of the mean annual temperature, yet the "winters" of Guam are so definitely marked that certain wasps which during the summer make their nests in the open fields among the bushes invade the houses of the people at that season and hibernate there.
The forest vegetation of Guam consists almost entirely of strand trees, epiphytal ferns, lianas, and a few undershrubs. The majority of the species are included in what Schimper has called the Barringtonia formation. The principal trees are the wild, fertile breadfruit, Artocarpus communis; the Indian almond, Terminalia catappa; jack-in-the-box, Hernandia peltata, and the giant banyan.
CATCHING FISH WITH INTOXICANTS
The fruit of another common tree (Barringtonia speciosa) the natives use to stupefy fish.
The fruit is pounded into a paste, inclosed in a bag, and kept over night. The time of an especially low tide is selected, and bags of the pounded fruit are taken out on the reef next morning and sunk in certain deep holes in the reef. The fish soon appear at the surface, some of them lifeless, others attempting to swim, or faintly struggling with their ventral side uppermost. The natives scoop them in their hands, sometimes even diving for them. Nothing more striking could be imagined than the picture presented by the conglomeration of strange shapes and bright colors—snake-like sea eels, voracious lizard-fishes, gar-like houndfishes, with their jaws prolonged into a sharp beak; long-snouted trumpet-fishes, flounders, porcupine-fish, bristling with spines; squirrel-fishes of the brightest and most beautiful colors—scarlet, rose color and silver, and yellow and blue; parrot-fishes (Scarus), with large scales, parrot-like beaks, and intense colors, some of them a deep greenish blue, others looking as though painted with blue and pink opaque colors; variegated Chaetodons, called "sea butterflies" by the natives; trunkfishes with horns and armor, leopard-spotted groupers, hideous-looking, warty toadfishes, "nufu" armed with poisonous spines, much dreaded by the natives, and a black fish with a spur on its forehead.
As many young fish unfit for food are destroyed by this process, the Spanish government forbade this method of fishing, but since the American occupation of the island the practice has been revived.
In the mangrove swamps when the tide is low hundreds of little fishes with protruding eyes may be seen hopping about in the mud and climbing among the roots of the Rhizophora and Bruguiera. These are the widely spread Periophthalmus koelreuteri, belonging to a group of fishes interesting from the fact that their air bladder has assumed in a measure the function of lungs, enabling the animal to breathe atmospheric air.
From W. E. Safford, U. S. National Museum
A Coffee Tree in Full Bloom, Island of Guam
Every family on the island grows its own coffee
From W. E. Safford, U. S. National Museum
Betel-nut Palms
The nut is greatly esteemed by the natives of Guam, who chew it with the leaf of the betel pepper. It imparts a red color to the saliva, so that the lips and teeth appear to be covered with blood, and in time become blackened. In Guam betel chewing is a matter of etiquette at all wedding assemblies, festivals, and funerals.
THE NATIVES AS THE SPANIARDS FOUND THEM
Both sexes were expert swimmers, and were as much at ease in the water as on land. As they threw themselves into the sea and came bounding from wave to wave they reminded Pigafetta of dolphins. The men were good divers. Legazpi states that they would catch fish in their hands. The children accompanied their parents while fishing, and were so expert in the water that Garcia declared that they appeared rather fish than human beings.
According to the testimony of early writers, their houses were high and neatly made and better constructed than those of any aboriginal race hitherto discovered in the Indies. They were rectangular in shape, with walls and roofs of palm leaves curiously woven. They were made of cocoanut wood and palo maria (Calophyllum inophyllum), and were raised from the ground on wooden posts or pillars of stone. In one of the narratives of the Legazpi expedition it is said that some of the houses supported on stone pillars served as sleeping apartments; others built on the ground were used for cooking and other work. Besides these, there were large buildings that served as storehouses for all in common, wherein the large boats and covered canoes were kept. "These were very spacious, broad, and high, and worth seeing." As described by the missionaries, some of the houses had four rooms or compartments, with doors or curtains of mats, one serving as a sleeping-room, another as a store-room for fruits, a third for cooking, and a fourth as a workshop and boat-house.
They were a happy, careless people, fond of festivities, dancing, singing, story telling, and contests of strength and skill, yet sufficiently industrious to cultivate their fields and garden patches, build excellent houses for their families, braid mats of fine texture, and construct canoes which were the admiration of all the early navigators. They were much given to buffoonery, mockery, playing tricks, jesting, mimicry, and ridicule, offering in this respect a striking contrast to the undemonstrative Malayans.
That they were naturally kind and generous is shown by their treatment of shipwrecked sailors cast upon their shores and their reception of the early missionaries who founded the first colony on the island. These missionaries complained that they could not make the natives take life seriously, saying that what they promised one minute they forgot the next. On the other hand, the missionaries spoke of the remarkable intelligence shown by the children in learning the Christian doctrine, the moderation of the natives in eating, and the absence of intoxicants. Their sense of hospitality was very marked. Women were treated with consideration, and had greater authority than in almost any other land hitherto known.
THE PRESENT PEOPLE OF GUAM
The natives of Guam are, as a rule, of good physique and pleasing appearance. Owing to their mixed blood, their complexion varies from the white of a Caucasian to the brown of a Malay. Most of them have glossy black hair, which is either straight or slightly curly. It is worn short by the men and long by the women, either braided, coiled, or dressed after the styles prevailing in Manila.
Though the natives of Guam are naturally intelligent and quick to learn, little has been done for their education, and many of them are illiterate. The college of San Juan de Letran was founded by Queen Maria Anna of Austria, widow of Philip IV, who settled upon it an annual endowment of 3,000 pesos. Through misappropriation and dishonesty the annual income of the college gradually dwindled to about 1,000 pesos. The greater part of this was absorbed by the rector, who was usually the priest stationed at Agana, and by the running expenses of the school, which were the subsistence and wages paid to janitor, porter, steward, doctor, and the lighting of the building.
The people are essentially agricultural. There are few masters and few servants on the island. As a rule the farms are not too extensive to be cultivated by the family, all of whom, even the little children, lend a hand. Often the owners of neighboring farms work together in communal fashion, one day on A's corn, the next day on B's, and so on, laughing, singing, and skylarking at their work and stopping whenever they feel so inclined to take a drink of tuba from a bamboo vessel hanging to a neighboring cocoanut tree. Each does his share without constraint, nor will he indulge so freely in tuba as to incapacitate himself for work, for experience has taught the necessity of temperance, and every one must do his share if the services are to be reciprocal. In the evening they separate, each going to his own rancho to feed his bullock, pigs, and chickens. After a good supper they lie down for the night on a pandanus mat spread over an elastic platform of split bamboo.
None of the natives depends for his livelihood on his handiwork or on trade alone. There are men who can make shoes, tan leather, and cut stone for building purposes, but such a thing as a Chamorro shoemaker, tanner, stone mason, or merchant who supports his family by his trade is unknown. In the midst of building a stone wall the man who has consented to help do the work will probably say, "Excuse me, Señor, but I must go to my rancho for three or four days; the weeds are getting ahead of my corn." And when lime is needed the native to whom one is directed may say, "After I have finished gathering my cocoanuts for copra I will get my boys to cut wood and gather limestone to make a kiln. Never fear, Señor, you shall have your lime within six weeks." On one occasion a blacksmith was delayed two weeks in making a plow owing to the fact that the man from whom he got his charcoal had been so busy supplying visiting vessels with fruits and vegetables that he could not find time to burn it.