baked in the earthen ovens covered with hot stones.
Following hurricanes, during times of near famine, the natives would seek the cycas or fadang nuts as a prime source of food in the inner valleys unstripped of their vegetation by the storms. These nuts have certain poisonous properties which are removed by soaking them in frequent changes of fresh water, and though palatable enough, they are seldom eaten except in times of emergency. The pulpy, starchlike residue created by soaking is further reduced with native stone pestle and mortar before molding and baking the nuts into a heavy sort of bread.
Primitive relishes were made from certain dried seaweeds. Seaweed is still part of a Chamorro sauce served today with deep-fried prawns. This sauce includes, besides ground seaweed, soya juice, small fiery Guamanian peppers, a bit of lime juice, and various native spices. Formerly nuts were much used in augmenting the diet; terminalia nuts and the kernels of the textile screw pine were once much sought after.
Although rice was willingly sold to the early navigators who stopped at Guam, it was not considered a common staple by the aborigines, being reserved for their principal feasts and special occasions such as weddings and funerals, when it was used as a base for a seasoned fish broth or stew. Maize and sweet potatoes were not cultivated before Magellan's discovery, being a Spanish introduction brought with other innovations from the Western world. (See Chapter 2—Other Food Staples.)
The aboriginal taste for food did not include fresh meat. The Chamorros have no record either of eating animal flesh or of early cannibalism and, up to the date when pork was introduced, presumably by the Spanish, records show that they apparently ate no fresh meat at all. Although they kept fowl as pets, there is no evidence that these animals were ever slaughtered and eaten. Even fresh-water fish (as was cited in the case of eels) held no appeal for them, except for the fresh-water shrimp and a shore-bound spiny lobster living near the fresh-water discharges into lagoons. The aborigines spoke disparagingly of the Jesuit missionaries and the itinerant navigators who enjoyed the flesh of animals.
Juice of the grated coconut was used in food and was an integral part of their principal dishes. As was the classic custom throughout the tropical Pacific, the Chamorri cooked their food covered, alternating leaves between layers of stones in the manner of a Polynesian luau, although the pits were not as deep. Poi, the fermented paste of the taro plant's root, was unknown to the aborigines.
It is interesting to note that in all their diet few items were consumed raw. Fish or manahag was dried in abundance, and stored away for future requirements. Breadfruit was cut into thin slices and dried, without being first baked, for the drying process served the same curative purpose as baking. Dried slices were palatable without further preparation, like dried prunes or apricots. Sometimes they were cut up and incorporated in hot-food dishes.
There was neither a native wine or spirit on Guam nor in the rest of the Marianas until the Spanish occupation. Besides the milk of young coconuts, the only Chamorro beverage was water. They did not even use the various aromatic leaves of island plants as a source of native tea. Temperance in diet was their watchword, and they attributed their tall splendid bodies, radiant health, and great strength to their particular feeding and working and leisure habits.
NATIVE ARTS
In the useful arts—such as the construction of their fine, sturdy houses and their fabulous outrigger canoes—this glowing health was a great aid. It contributed to the incredible design and utility of their flying praos, to the swift and lethal slings they fashioned, to their woodworking instruments of stone, their finely plaited fishing nets, and their hooks and lines.
The arts of woodcarving, engraving, or true weaving with the aid of looms were not among their skills, oddly enough. They braided their mats diagonally in the primitive Polynesian fashion, and their nets, though efficient, were not actually woven.
Houses were built in communal effort by male labor while the female contingency braided the necessary interior household mats, the carrying bags, the storage bags, the bed mats, and the long crisscross strips of tough lightweight matting from which the lateen-type sails for canoes were made.
Pottery was unknown too, and the aforementioned bamboo or crude gouged wooden vessels substituted for this art. The fishhooks referred to above were sometimes made from mother-of-pearl, sometimes from tortoise shell, and carved by hand. Fish were caught either by trawling from canoes or by net casting along the shore. Spear fishing from the reefs at low tide was practiced, and night fishing on the reefs by torch at low tide is still a popular and frequent diversion with the native population.
The 20th-century industrialization of the populated areas of Guam has reduced the need or desire to follow ancient custom, and the native arts are slowly dying out. Modernization, however, has not altered too drastically the essential basic character of the Chamorro, which still remains linked with the island's unique past.
5
The Flying Prao
The first Europeans to set eyes upon the fabulous Chamorro canoes of the Guam aborigines were the crew of Magellan's tiny fleet. As the colorful outriggers approached, fairly flying over the placid coastal waters of Guam, making straight for the scurvy-marked faces of Magellan's gaunt band, they must have appeared wonderfully graceful and vivid with their red- and black-painted hulls and their sloping plaited sails billowing in the strong breeze of the trade wind.
"These sails were tri-shaped mats plaited from Pandanus leaves and supported on a yard in the [Mediterranean] manner like lateen sails," Magellan's biographer Pigafetta observed in his journal. "The mast was midships. Instead of going about in tacking, they simply shifted the sheet of the sail from one end of the canoe to the other, so that which had been the bow became the stern, and the stern became the bow. Parallel to the fore-and-aft line there was an outrigger or log, rigidly connected with the hull by cross pieces and resting upon the surface of the water. This served, both by its weight and buoyancy, to keep the narrow craft from capsizing, and was kept always on the windward side by shifting the sheet as described above. All of the boats were painted, some black and others red. They had paddles of the form of hearth shovels, which could be used for steering or propelling the boats."
To the land-starved, sea-weary gaze of Magellan's men, these handsome canoes and their sturdy, joyous occupants waving flowers and fresh fruit were a beckoning symbol of the rich island that rose behind their graceful sails. It is little wonder that these unique craft were more extravagantly admired than even their ingenious builders by most of the early navigators who trekked the long, arduous path of the Pacific from the west coast of the Americas to the restful haven of Guam and the Marianas.
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