the United States Navy, was stationed on the island of Guam as vice-governor. Safford's field was ethnobotany, but his range of interest was extremely wide and profound. His absorption with Chamorro lore led him to prepare for the American Anthropology Series many papers concerning the Marianas, including the first serious handbook on the surviving Chamorro language. He also chronologized the early history of the island, cataloguing for the first time its extensive and exotic array of tropical plants, both those indigenous to Guam and those introduced by visitors and settlers.
When Safford died in 1926, he was still actively writing and associated with the United States National Herbarium as consulting economic botanist. His fascinating delineation of island plant life remains a standard guide to anyone curious about the flora of a tropical outpost. It would not be possible here to list even the most generally known of the plants growing on Guam, so I have deemed it best to feature some of the essential staple plants used in the aboriginal and more recent past for food, clothing and shelter, for medicine and paint. These accounts are taken from Safford's writings and more or less follow the pattern delineated by him. The array of plants is unusual indeed, including plants that are palliatives for leprosy, oranges whose skin can be lathered like soap, sea-voyaging beans from the futu tree whose pods cast themselves into the island's surf and are sometimes carried thousands of miles by ocean currents, and curative plants like the bastard currant—a bush with white flowers whose root was used as a remedy for syphilis, bronchitis, and even asthma.
Scientists who study the Pacific islands have been able to trace the ethnological distribution of various aboriginal races through the migration and arrangement of plant life on the various chains and groups of islands. On Guam several prime plants were cultivated which were virtually unknown in eastern Polynesia, for example, the betel pepper, the areca palm (betel nut), and rice. All evidence points to their Malayan origin; they even bear Malayan names and probably found their way to Melanesia after the departure of the people who spread over the islands of the Eastern Pacific, but some time before Guam's settlers left their parent stock. Most arresting proof is the resemblance that the Chamorro name for rice (fae, or fai) bears to the Javanese name (bai), rather than the Philippine name (palai). Numerous examples of this sort exist in the island languages, carrying weight where ethnological beginnings are concerned, and tying together racial origin with the origin and migration of plant life.
The primary association with the word "tropical" is usually "coconut," and in terms of Guam's past, although no longer true, the coconut was one of the prime life sources since aboriginal times. The first accurate description of the coconut was published in Dampier's Voyages from observations made by him during his Guam visit of 1686. Magellan's chronicler, Pigafetta, had noted that the natives had used coconut oil scented with flowers to anoint their bodies and hair, but Dampier's description is more elaborate:
"The Nut or Fruit grows at the head of the Tree, [he writes] among the Branches and Clusters, 10 to 12 in a Cluster. . . . The Nut is generally bigger than a Man's Head. . . . The Kernel in some Nuts is very thick sticking to the inside of the Shell clear round, leaving a hollow in the middle of it, which contains about a Pint, more or less, according to the bigness of the Nut. . . .
"This Cavity is full of sweet, delicate, wholesome and refreshing Water. While the Nut is growing, all inside is full of this Water, without any Kernel at all; but as the Nut grows toward Maturity, the Kernel begins to gather and settle round on the inside of the Shell, and is soft like Cream; and as the Nut ripens, it increaseth in substance and becomes hard. The ripe Kernel is sweet enough, but very hard to digest, therefore seldom eaten, unless by strangers, who know not the effects of it; but while it is young and soft like Pap, some Men will eat it, scraping it out with a Spoon, after they have drunk the water that was within it. I like the Water best when the Nut is almost ripe, for it is then sweetest and briskest."
Dampier goes on to describe how the nut falls to earth, splits, sprouts, feeds upon its meat until it has sent roots securely into the ground, and concludes, after comparing the trees of Guam and their habits with East Indian groves: "These at Guam grow in dry ground, are of middle size, and I think the sweetest that I did ever taste."
Dampier was accurate about the coconut meat; it is seldom eaten ripe by the Pacific Island natives, and Guam is no exception. Fed to cattle it fattens them rapidly, and it is considered excellent human food when a rich custard is made from the grated meat and served in native style with boiled fowl or with crab meat. One reason for the coconut's attractiveness to early voyagers was its portable endurance. However, long before, Dampier and other navigators had discovered that only the milk of the young coconut was bland enough to substitute for water. The milk of mature nuts caused diarrhea.
Besides the conversion of coconut meat into export copra (dried meat which is used for commercial oil and fertilizer), another odd use persists in modern times. The meat is used to fatten the coconut crab which is usually caught at night with bait of freshly-split coconuts laid on the open ground. Legend claims that this crab would climb trees, clip off coconuts with its powerful claws, descend, tear off the husk, and break the shell, forcing the nut open to get at its kernel. But native crab hunters claim that the ayuyu, strong as its pincers are, cannot open the nut by itself. Crabs setting upon coconuts become so engrossed in their greedy work that they are easily taken, and usually penned in a bamboo cage and fattened upon coconuts until they are ready to be boiled and served the same way as cold, cracked sea crab with a side dish of Guamanian sauce. (See Chapter 4—Food.)
In ancient days all the houses of Guam were built with local wooden frames and thatched coconut leaves. Even sword grass from the savannahs was sometimes used. Coconut leaves to be thatched were first dried and split down the midrib, the two halves being placed together in reverse direction and leaflets interwoven diagonally. This was usually the women's work, and leaves thus prepared were then lashed to the wooden framework with strips of pandanus leaves, beginning at the eaves and ending at the ridgepole, the leaves being placed together to form a thick imbricating thatch. Coconut thatch is not durable, however, and even the most painstaking job would not last much longer than four years, due to the intense action of sun and rain. Hurricanes would often quickly destroy the thatching.
Coconut fiber was also popular for plaiting mats, and the pandanus leaf fibers, used in housebuilding as lashing, were exceptionally strong material for making native sun hats, sleeping mats, working mats upon which corn, maize, and other seed were dried, or even large bags for holding and storing rice or corn.
With the advent of Spanish civilization upon the island came a further use for the coconut: the manufacture of toddy (tuba), a fermented drink made from the sap of the coconut tree. The Spanish introduced this beverage in Guam in an effort to reduce the number of natives and nearly succeeded by the production of this drink alone, and later, by the production of aguardiente, an occasionally highly toxic native rum distilled from tuba. The agreeable, passive natives could tolerate the effects of their local plant narcotics, the areca palm nut and the betel pepper leaf, but alcoholic drink was more of a scourge than a release. Actually, according to Padre Blanco in an early chronicle of the island, the Filipinos were more susceptible to their own poisonous concoction than the Chamorros, and when using aguardiente chronically they suffered great harm—insomnia, loss of appetite, premature old age, great obesity, and often a syndrome of other diseases resembling dropsy and the dreaded scurvy, and sometimes even insanity.
On the other hand, the reliable banana was put to no such devious uses in Guam. It was growing on the island before Magellan. Pigafetta describes "figs a palm long," which were probably the plantain, a large and starchy banana which must be cooked to be palatable. Other varieties, those edible when raw, were introduced in greater variety after the Spanish settled, being brought in by Pacific travelers. One small native banana has a truly delicious perfumed flavor, though not a handsome fruit.
Before the days of refrigeration, a few bananas were exported from Guam, but the crop now is barely sufficient for island needs. In those days the fruit was preserved by cutting it into strips or
