GuamGuåhan

The Marianas were settled around 1500 BC by people who sailed from Island Southeast Asia, probably the Philippines, across more than 2,000 km of open ocean. That makes the first CHamoru among the earliest long-distance seafarers anywhere, centuries before people reached most of Polynesia. Their pottery, red-slipped and sometimes stamped with lime-filled patterns, is the earliest evidence archaeologists find.

From about AD 900 island society entered what archaeologists call the latte period. Latte are two-part stone pillars, a shaft (haligi) topped by a cup-shaped capstone (tasa), cut from limestone or basalt and set in parallel rows to raise houses off the ground. The largest, at the As Nieves quarry on Rota, were never finished and weigh many tonnes. The dead were often buried beside the latte, which is why the sites are treated as sacred today.

Society was divided into ranked matrilineal clans. The chamorri, the high caste, held the best coastal land and fishing rights; the lower caste, the manachang, lived inland and were barred from the sea's best resources. Lineage passed through the mother, and senior women held real power over land and family decisions, a pattern that survives in the respect given to the eldest women of a family.

Outrigger canoes, the sakman, were fast enough to impress the first Europeans, who named the islands the Islas de las Velas Latinas for their lateen sails. Ocean voyaging linked the Marianas with the Carolines to the south, a connection that the Spanish period broke and that recent canoe revival groups have rebuilt.

Magellan's fleet reached the Marianas in March 1521, most likely anchoring at Umatac. The encounter went badly: islanders took items from the ships under their own ideas of exchange, and the Europeans burned houses and killed several people in reprisal. Spain claimed the islands in 1565, but for a century they were mainly a place for the Manila galleons to take on water.

Permanent Spanish presence began in 1668 with the Jesuit Diego Luis de San Vitores. Baptisms met resistance from chiefs such as Matå'pang and Hurao, and San Vitores was killed in 1672. Decades of war followed. Combined with smallpox, influenza and forced relocation into mission villages, the fighting reduced the CHamoru population from tens of thousands to a few thousand by 1710, and the people of the northern islands were moved to Guam and Rota.

The survivors intermarried with Spanish, Mexican and Filipino soldiers and settlers, and CHamoru language absorbed hundreds of Spanish words. Catholicism became the centre of village life: each village has its patron saint, and the fiesta for that saint, with Mass, procession and a huge open-house meal, is still the main event on the village calendar.

For 150 years Guam was the one Pacific stop on the galleon route between Acapulco and Manila. Maize, chilli, tobacco, cattle and the titiyas flatbread came this way, along with Mexican silver. The route ended in 1815 as Mexico moved towards independence, and Guam became a quiet outpost until 1898.

The US took Guam from Spain in June 1898 almost without a fight; the Spanish garrison had not heard war had been declared. Guam was run by the US Navy as a naval station for the next four decades, with naval governors who banned the CHamoru language in schools at times and offered no citizenship. The rest of the Marianas went to Germany and, after 1914, to Japan, which split CHamoru families across a colonial border.

Japanese forces invaded on 8 December 1941, hours after Pearl Harbor. For 31 months the island, renamed Omiya Jima, lived under occupation: forced labour on airfields, confiscated food, public executions and, as the US approached in 1944, forced marches to camps at Manenggon and massacres at Tinta and Faha near Merizo. Many CHamoru were punished for sheltering the US Navy radioman George Tweed, who hid in the jungle for the whole occupation.

US Marines and soldiers landed at Asan and Agat on 21 July 1944. Fighting lasted three weeks, and Japanese holdouts stayed in the jungle for years; the last, Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, was found near Talofofo in 1972. Liberation Day on 21 July is the island's largest public celebration, with a parade, carnival and family gatherings.

War reparations remain a live issue. Congress passed a law recognising Guam's wartime claims in 2016, and payments to survivors and heirs began only in the 2020s. For older islanders, the occupation is still personal memory, and for many families it explains loyalty to the United States alongside frustration at how that loyalty has been rewarded.

The Organic Act of 1950 made the people of Guam US citizens and moved government from the Navy to civilian hands. Guam is still an unincorporated territory: residents pay into the US system and serve in the armed forces at high rates, but cannot vote for president, and their one delegate in Congress has no vote on final bills. Guam elected its own governor for the first time in 1970.

Decolonisation is an open question. Guam is on the UN list of non-self-governing territories, and debates continue over a plebiscite on statehood, free association or independence. A 2017 federal court ruling struck down a vote limited to 'native inhabitants', which stalled the process. For many CHamoru, the issue is less legal than cultural: whether the island's first people will have the final say on its future.

The military holds about a quarter of the land. Andersen Air Force Base in the north launched bombers to Vietnam and now hosts rotations of long-range aircraft; Naval Base Guam in Apra Harbor is home to submarines. Marine Corps Camp Blaz opened in 2023 to receive Marines moving from Okinawa, and a new missile-defence system for the island is under construction.

The build-up brings jobs and federal money but also pressure on water, land and reefs. Litekyan (Ritidian), an ancient village area in the north, became a focus of protest when a firing range complex was built beside it. Visitors see the military mainly as fenced land, low-flying aircraft and the uniforms in Tumon on a Friday night.

Inafa'maolek, literally 'making things good for each other', is the idea behind CHamoru social life. It means cooperation, reciprocity and keeping relationships in balance. Its most visible form is chenchule', the reciprocal exchange of money, food or labour at weddings, funerals and fiestas, carefully remembered and returned over generations.

Respect for elders, or respetu, shows in the nginge', when a younger person sniffs or kisses the back of an elder's hand while saying 'ñot' or 'ñora'. Family networks are wide, and a fiesta or funeral can draw hundreds of relatives. The rosary for the dead is said over nine nights, the nobena, with food for everyone who comes.

Belief in the taotaomo'na, the spirits of the ancient ancestors, lives on alongside Catholicism. They are said to inhabit the jungle and especially the banyan (trongkon nunu) trees. Many islanders ask permission before entering the jungle or relieving themselves outdoors, saying 'Guella yan Guello, kao sina hu falak'. Visitors who fall ill after disrespecting a site are, in local stories, said to have been 'pinched' by the spirits.

The CHamoru language has fewer fluent speakers each generation, and English dominates daily life. Since the 1970s schools have taught CHamoru, the University of Guam and the Kumisión i Fino' CHamoru have standardised spelling, and immersion programmes and CHamoru-language music and media have grown. Dance troupes, weaving, canoe building and the chant form kantan chamorita have been revived and taught as living practice.

A CHamoru fiesta table tells the island's history in one plate. Red rice coloured with achiote seed is Spanish-Mexican; kelaguen, meat or seafood 'cooked' with lemon, coconut and chilli, is a local technique; pancit and lumpia arrived with Filipino families; soy-marinated barbecue grew from Japanese and American tastes. Finadene', a sauce of soy, vinegar or lemon, onion and hot pepper, goes on everything.

SPAM came with the US military after 1944, when fresh meat was scarce, and it stayed. Guam's residents eat it by the can, fried with eggs and rice at breakfast, in musubi, or given as gifts in cases at weddings and funerals. Its popularity is a quiet reminder of wartime shortages and of the long dependence on imported food.

Tourism became Guam's civilian economy after Pan Am and Japan Air Lines opened routes in the late 1960s. Tumon Bay filled with hotels for Japanese honeymooners and, later, Korean families; shopping, weddings in beach chapels and shooting ranges followed. Visitor numbers peaked at about 1.6 million in 2019 and collapsed during the pandemic.

Recovery has been slow, especially from Japan, where a weak yen has made Guam expensive. Korea is now the largest market, and the island is looking for new visitors while trying to show more of its own culture than the duty-free strip. For the traveller, that means Tumon is less crowded than a decade ago and the villages are more open than the hotel brochures suggest.