Circumnavigations #4: Re-Discovering Discovery Day
If you have never been to a Discovery Day before I suggest you go just to witness the surreal nature of this reenactment where Chamoru huts are burnt and Chamoru are killed by a guy in Spanish armor who usually arrives in Umatac Bay via a motorboat. The village of Umatac in particular enjoyed this holiday as it brought the attention of the island to their particular corner. It also provided some economic opportunity for a part of the island that doesn't get much compared to other villages.
In Morrison's efforts, he thankfully wasn't trying to revive Discovery Day directly. He was much more interested in rediscovering the holiday as a venue for the celebration of Chamoru culture, heritage and history. While Magellan will always be a part of Guam history, it is important when considering something such as this to recall his short, but memorable visit to Guam.
Magellan’s mission was to circumnavigate the globe, to take
the pieces that Europeans knew from Asia and the Americas and try to connect
the dots, to determine how much ocean or land lay between them. This was necessary because of the way in which the world had been divided into pieces for the navies and merchants of Portugal and Spain to carve up and exploit. The Portuguese controlled the route to Asia that circled south of Africa. The hope for the Spanish was that a route could be found that went around the Americas.
When Magellan arrived in the waters of the Marianas in March 1521
his men were starving and some very ill. They have been sailing into unknown
waters across the Pacific. Guam wasn’t the first land they had spotted on their
journey, they had seen other small atolls, which they named the “Unfortunate
Islands” because there wasn’t much too them. When they reached Guam however,
they were greeted by a lush green island, and a fleet of canoes.
Although “Island of Thieves” is the name that Magellan
notoriously gave Guam, and which stuck for centuries, this was not the first
name the Europeans invoked. Seeing the canoes and how swiftly they moved in the
water they gave Guam a poetic name, the Island of Lateen Sails, based on the
design of sail the canoes used. A later European would note that the canoes
moved like dolphins jumping from wave to wave.
Chamorus came aboard the ships and things seemed fine at
first. Although the usual way the tale is told, Chamorus are amazed and awed
by the Europeans. Some accounts of the visit however reveal that Chamorru were
not awestruck by the Europeans and seemed to be intrigued but not impressed by
their appearance or presence.
Trouble started however when one of the crew slapped one of
the Chamoru men. The Chamoru man slapped the sailor back. The sailor promptly
drew a machete and tried to strike him down. Chamorus jumped back to their
boats and began to throw spears and slingstones. Several groups of Chamorus
showed up that day to trade with Europeans. One of them surprised the Europeans
by immediately starting to hurl weapons at them once their trade of supplies
for metal and glass beads had finished.
Although many European accounts attest to Chamorus having
no knowledge of metal and that they were amazed to see it and touch it for the
first time, this could be false. Chamorus at that time may have had infrequent
contact with peoples of Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Through this trade
they would have learned about the value of metal. When Magellan appeared it is possible that they were not amazed by something they had never imagined before.
Instead they were excited to see something they already knew about and that the
arrival of Europeans represented hopefully a new opportunity to obtain more of
the rare material.
At some point the rope for a skiff was cut and Magellan
immediately assumed the Chamorus had done it. His men went ashore and burned
down several houses and killed seven Chamorus. One part of this story that is not
as frequently mentioned and not usually part of the re-enactment that takes
place in Umatac each year, is the request by some of Magellan’s crew that they
kill some Chamorus and then take out their intestines and bring them aboard so
that those who are sick may eat them. At the time, it is likely that this was a sailor's remedy for illnesses like scurvy. If you ingest the entrails of a healthy person, it may cure your own.
Part of the reason this tidbit is left out is because it
calls into question the usual way we understand these stories, namely that one
side is civilized the other side is savage.
Magellan left after less than three days in Guam, and sailed
on to the Philippines where he was killed in a dispute between chiefs in Cebu.
As I’ve heard more than one Filipino say, “Chamorros kept Magellan alive long
enough so that Filipinos could kill him.”
The telling of this story in the context of “Discovery Day”
obscures one very simple and very obvious truth. Magellan did not discover
anything. The Discovery Days of the past have trouble dealing with this simple
fact. Magellan may have put Guam on the map of Europeans, but it was on the
maps of Chamorus and other peoples in Micronesia for long before that.
Eventually, Morrison's efforts paid off, and thankfully Discovery Day was not re-instated. Instead a new holiday, "Guam History and Chamorro Heritage Day" was created, which allowed a greater focus on Chamoru culture and history. The re-enactment is still a prominent part of the celebration, but at least the re-imagining allows it to move beyond Magellan and become something through which Chamorus can discover and rediscover themselves.
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