Ancient Chamoru Gender Dynamics

 I recently gave a lecture talking about the Maga'håga spirit and the matrilineal strain that runs through Chamoru culture. In putting it together, I had to scrounge for different quotes from the early accounts of the Spanish, when they encountered Chamorus in the 16th and 17th centuries. It provides a stark contrast in most ways we see gender relations today, but it must have felt nightmarish at times for a Catholic priest of the time. To see women with this much authority over life and over their husbands, I imagine it would have given San Vitores and others plenty a panic attack. 

Here are some of the quotes I used in my presentation:

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In each family, the head is the father or older relative, but with limited influence. A son, as he grows up, neither fears or respects his father. In the home it is the woman who rules, and her husband does not dare give an order contrary to her wishes, nor punish the children, for she will turn upon him and beat him. If the wife leaves his house the children will go with her, knowing no other father than the next husband their mother may select.

 

San Vitores, 1668

 

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“…the astuteness and courage of the Islanders themselves served quite as well as the Spanish arms to rid the island of malefactors. This was started by a woman who governed, insofar as the Marianos will suffer government, the district called Sidya, in the southern part of Guam. This noble matron was devoted to Christianity, counseled her people, who were already tired of constant unrest, to buy peace and friendship from the Spaniards by means of punishment of delinquents. Thus is was done.”

San Vitores, 1672

 

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Even in feuds women were accorded special treatment. If a woman was engaged in a quarrel, the whole clan took her side; no one interfered in arguments between men…If a plea for assistance was directed to a male, he alone came. But if it were directed to the women of the highest rank in a Chamorro family, all relatives, including the in-laws, had to turn out.”

 

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”This cake was first offered by the mother of the nuptial pair to their husband’s eldest sisters. The wedding cake, which was constructed upon a special litter, passed via appointed bearers from person to person until it finally was received by the eldest woman in the family. She alone had authority to divide it among those to whom it had been presented.”

Larry Lawcock, Guam Women A Hasty History, 1975

 

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They do not have many wives nor do they marry relatives, if one can call marriage that which might be better called concubinage for its lack of perpetuity, for they may separate and take another husband or wife at any trifling quarrel. However, if a man abandons his wife it costs him a great deal, for he loses both his property and his children. Women can leave their husband without inconvenience, and do so frequently through jealousy, and suspecting their husbands of disloyalty, punish them in many ways. Sometimes the women, who have evidence against their husband, calls a meeting of all the women of the village, who, wearing hats and armed with spears and lances, advance on the house of the adulterer, and if he has growing crops, destroy them. They make him come out of the house and threaten to run him through with their lances, at last driving him away. At other times the offended wife punished her husband by leaving him. Then her parents go to the husband’s house and carry away everything of value, not even leaving him a spear or a mat on which to sleep. They leave nothing more than the mere shell of the house and sometimes they destroy even that. If a woman is untrue to her husband the latter may kill her lover, but the woman receives no punishment. 

 

Francisco Garcia, Life and Martyrdom of San Vitores

 

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To the wives are given all the rights attributed to husbands elsewhere. The woman has absolute command in the house. She is the mistress, she has all the authority, and the husband cannot dispose of anything without her consent. 

Le Gobien, 1700