Culture of Guam

The culture of the Marianas Islands, including Tinian, Saipan, Rota, and Guam, reflects traditional Chamorro customs in a combination of indigenous pre-Hispanic forms, as well as American, Filipino, Spanish and Mexican traditions. The Chamorro people have lived on the Micronesian island of Guam for nearly 4000 years, and have cuisine, dance, fashion, games, language, music, and songs of their own.

The island’s original community is of Chamorro natives who have inhabited Guam for almost 4000 years. They had their own language akin to the languages of Indonesia and Philippines. The Spanish later called them Chamorros, a derivative of the local word Chamurre (meaning of Chamorri is "noble race"). They began to grow rice on the island. Western people came to the island from the 16th century and wrote about the culture of these people. Many scientists (including ethnologists, doctors, botanists, archeologists) came to Guam from Spain, Russia, France to study from the 1700s, apart from Spanish governors who had written on the local people. Many of their collections are now in the Guam Museum.

Early navigators and missionaries described the aboriginal inhabitants of Guam. The men wore their hair loose or coiled in a knot on top of the head, though there are also records of the men shaving the head, with the exception of a section about a finger long, which they left on the crown. Some of them were bearded. They also wore hats called akgak made out of pendanus plant. Carrying a carved walking stick was a style among young men. Men built houses and canoes and fished, hunted birds, fruit bats and crabs, and grew their own crops.

Women's hair was worn long, touching the ground. The lower half covering of the women was a small apron-like garment made of the inner bark of a tree. They also wore a top called the tifi made out of gunot while men remained bare-chested due to hot climatic conditions. The women occupied themselves with weaving baskets, mats, and hats of pandanus leaves, and doing other necessary work about the house. Women decorated themselves with flowers and belts made of coconuts as jewelry over their skirts and also a head dress made of tortoise shells. Women took care of the domestic chores, but were also involved in fishing in reefs and collecting breadfruit called dokdok from the forest.

Before marriage, it was customary for young men to live in concubinage with young women, whom they purchased from their parents by presents. Frequently a number of young men and young women would live together in a large public, house, as is the custom among the Igorot of Luzon. After marriage, a husband contented himself with one wife, and a wife with one husband, at a time. Divorces were noted as being frequent, with the children and the household property staying with the wife.

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