IIL Conquest The landing on Guam in 1668 of the first officially sponsored Spanish mission among the Chamorros opened the next epoch in the post-contact history of the Marianas. This period, which lasted for thirty years, was distinguished by the conversion of the Cha- morros to Christianity and by their complete political subjugation to Spain. It was a time of continuous strife and unrest, interspersed with brief phases of peace. By the close of the period, the Chamorros had been decimated and subdued by years of violence. Our knowledge of this thirty-year epoch derives almost entirely from the Jesuit missionaries. As was characteristic of their mis- sionary efforts elsewhere, the Jesuit padres carefully documented their work in numerous letters and reports. These formed the source materials for two important works, those of Garcia (1683) and Le Gobien (1700), which provide us with most of what is known of this period in the history of the Marianas. Important supplementary information is contained in a number of seventeenth century Jesuit letters translated and published by Repetti (1940a, b, c, 1941a, b, 1945-46, 1946 47), as well as in later secondary sources (Murillo Velarde [1749], Freycinet [1829 37], and Corte [1876]). The Jesuit missionaries recorded events in the Marianas from their own par- ticular point of view, and in the absence of other first-hand accounts it is often difficult to arrive at a balanced historical interpretation. Certain of the principal events of the period are outlined below. In 1662, Luis de Sanvitores, a Spanish Jesuit, stopped briefly at Guam on his way to the Philippines. His glimpse of the Marianas led him to resolve to form a mission among the Chamorros. After overcoming numerous difficulties he was finally able to obtain the necessary support, and he set out for the Marianas with a small company of fellow Jesuits and secular companions. On June 15, 1668, their ship arrived off Guam, and the company landed on the island. At first the padres were hospitably received. They made Agafia their headquarters and commenced the construction of a church and a house for their company. But it was not long before resistance 41 42 SAIPAN developed. To judge from the missionary accounts, Chamorro an- tagonism toward the missionaries centered around baptism, particu- larly of infants and children. Enough cases occurred where baptism was followed by the death of the child for the Chamorros to infer that baptism was the cause of death. Also, by this time, the infant mortality rate may have been boosted by the introduction of new diseases. As far as the missionaries were concerned, the devil's advocate in the Chamorro resistance to baptism was a Chinese named Choco, who had been shipwrecked in the Marianas in 1648. For twenty years prior to the arrival of the Spanish missionaries he had lived among the Chamorros and in 1668 was residing in a village in the southern !)art of Guam. According to the missionaries, it was Choco who spread the belief that baptism caused death, and who encour- aged the Chamorros to resist. Sanvitores himself sought out Choco and, having succeeded in getting him to agree to being baptized, performed the ceremony on the spot, though the earnest padre was embarrassed to have his two Filipino secular helpers run amok during the service. Choco's baptism did not stick, however, and soon he was again encouraging the Chamorros to oppose the Spanish. Although baptism was a focal point around which resistance crystallized, it may well be somewhat over-emphasized in the ac- counts of Garcia and Le Gobien. It was attempts at baptism that resulted in the killing of a number of Spanish priests and helpers, including Sanvitores himself, who became a martyr to his cause when he was killed on Guam on April 2, 1672. Baptism was the occasion for open Chamorro hostility. However, it must not be forgotten that the missionaries' opposition to the sorcerers; to pre- vailing pre-marital sex practices and the apparently brittle marriage tie; to methods of disposal of the dead, which involved the display of ancestral skulls in the men's houses; to the men's houses them- selves; to the custom of wearing little or no clothing; and probably to other undescribed facets of Chamorro custom, affected a series of institutions at the core of the local society and culture. The net effect is described by Garcia, who noted the commencement of armed opposition to the Spanish in the following words (Garcia, 1683, Higgins' translation): Certain villages of the island of Guam were uneasy, and there was unrest because of the inconstancy of those natives, who change just for a change, and because their shoulders, unaccustomed to the weight of law or reason, felt the yoke of Christ too heavy, although it is light and easy for those who love him. WADERO KliTHATO DEEL PTEDJECO LVJS Fig. 3. Sanvitore.s (from Garcia, 1683). 43 44 SAIPAN Once aiUagonism toward the Spanish had broken out into open hostihty, the secular power of Spanish coloniahsm was set into force. At first it was most inadequate, as only a small group of secular hi'lpi'rs and soldiers accompanied the priests, a force that was slightly replenished from time to time with the annual arrival of the galleon from Mexico. In 1676, the first governor of the Marianas was appointed, Don Francisco de Irisarry y Vivar, who took up residence on Guam and supported a strong secular policy. We are told (Gai'cia, 1683, Higgins' translation) that Irisarry . made it obligatory for all baptized indios to attend church on Sun- days and fiesta days, and to send their sons and daughters not only to learn the things of our Faith, but also to perform certain offices and duties necessary to the formation of a Christian and political republic. The Spanish troops in the Marianas were never very numerous but the Spaniards finally prevailed, through their uncompromising zeal. The situation was such that it is doubtful that they could have remained in the islands without constant recourse to armed force. The man responsible for breaking the back of Chamorro re- sistance was Jos^ de Quiroga, who arrived on Guam in 1679. There- after he directed most of the armed expeditions against the Cha- morros. (Completely fearless, highly aggressive, thoroughly cogni- zant of Chamorro methods of warfare, physically tough as nails, and quite unscrupulous, Quiroga was in the tradition of the typical Spanish conquistador. He spent nearly twenty years in pacifying the islands, in which effort he finally succeeded. Thus, in the Mari- anas as in the New World, the sacred and secular aspects of Spanish colonialism were firmly bound together. The policy cannot be de- scribed better than in the words of Garcia's account of the conversion of the Chamorros: It has been necessary in this spiritual conquest, as experience has shown us that it is always necessary among barbarians, that our Spanish zeal carry in its right hand ... a plow and the Kvangelical seed; and in its left hand . the sword, with which to prevent embarrassment to the religious labor. Certain other features of the thirty-year period of conversion and conquest deserve brief mention. The Spanish were aided by the lack of a high degree of political organization among the Cha- morros. The latter were accustomed to fighting each other before the Spanish came, and inter-district warfare continued to be a feature of Chamorro life, even though opposition to the Spanish no doubt created a common bond. Thus, in 1669, Sanvitores was influential in effecting a peace on Tinian between Marpo, an interior district. CONQUEST 45 and Sunharon, a coastal one, which seem to have been traditional enemies. Also, during the period, the missionaries slowly succeeded in gaining converts among the Chamorros, so that a group of Chris- tianized Chamorros was created to assist the Spanish effort. It is at this time that marriages of Spanish men and Chamorro women were first described. In one such instance, occurring in 1676, Garcia records that the father of the bride made an attempt to kill the bridegroom but was frustrated by the Spaniards, who hanged the father publicly in Agafia. The Spanish centered their efforts on Guam. Their headquarters were at Agaiia, where they built a church, a parish house, a seminary and a small presidio. From Agafia, they ventured to other parts of Guam and to the northern islands. The latter, however, were visited only periodically, though in the first few years the padres explored the chain as far north as Maug, apparently landing on all but two of the smallest islands—Farallon de Medinilla and Farallon de Pajaros. To the remaining thirteen, Sanvitores also gave Span- ish names, though Asuncion is the only island name that has per- sisted. In the other twelve cases the original name has been retained. The list of names is given below: Chamorro name Spanish name Guam San Juan Rota Santa Ana (in the Jesuit accounts, Rota is also referred to as Zarpana, which sounds very much like a phonetic modification of Santa Ana) Aguijan San Angel Tinian Buenavista Mariana Saipan San Joseph (Saipan— spelled Saypan by Garcia—is today sometimes said to be of nineteenth century Carolinian origin. This is incor- rect, as the name is found as far back as the sixteenth century) Anatahan San Joaquin Sariguan San Carlos Guguan San Phelipe Alamagan Concepcion Pagan San Ignacio Agrihan San Francisco Xavier Asonson Asuncion Maug San Lorenzo Sanvitores also established the name "Marianas" for the islands as a whole, in honor of Marie Ana of Austria, thereby superseding 46 SAIPAN the names "Ladronos" and "Islas de Latinas Velas" which had been in previous use, though "Ladrones" continued to be used as a syno- nym.