code, men did have their youthful freedom through the long houses. This custom extended clear down to the Florida Islands and is maintained in modern times. There are still houses—or were before the last war—where "the large canoes are kept, men congregate, and young men sleep, strangers are entertained. . . ." The romantic aspect may be gone, but the general pattern remains, and the long houses are still the expression of young male freedom before marriage.
EARLY HOUSES
According to the word of early writers, the aboriginal houses were better constructed than any other Pacific dwellings. They were made of several native woods, generally rectangular in shape, with roofs of palm leaves, solidly twisted and woven. Sturdy, resistant wood formed the support posts, raising the floor several feet off the ground. In some cases the houses were built in sections. A sleeping unit for the whole family would be elevated on wooden or stone posts, while the kitchen would be constructed at ground level with a covering of thatching, and behind this would be a split-bamboo pen for small domestic animals to protect them from marauders. Floors were generally of split bamboo, and this practice has been carried down to the present era.
The houses themselves in the early villages were usually located either on the actual strand itself or in proximity to a convenient harbor. Often huts dotted the gentler banks of the small rivers so that the inhabitants would easily have a good water supply and a place for bathing and washing clothes (after they began to wear them). In some cases, villages were settled, as on the southern-mountain coast, high on hilltops to make them secure against attack. Often the early beach villages ran to 150 houses, while the interior villages seldom ran above 20 houses each.
By modern Western standards the early houses could scarcely be said to contain much in the way of furniture. The only parallel to be drawn here is that everything in the ancient Chamorro house was completely functional. There were common floor mats, diagonally braided, and softer sleeping mats, some of them extremely fine in texture being made from the leaves of the textile screw pine. Water vessels were fashioned from lengths of large hollow bamboo stalks, five or six feet long and open at one end, filled, and supported against the side of a wall for storage.
Coarsely woven pandanus (textile screw pine) held everything from dried breadfruit to rice. Each native carried a small finely woven sack of some type of native material to hold his individual supply of betel nut and pepper leaves and the necessary pinch of lime. Coarse portage baskets were created from soft fresh coconut leaves as the need arose. These were utilized until they were stiff and dry and then discarded, probably into a kitchen fire to swell the blaze. Bamboo baskets were the most pliable of all types and the most durable. The skill of making these has been handed down, and there are still excellent ones to be found on the island.
FOOD
In ancient times the Chamorros' diet was simple and salutary. It consisted mainly of the various indigenous island fruits (see Chapter 2—Other Food Staples), yams, taro root, and various salt-water fish. Coconuts were prepared in many different fashions; sugar cane provided a ready natural sweet by chewing sections of the fresh stalk; bananas were eaten raw or cooked (in the case of plantains) over roasting fires. The ubiquitous breadfruit was always there, either to be eaten hot from stone ovens for part of the year or baked and stored dry in thatched communal storerooms to be drawn on during the remainder of the year. Yams were a favorite with the aborigines and were baked in the earthen ovens covered with hot stones.
Following hurricanes, during times of near famine, the natives would seek the cycas or fadang nuts as a prime source of food in the inner valleys unstripped of their vegetation by the storms. These nuts have certain poisonous properties which are removed by soaking them in frequent changes of fresh water, and though palatable enough, they are seldom eaten except in times of emergency. The pulpy, starchlike residue created by soaking is further reduced with native stone pestle and mortar before molding and baking the nuts into a heavy sort of bread.
Primitive relishes were made from certain dried seaweeds. Seaweed is still part of a Chamorro sauce served today with deep-fried prawns. This sauce includes, besides ground seaweed, soya juice, small fiery Guamanian peppers, a bit of lime juice, and various native spices. Formerly nuts were much used in augmenting the diet; terminalia nuts and the kernels of the textile screw pine were once much sought after.
Although rice was willingly sold to the early navigators who stopped at Guam, it was not considered a common staple by the aborigines, being reserved for their principal feasts and special occasions such as weddings and funerals, when it was used as a base for a seasoned fish broth or stew. Maize and sweet potatoes were not cultivated before Magellan's discovery, being a Spanish introduction brought with other innovations from the Western world. (See Chapter 2—Other Food Staples.)
The aboriginal taste for food did not include fresh meat. The Chamorros have no record either of eating animal flesh or of early cannibalism and, up to the date when pork was introduced, presumably by the Spanish, records show that they apparently ate no fresh meat at all. Although they kept fowl as pets, there is no evidence that these animals were ever slaughtered and eaten. Even fresh-water fish (as was cited in the case of eels) held no appeal for them, except for the fresh-water shrimp and a shore-bound spiny lobster living near the fresh-water discharges into lagoons. The aborigines spoke disparagingly of the Jesuit missionaries and the itinerant navigators who enjoyed the flesh of animals.
Juice of the grated coconut was used in food and was an integral part of their principal dishes. As was the classic custom throughout the tropical Pacific, the Chamorri cooked their food covered, alternating leaves between layers of stones in the manner of a Polynesian luau, although the pits were not as deep. Poi, the fermented paste of the taro plant's root, was unknown to the aborigines.
It is interesting to note that in all their diet few items were consumed raw. Fish or manahag was dried in abundance, and stored away for future requirements. Breadfruit was cut into thin slices and dried, without being first baked, for the drying process served the same curative purpose as baking. Dried slices were palatable without further preparation, like dried prunes or apricots. Sometimes they were cut up and incorporated in hot-food dishes.
There was neither a native wine or spirit on Guam nor in the rest of the Marianas until the Spanish occupation. Besides the milk of young coconuts, the only Chamorro beverage was water. They did not even use the various aromatic leaves of island plants as a source of native tea. Temperance in diet was their watchword, and they attributed their tall splendid bodies, radiant health, and great strength to their particular feeding and working and leisure habits.
NATIVE ARTS
In the useful arts—such as the construction of their fine, sturdy houses and their fabulous outrigger canoes—this glowing health was a great aid. It contributed to the incredible design and utility of their flying praos, to the swift and lethal slings they fashioned, to their woodworking instruments of stone, their finely plaited fishing nets, and their hooks and lines.
The arts of woodcarving, engraving, or true weaving with the aid of looms were not among their skills, oddly enough. They braided their mats diagonally in the primitive Polynesian fashion, and their nets, though efficient, were not actually woven.
Houses were built in communal effort by male labor while the female contingency braided the necessary interior household mats, the carrying bags, the storage bags, the bed mats, and the long crisscross strips of tough lightweight matting from which the lateen-type sails for canoes were made.
Pottery was unknown too, and the aforementioned bamboo or crude gouged wooden vessels substituted for this art. The fishhooks referred to above were sometimes made from mother-of-pearl, sometimes from tortoise shell, and carved by hand. Fish were caught either by trawling from canoes or by net casting along the shore. Spear fishing from the reefs at low tide was practiced, and night fishing on the reefs by torch at low tide is still a popular and frequent diversion with the native population.
The 20th-century industrialization of the populated areas of Guam has reduced the need or desire to follow ancient custom, and the native arts are slowly dying out. Modernization, however, has not altered too