primary association with the word "tropical" is usually "coconut," and in terms of Guam's past, although no longer true, the coconut was one of the prime life sources since aboriginal times. The first accurate description of the coconut was published in Dampier's Voyages from observations made by him during his Guam visit of 1686. Magellan's chronicler, Pigafetta, had noted that the natives had used coconut oil scented with flowers to anoint their bodies and hair, but Dampier's description is more elaborate:
"The Nut or Fruit grows at the head of the Tree, [he writes] among the Branches and Clusters, 10 to 12 in a Cluster. . . . The Nut is generally bigger than a Man's Head. . . . The Kernel in some Nuts is very thick sticking to the inside of the Shell clear round, leaving a hollow in the middle of it, which contains about a Pint, more or less, according to the bigness of the Nut. . . .
"This Cavity is full of sweet, delicate, wholesome and refreshing Water. While the Nut is growing, all inside is full of this Water, without any Kernel at all; but as the Nut grows toward Maturity, the Kernel begins to gather and settle round on the inside of the Shell, and is soft like Cream; and as the Nut ripens, it increaseth in substance and becomes hard. The ripe Kernel is sweet enough, but very hard to digest, therefore seldom eaten, unless by strangers, who know not the effects of it; but while it is young and soft like Pap, some Men will eat it, scraping it out with a Spoon, after they have drunk the water that was within it. I like the Water best when the Nut is almost ripe, for it is then sweetest and briskest."
Dampier goes on to describe how the nut falls to earth, splits, sprouts, feeds upon its meat until it has sent roots securely into the ground, and concludes, after comparing the trees of Guam and their habits with East Indian groves: "These at Guam grow in dry ground, are of middle size, and I think the sweetest that I did ever taste."
Dampier was accurate about the coconut meat; it is seldom eaten ripe by the Pacific Island natives, and Guam is no exception. Fed to cattle it fattens them rapidly, and it is considered excellent human food when a rich custard is made from the grated meat and served in native style with boiled fowl or with crab meat. One reason for the coconut's attractiveness to early voyagers was its portable endurance. However, long before, Dampier and other navigators had discovered that only the milk of the young coconut was bland enough to substitute for water. The milk of mature nuts caused diarrhea.
Besides the conversion of coconut meat into export copra (dried meat which is used for commercial oil and fertilizer), another odd use persists in modern times. The meat is used to fatten the coconut crab which is usually caught at night with bait of freshly-split coconuts laid on the open ground. Legend claims that this crab would climb trees, clip off coconuts with its powerful claws, descend, tear off the husk, and break the shell, forcing the nut open to get at its kernel. But native crab hunters claim that the ayuyu, strong as its pincers are, cannot open the nut by itself. Crabs setting upon coconuts become so engrossed in their greedy work that they are easily taken, and usually penned in a bamboo cage and fattened upon coconuts until they are ready to be boiled and served the same way as cold, cracked sea crab with a side dish of Guamanian sauce. (See Chapter 4—Food.)
In ancient days all the houses of Guam were built with local wooden frames and thatched coconut leaves. Even sword grass from the savannahs was sometimes used. Coconut leaves to be thatched were first dried and split down the midrib, the two halves being placed together in reverse direction and leaflets interwoven diagonally. This was usually the women's work, and leaves thus prepared were then lashed to the wooden framework with strips of pandanus leaves, beginning at the eaves and ending at the ridgepole, the leaves being placed together to form a thick imbricating thatch. Coconut thatch is not durable, however, and even the most painstaking job would not last much longer than four years, due to the intense action of sun and rain. Hurricanes would often quickly destroy the thatching.
Coconut fiber was also popular for plaiting mats, and the pandanus leaf fibers, used in housebuilding as lashing, were exceptionally strong material for making native sun hats, sleeping mats, working mats upon which corn, maize, and other seed were dried, or even large bags for holding and storing rice or corn.
With the advent of Spanish civilization upon the island came a further use for the coconut: the manufacture of toddy (tuba), a fermented drink made from the sap of the coconut tree. The Spanish introduced this beverage in Guam in an effort to reduce the number of natives and nearly succeeded by the production of this drink alone, and later, by the production of aguardiente, an occasionally highly toxic native rum distilled from tuba. The agreeable, passive natives could tolerate the effects of their local plant narcotics, the areca palm nut and the betel pepper leaf, but alcoholic drink was more of a scourge than a release. Actually, according to Padre Blanco in an early chronicle of the island, the Filipinos were more susceptible to their own poisonous concoction than the Chamorros, and when using aguardiente chronically they suffered great harm—insomnia, loss of appetite, premature old age, great obesity, and often a syndrome of other diseases resembling dropsy and the dreaded scurvy, and sometimes even insanity.
On the other hand, the reliable banana was put to no such devious uses in Guam. It was growing on the island before Magellan. Pigafetta describes "figs a palm long," which were probably the plantain, a large and starchy banana which must be cooked to be palatable. Other varieties, those edible when raw, were introduced in greater variety after the Spanish settled, being brought in by Pacific travelers. One small native banana has a truly delicious perfumed flavor, though not a handsome fruit.
Before the days of refrigeration, a few bananas were exported from Guam, but the crop now is barely sufficient for island needs. In those days the fruit was preserved by cutting it into strips or slices and drying it, or by making it into flour. Ripe bananas were always used for the process, peeled and then sliced lengthwise, dried first by oven heat, and then by the sun. Packed in boxes in a wrapping of dried leaves, they were thus exported. In this form they retained their sun-sweetness and were sugary and flavorful.
Banana flour is still made in the same fashion as in ancient days: from unripe bananas scalded in hot water to facilitate their peeling, sliced and dried, pulverized, sifted, and then packed in moisture-proof containers. Green fruit is best for the process, harvested before the starch has had a chance to convert to sugar. In the old method banana flour was packed into boxes or barrels lined with paper. It is still yellowish of color, sweetly agreeable to the taste. It combines readily with water, eggs, milk, or any sort of broth but will not mold into bread, though it is pleasant for sweet biscuits and cakes.
THE BREADFRUIT TREE
Of all the truly indigenous trees of Guam, perhaps the breadfruit was the most important food staple of the islanders outside of the coconut and rice. Today it would hardly be called an important food staple, although it is used in the remote southern portions of the island as an ancient delicacy on festive, religious, and family occasions. Now it is more admired for its really magnificent shape, its handsome leaves, and the beauty of its melon-like fruit than for its basic usefulness.
There are two main types of breadfruit on Guam: the seedless variety (lemae) and the seeded type (dugdug). The lemae must be propagated by hand and thus grows only in accessible and generally cultivated regions, around homes and in the towns and villages of the island, and its sterility has given rise to the anthropological argument that the tree must certainly have been brought to Guam by the aboriginal settlers when they migrated from Malaysia.
The fruit of the tree, when yellow-ripe, has the consistency and taste of newly baked bread and sweet potato. Although its flavor is not wholly attractive at first sampling, a taste for it can be acquired. In Guam the breadfruit was cooked in the traditional Pacific island fashion, by means of heated stones placed in the ground, with layers of hot stones and leaves alternating with breadfruit, then the whole of this covered over with earth or more stones and allowed to steam until cooked. Even today it is baked in this manner, although the method most popular with early voyagers and the colonial Spanish was to boil or bake it in ovens, or to fry it like sliced potatoes. The Guamanian ovens used in the 19th century were Mexican in origin, their design having been brought by Mexican soldiers who were introduced to assist in one of the periodic "reductions" of the native populace. By the use of this oven the Chamorros eventually devised a long-lasting staple from the shortlived breadfruit