Since so much of modern knowledge is based on European ideas, there was once a consensus that the only way in which the islands in the Pacific could have been peopled was through constant and regular accidents and drift voyages. As so much of the idea of Europe was based on its ties to the land, so much of its self-aggrandized ascension, its elevation above the world was tied to the way it claimed to have conquered the ocean. Thus in the medulla oblongata of the Western world, it was inconceivable that anyone prior to Magellan, Columbus, De Gama and others could have braved the unknown and rather frightening ocean. Especially if they weren’t Europeans.
But, by the time Europeans arrived in the Pacific, there had been people living and traveling here for thousands of years. I find it particularly strange that people still unconsciously cling to the phrasing that what people such as Magellan and Columbus did was “discoveries” despite the fact that they were several thousand years late in finding whatever it is they are celebrated as stumbling upon.
If you ever wonder why, despite the world being globalized and things such as human rights coming into existence which appear to level or flatten the world and demote the privileges that Europe and the West used to insist it deserves, that Europe and the West continue to dominate things even at the most minute and private levels, notice how “discovery” is still embedded in the way people talk. Even though people know that they didn’t discover anything, they still attribute to them that status of naming and creating something with their mere presence. Even though Europe is not the world, people can still give them the world, still give them that ability to make the world and make its history. So for a while, the idea reigned that the Pacific was populated before Europeans arrived because random groups of people in tiny canoes off the coast of Asia and Australia, got caught in huge storms and were dragged out hundreds or thousands of miles into the Pacific, and ended up drifting accidentally towards their island paradises.
However, thankfully this notion has been contested. In the case of Guam for instance, the closest Asian land is still more than a thousand miles west and so it is extremely unlikely that a storm could have tossed any vessel that far. Furthermore, what we now know is that the wind and water currents west of Guam all push west and not east, which means that the chances of something drifting from Asia to Guam are almost impossible. Within the islands in the Pacific, drift voyages and accidental discoveries are possible, but not in the case of that first arrival in Guam.
So we can conclude for the most part, that people came into the Pacific, in places such as Guam intentionally. They might have done this for many reasons which we can never truly know. They may have been fleeing pressures in Asia, they may have simply wanted to seek out and explore new lands. One thing we can be certain of is that they were skillful navigators. They knew what they were doing, they knew how to handle sailing against the wind and current into a completely new ocean. It might have taken several voyages for them to make it to Guam, but we can assume that eventually they did.
As another Chamorro month ends and we reflect and celebrate our continued existence of Chamorros as a people, it is important that we remember that incredible voyage 4,000 years ago, one of the greatest feats of human history that started our story.
MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA
Mangilao, Guam
