CHamorus were skilled farmers
- Admin
- Jun 15
- 4 min read
When Ferdinand Magellan and his crew landed on Guam in March 1521, they immediately recognized that the CHamorus were skilled farmers.
The CHamorus cultivated a variety of crops and foraged from the forest, demonstrating a deep knowledge of how to produce their own food.
Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s official “travel blogger,” wrote how amazed he was by Guam’s agricultural products, such as bananas, sweet potatoes, coconuts, breadfruit, yams and taro.
Later records also mentioned rice and sugarcane, which the Spanish observed but didn’t document right away, so no one recorded how the islanders grew all the local food.
Fast forward to the 19th century when archaeologists excavated ancient villages and found signs of food preparation and plant use, but proving the ancient farming techniques used there remained a challenge.
A 2012 study titled “Two Probable Latte Period Agricultural Sites in Northern Guam: Their Plants, Soils and Interpretations,” provided insights into how the early CHamorus were already farming before contact with the Western world.
The archaeologists who authored the report—Boyd Dixon, Samuel Walker, Mohammad H. Golabi and Harley Manner—studied soil collected from two possible ancient farm sites in northern Guam. They looked at what was in the dirt, such as plant bits and chemicals, to guess what crops the early people grew and what their farming techniques were.
Radiocarbon dating of planting pits in Guam suggests that the CHamoru people were cultivating taro and yams as far back as A.D. 986 to 1210. The English explorer and navigator William Dampier, who visited in 1686, praised Guam’s abundance of breadfruit, saying he hadn’t seen anything like it elsewhere.
By the late 1800s, Francisco Olive y Garcia, who served as governor of the Marianas from 1884 to 1887, compiled a long list of fruit trees, timber and crops found in the Mariana Islands.
The authors also mentioned that in 1602, the Spanish friar Juan Pobre de Zamora abandoned his ship and spent seven months living with the locals on Rota. While there, he got a front-row seat to island life and the local foods. He observed the CHamoru people growing tubers such as yams and sweet potatoes, and baking delicious breadfruit pies called tazca.
De Zamora also observed the local people enjoying camotes or sweet potatoes, and preparing tasty treats and drinks using rice flour and coconut in a big stone bowl called “mortero.”
Inspired by what he saw, de Zamora decided to begin farming himself. He hiked into the hills and planted a few corn seeds. Guess who was absolutely thrilled with Friar Juan’s efforts? The rats. They came out and happily devoured the newly planted corn seeds in the fields.
While this story may be amusing, de Zamora's planting efforts might have been the first written mention of inland farming in the Marianas.
Even more interesting, it revealed who was really in charge of the farms. De Zamora could have simply asked the women about farming. They were the expert gardeners. Using a special digging stick called a “bonga,” which resembled a sideways knife, they planted and tilled the soil.
During that time, the CHamoru society was matrilineal, meaning that family ties and property were passed down through the women, who held immense power.
For example, if a husband stepped out of line or was unfaithful, his wife and the other village women would kick him out, and her parents would raid his house and take all the valuable belongings. Families farmed lands together—men, women and sometimes helpers from lower-ranking groups— but the land and decisions belonged to the female elders.
Archaeologists who studied Guam’s ancient latte period, around A.D. 1000 to 1668, found clues to the early CHamoru cuisine from the tools they left behind.
Near the stone latte houses and cave camps, archeologists found tools such as the lusong, or big stone mortars used to pound rice out of its hulls; stone axes used to chop trees and shape tools; shell adzes for carving digging sticks; clay griddles for cooking early cakes before 1000 A.D.; big ceramic pots for boiling rice and tubers; stone and shell scrapers for peeling, grating, and preparing plants,; and rock ovens and hearths where they baked breadfruit or cooked over fire like pros.
So yes, the ancient CHamorus had a full kitchen setup—minus the microwave.
The early people of the Mariana Islands left evidence in the soil and tools, offering a glimpse into what meals on the islands looked like in the past. Researchers found banana remnants in the soil on Guam, yam pollen in Tinian’s soil, rice residue in the giant stone mortars on both Guam and Rota, and tiny traces of plant fibers and starch clinging to polished stone tools recovered on Tinian. Researchers also found traces of new foods that the CHamorus adopted from the Spanish, such as corn, along with tools like metates, or grinding stones, and comales, or flat griddles, used to make tasty foods like tortillas.
Boyd and his co-authors pointed out that across both northern and southern Guam, people practiced a form of swidden farming—or slash-and-burn agriculture—setting up temporary camps, harvesting and processing native plants, then moving on to let the land recover.
In the south, they used shallow rock shelters. These farming strategies weren’t random; they were smart, efficient, and adapted to the land and climate.
Anthropologist Darlene R. Moore, in her published work “Archaeological Evidence of a Prehistoric Farming Technique on Guam,” shared her findings from a site in Manenggon Hills, Guam, dating back to the Latte Period.
Although there were no large farming structures, the evidence showed that people were growing and using crops like taro and yams. She also suggested that rice may have been cultivated in the area, based on pottery sherds with rice impressions recovered from different sites.
Researchers noted that while detailed information about the early agricultural systems of the CHamorus and how they grew every crop is lacking, evidence suggests the traditional agriculture on Guam was a “highly diverse, sustainable, and community-driven farming system.”
Raquel Bagnol is a longtime journalist. She worked as a reporter for Marianas Variety on Saipan and Island Times in Palau. Send feedback to gukdako@yahoo.com
Subscribe to
our digital
monthly edition