The culture of Guam reflects traditional Chamorro customs in a combination of indigenous pre-Hispanic forms, as well as American, Spanish and Mexican traditions. Post-European-contact CHamoru Guamanian culture is a combination of American, Spanish, Filipino, other Micronesian Islander and Mexican traditions. Few indigenous pre-Hispanic customs remained following Spanish contact, but include plaiting and pottery, and there has been a resurgence of interest among the CHamoru to preserve the language and culture. Hispanic influences are manifested in the local language, music, dance, sea navigation, cuisine, fishing, games (such as , , , and ), songs and fashion.
Background and customs
The island's original community is of Chamorro natives who have inhabited Guam for almost 4000 years. They had their own language related to the languages of Indonesia and southeast Asia. The Spanish later called them Chamorros, a derivative of the local word Chamurre (meaning of Chamorri is "noble race"). They began to grow rice on the island. The modern CHamoru language has many historical parallels to modern Philippine languages in that it is an Austronesian language which has absorbed much Spanish vocabulary. The language lies within the Malayo-Polynesian languages subgroup, along with such languages as Tagalog, Indonesian, Hawaiian, and Maori. Unlike most other languages of the Pacific Islands, CHamoru does not belong to the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian languages. Western people came to the island from the 16th century and wrote about the culture of these people. Many scientists (including ethnologists, doctors, botanists, archeologists) came to Guam from Spain, Russia, France to study from the 1700s, apart from Spanish governors who had written on the local people. Many of their collections are now in the Guam Museum.
Dress
Early European navigators and missionaries described the aboriginal inhabitants of Guam: the men wore their hair loose or coiled in a knot on top of their heads, though there are also records of men with shaving their heads with the exception of a patch of hair about a finger long, which they left on the crown. Some of them also wore beards. They wore hats called akgak, made out of the leaves of the Pandanus plant. Carrying a carved walking stick was a style among young men. Men were in charge of constructing houses and canoes, fishing, hunting birds, fruit bats and coconut crabs, as well as growing their own crops.
Women's hair was worn very long, often reaching to the ground. Women wore a lower body covering in the form of a small apron-like garment made of the inner bark of trees. They also wore a top called a tifi made out of gunot, while men remained bare-chested due to hot climatic conditions. Women occupied themselves with weaving baskets, mats, and hats of Pandanus leaves, and doing other forms of domestic labor around the house. Women decorated themselves with flowers and belts made of coconut shells as adornments over their skirts, and also wore a head dress made of tortoise shells. In addition to domestic chores, women were also involved in fishing in the reefs and collecting wild breadfruit called dokdok from the forest.
Marriage and festivals
Before marriage, it was customary for young men to live in concubinage with young women, whom they purchased from their families with gifts. Frequently a number of young men and young women would live together in one large public house, as is also the custom among the Igorot of Luzon. After marriage, a husband was expected to be content with one wife, and a wife with one husband, at a time. Divorces were noted as being frequent, with the children and the household property staying with the wife.
Festivals were celebrated with the men and women collecting in separate groups, forming semi-circles. They would sing and chant their ancestral legends and fables. Sometimes these traditional songs would be sung with treble, contralto, and falsetto singers in a three-part harmony. The songs were accompanied by certain gestures and movements of the body. Women used rattles and castanets made of shells to make music as well.