Part V · The Islands of the West
Chapter 15
The Islands of Thieves
Guam, the Mariana Islands
At Guam the Chamorro carry off whatever they can from the ships, including a skiff, which to them may have been fair exchange. Magellan burns their houses, takes the skiff back, and names the islands the Ladrones: the Islands of Thieves.
6 March 1521
Three islands rise from the sea, and the largest is high and green. Magellan heads for it to get fresh food. Before the ships can anchor, a fleet of small boats races out to meet them.
The boats are like nothing the Europeans have seen. They are narrow and brightly painted black, white or red, with sails made of woven palm leaves, and a long float on poles on one side to keep them upright. They can sail with either end in front, and they skim over the waves so fast that Pigafetta compares them to dolphins leaping from wave to wave.
The islanders swarm aboard the ships and carry off whatever they can lay their hands on, “so that we could not protect ourselves.” As the sailors struggle to take in the sails, some of the islanders very neatly cut loose the small boat tied to the flagship’s stern and paddle away with it.
7 March 1521
Magellan is enraged by the loss of the boat. He goes ashore with forty armed men. They burn forty or fifty houses and many boats, kill seven people, and take back the skiff.
Before they land, some of the sick men beg the others, if they kill any of the islanders, to bring back the entrails, believing it will cure them at once. It is a measure of how desperate they have become.
Then Pigafetta writes something that shows his decency. When the crossbow bolts pass right through the islanders’ bodies, the wounded men pull at the shafts, first from one side and then from the other, and draw them out, staring at them in amazement, and die. Others shot in the chest do the same. It “moved us to great compassion.” These people have never seen such weapons.
The landing party loads up with what food it can find: coconuts, sweet potatoes, fish, bananas. For the first time in fourteen weeks, the men eat fresh food.
9 March 1521
As the ships sail away, more than a hundred canoes follow them for over a league. The islanders come alongside holding up fish, as if to offer them, then throw stones and dart away. They pass between the ships and the boats towed behind them with complete ease. Pigafetta sees women in the canoes crying out and tearing their hair, “for love, I believe, of those whom we had killed.”
He does his best to describe these people fairly. They have no single ruler, he says. They go naked, wear palm-leaf hats, and stain their teeth red and black, which they think beautiful. The women’s black hair hangs almost to the ground. They live in wooden houses with floors and windows, and sleep on fine palm mats. Their favourite pastime, men and women alike, is to “plough the seas” in their boats.
Magellan names the islands the Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves. Pigafetta adds a strange note: the islanders seemed to believe “that there were no other people in the world but themselves.”
After what had just happened, they may have wished it were true.