Economic Systems

The matao fashioned the iron they acquired from trading with visiting ship crews into traditional tools, including punches, drills, fish hooks and adze blades. The most prominently mentioned application was canoe construction, a major preoccupation of high status men. The Marianas outrigger canoe played a vital role as the integrating mechanism for the islanders’ cultural unity, connecting their tano’ tasi (land of the sea) via inter-island transportation, communication and trade.

Between 1565 and 1665, Guam’s southwest coast received sporadic visits from Spanish vessels, including the first wreck of a trade galleon (San Pablo, 1568), as well as the first encounters with Dutch and English mariners.  However, a more significant exchange venue was established in the 30-mile wide Rota Channel to trade with the Spanish ships crossing regularly from New Spain (Mexico) to the Philippines.

Members of the matao, the highest-ranking strata of Mariana Islands society in the 16th and 17th centuries, carried on the first sustained cultural interaction and commercial exchange between Pacific Islanders and Europeans. From Ferdinand Magellan’s 1521 visit through the establishment of the 1668 Spanish Jesuit mission, these island traders, primarily from Guam and Rota, regularly bartered food staples and craftwork for iron goods with Spanish exploration and trade vessels, Dutch expeditions and English privateers.