The ever-curious Pigafetta also describes the interior of the Chamorros’ huts, so it is likely that the Europeans and the Chamorros enjoyed other, more enjoyable encounters than their violent first meeting. Members of the crew probably stayed overnight because Pigafetta was able to offer vignettes of their domestic life. “Their houses are constructed of wood, covered with planks, with fig leaves, which are two ells in length: they have only one floor; their rooms and beds are furnished with mats, which we call matting, which are made of palm leaves, and are very beautiful, and they lie down on palm straw, which is soft and fine.”
During his visit, Pigafetta examined the Chamorros’ most advanced piece of technology, their highly maneuverable proas, paying special attention to their ingenious counterweight. “Some are black and white, and others red. And on the other side of the sail they have a large spar pointed at the top. Their sails are of palm leaf sewn together like a lateen sail to the right of the tiller. And they have for steering oars certain blades like a shovel. And there is no difference between the stern and the bow in the said boats, which resemble dolphins jumping from wave to wave.” He even included a crude sketch showing a small vessel with two oarsmen facing each other; in the middle of the craft, a single mast holds a lateen sail, and most strikingly, the counterweight balancing the hull, projecting straight toward the viewer. Curiously, Pigafetta (or whoever made these sketches for him) depicted the Chamorros as water-borne warriors in hoods and tunics, giving them a decidedly European appearance; in reality, they were naked, or nearly so.
The European visitors were surprised to find that the Chamorros possessed very few arms; their most dangerous weapon consisted of a stick with a fishbone attached to one end, and it was used not for combat but to catch flying fish. It now appeared that the armada’s initial encounter with the Chamorros might have been a tragic misunderstanding, because Pigafetta, trying as usual to communicate with the local populace, determined that they had been startled more than anything else. “According to the signs they made,” he wrote, the Chamorros thought that “there were no other men in the world besides them.” If this was the case, and the armada had disturbed an isolated island society, the Chamorros’ hostile response becomes understandable, as does their fascination with Trinidad’s skiff, the one piece of equipment in the armada that bore resemblance to their own canoes. In addition, the Chamorros had no concept of private property, and so they believed the newcomers’ possessions belonged to one and all. On this basis, they had been equally pleased to share their food and supplies with the starving intruders. Nevertheless, Pigafetta and Magellan decided that the Chamarros’ worst offense was their thievery, and the Captain General christened the island, as well as two others nearby, the Islas de los Ladrones—the Islands of the Thieves.
A more accurate name might have been the Islands of the Sharers.
On March 9, 1521, as the armada left the island, the Chamorros reacted with anger, perhaps feeling insulted or betrayed by the unexpected departure. Over a hundred proas took to the water. “They approached our ships, showing us fish, and feigning to give it to us. But they threw stones at us, and then ran away, and in their flight they passed with their little boats between the boat which is tied at the poop and the ship going at full sail; but they did this so quickly, and with such skill, that it is a wonder.”
As Magellan led his enfeebled crew out of the harbor, they observed the effects of the violence they had visited on the Chamorros. “We saw some of these women, who cried out and tore their hair, and I believe that it was for the love of those whom we had killed,” Pigafetta recorded.
Although the fruit and vegetables they had acquired would soon begin to restore the scurvy-ridden crew to health, one was too sick to recover. Master Andrew of Bristol, as he was listed in the fleet’s roster, died, and his earthly remains joined those of his other deceased shipmates in watery repose. The only British crew member, he had served as the fleet’s master gunner; the post was immediately filled by Hans Bergen, a Norwegian.
Once again, the fleet plunged blindly into the expanses of the western Pacific, with no clear idea how to reach the Spice Islands.
Had Magellan tarried among the Chamorros, he might have learned valuable lessons about navigating across the Pacific. Like other island tribes, the Chamorros had techniques for identifying distant landmasses. They were adept at reading the ocean swells to maintain a course; they could distinguish between distracting swells raised by winds in the area and the widely spaced, regular swells useful for orienting a ship. The swells contained other clues to the whereabouts of remote islands, because they tended to bounce off islands or even to curve around them. By studying the patterns of the swells, an experienced navigator could make educated guesses about the distances and locations of various islands.
Island tribes also studied birds for signs of land. By simply following a bird’s trail at the end of the day, when it flew to its nest after a day’s fishing on the open ocean, island navigators could reach land.
They studied clouds. The higher islands in the Pacific interfere with the trade winds, causing mist and vapors to collect above the landmasses. Magellan’s lookout had seen this effect when he first spied land and was unable to distinguish the island of Guam from the surrounding clouds. Even the underside of clouds contained valuable information because they reflected the color of the ocean directly below. If the underside happened to be tinged with jade, it was likely reflecting the greenish shallow water covering an atoll or reef.
They also sensed patterns in the placement of the islands, which tended to be scattered in long archipelagos; if they found one island, they would know approximately where to look for others.
For celestial navigation, island tribes employed a significantly different system than the Europeans used. Instead of relying on instruments, they developed a so-called star compass, a mental construct in which points along the endless, undifferentiated horizon were determined by places where stars and constellations rose and set. With this construct, island navigators subdivided the horizon into thirty-two segments, just as European compass bearings did. Rather than rely on terms equivalent to north, south, east and west, the island system named the points after the star or constellation. Unlike the European system, the thirty-two segments migrated with the stars, resulting in irregular bearings. In addition, the island navigator assumed that his proa was stationary, and the reference points on earth and in the sky were on the move. His reference point was the vessel, not landmarks, not even the stars. This custom may have derived from a common illusion experienced by sailors that their vessels seem to be motionless while landmarks slide by: hence the European sailor’s tendency to say that an island falls astern of the boat, as if the island itself were on the move.
In the preliterate societies that Magellan encountered, the island system of navigation worked as well as, if not better than, the flawed European system, which still lacked the ability to determine longitude accurately.
Magellan set a westward course, journeying deeper into the unexplored reaches of the Pacific in his quest for the Moluccas. The revitalized fleet enjoyed another marvelous week of sailing downwind, making seven or eight knots—top speed.