-:- little vision tricksters -:-
-:- the people of the past - the taotao mona of guam -:-
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Guam is the metropolis of the Western Pacific Ocean . Situated at about the same latitude as Bangkok , Thailand , but about six hours’ plane flight east, it lies in the northwest quadrant of the group of archipelagos, islands and atolls known as Micronesia . With a population of 110,000, Guam is easily the most populous region for miles around, and a sizeable majority of this population is made up of the native Chamorro people.
Even today, in the modern urbanised sprawl of towns such as Yona and Hagatna, the Chamorro still hold a healthy respect for spirits believed to live in the wild and remote places in the southern half of the island.
These are the Taotao Mona, the people before recorded time. With the Spanish invasion of the island in 1672 and subsequent war which wiped out the vast majority of the Chamorro population, the previous religious and cultural systems collapsed. Memories persist of a time before the war when great ancestral spirits called aniti who were worshipped and remembered by all residents of particular villages.
But with the Chamorro culture all but destroyed and the Catholic faith gaining ground rapidly, beliefs in a generalised group of ancestral spirits began, and so the Taotao Mona began.
The Taotao Mona can appear as a large or strong person, but just as often they can seem as a ‘white lady’ surrounded by scents and lemon flowers. The most common form, however, is called in the Chamorro language a duende – a childlike figure that causes mischief and makes trespassers ill.
If a person happens to go into the jungle, to gather plants, or to visit an ancient burial site, he or she must always ask the permission of the resident Taotao Mona to pass through. Just as common is the belief that a person must whistle when passing through these areas so as to alert the Taotao Mona to his or her presence and so not startle them unnecessarily. If they should be startled or disturbed, they may pinch skin and also have the power to make a trespasser ill, and the only cure is to ask for forgiveness from these beings.
During a visit to Guam some years ago, I met numerous Chamorros (*2) who had a very firm respect and awareness of these spooks, and during a tour of the island that I was given, there were some places that were definitely ‘off limits’ on account of the Taotao Mona living there.
To a certain extent, one can see these beings as a kind of ‘territorial guardians’ detailing the areas which were unavailable for human habitation and use, as well as defining the boundaries of human society.
This type of ‘spook function’ – that is to say, a sociological, psychological or spiritual function to which the belief in the ‘spook’ is put by a given society – is very common across the world and seems to speak of a deeply ingrained human sense that some places in the environment, particularly very remote or extremely fertile places, are places of raw power, where a mere human cannot voyage unprotected or at all. This type of thinking would make sound evolutionary sense in societies before the advent of ‘protective’ societies such as the city state, since it would be easy to get lost or die of exposure in such remote places.
However, we also note a distinctly magical aspect to the Taotao Mona which was not found in the Ebu Gogo of Flores. A purely territorial guardian spook might be expected to take the form of a huge, man-devouring monster, rather than small, childlike magical being. Additionally, in Chamorro beliefs, the connection between the current Taotao Mona, the historical aniti and the inhabitants of Guam who lived before the Spanish Conquest is made explicit.
We have, then, exactly the type of multiple-functioned example that was discussed earlier: the spook as magical being, as ancestor and (in this case) as guardian of the boundaries. Exactly the same multiple functions are common and, as we see in the next case, can be found on the other side of the world, in Europe .
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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