Autonomy, Mobility, and Identity: The Re Tamuning of Guam, 1869–1901

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between 1869–1901, a community of migrants from the Central Carolinian atoll of Namonuito made a new home on the periphery of Agaña, the colonial capital of the Spanish Marianas. Named Tamuning, the enclave was founded as part of a wider series of northward migrations from the Central Carolines. The people of Tamuning perpetuated a collective identity as Refaluwasch – called carolinos or Carolinians in two colonial languages – which distinguished them from the rest of Guamanian society. Being carolino constituted a claim to communal autonomy and interisland mobility. The people of Tamuning, while nominally subordinate to the governor in Agaña, were not restricted to Guam and found opportunities across the transition from Spanish to US or German rule. As a microhistory of transoceanic migration, imperial transition, and identity-making in the western Pacific, the history of Tamuning captures the dynamism and resilience of Refaluwasch institutions of leadership and kinship across multiple colonial regimes.