A Pacific Red-Letter Day
p. 35 · Read in the full issue
Just in case you hadn’t noticed, we hereby draw your attention to the fact that March 6 this year is the 450th anniversary of the sighting by Western man of his first Pacific Islanders.
The event we celebrate is Magellan’s discovery, on March 6, 1521, of the islands of Guam and Rota, from which a number of islanders came out to greet him in swift outrigger canoes.
The islanders proved to be expert thieves, for which reason Magellan called their islands the Ladrones.
Magellan reached the Ladrones (now the Marianas) 98 hungry days after leaving the strait that now bears his name. He was exceedingly irritated by the pilfering propensities of the islanders . and took 40 armed men ashore, burned 40 or 50 houses and several boats, and killed seven men. This was “vengeance which may he called ample,” as the historian J. C. Beaglehole once put it.