Magellan in Edo
Magellan in Edo first Chapter draft
Magellan in Edo
The first known contact between Guam and Western Europe occurred when Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, anchored his small 3-ship fleet in Umatac Bay on March 6, 1521. Magellan had started out in Spain with five ships but by the time they reached the Marianas they were down to three ships and lost close to half their crew. One of the five original ships got destroyed, and after seeing the first ship go down another ship had a mutiny and took off. So two of the five ships and its men were lost by the time they got to the Marianas. Hungry and weakened from their long voyage, the crew quickly prepared to go ashore and restore provisions. However, the excited native Chamorros, who did not share the Spaniards concept of ownership or subsistence living, canoed out first and began helping themselves to everything that was not nailed down to the ship. "The aboriginals were willing to engage in barter... Their love of gain overcame every other consideration" Magellan mistakes the curious Chamorros as thieves, naming Guam the "Island of Thieves". The weakened sailors had trouble fending off the tall and robust natives until a few shots from the Trinidad's big guns frightened them off the ship and they retreated into the surrounding jungle. Magellan was eventually able to obtain rations and offered iron, a commodity highly prized by Neolithic peoples, in exchange for fresh fruits, vegetables, and water. Details of Magellan's visit, and the first known Western documentation of Guam and the Chamorro, come from the journal of Antonio Pigafetta, one of Magellan's 18 original crew members to survive Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe.
Magellan decided to discover the islands north which was also settled by the Chamorro since he felt that the Chamorros were a nice people and want to discover more about them. He discovered new islands at the north of the island of the Chamorros called the Marianas Islands and then islands which were uninhabited which is now known as Ogasawara/Bonnin islands which were empty, which led to the Izu and Hachijo(Hachigio) Islands and later to Edo in Nihon.
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