page_title: Chamorro people
section_title: Early Chamorros
hierarchical_section_title: Chamorro people / Early Chamorros
caption_attribution_description: English: Chamorro girls in 1930s日本語: 1930年代のチャモロ人少女
context_page_description: The Chamorro people are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, politically divided between the United States territory of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Micronesia. Today, significant Chamorro populations also exist in several U.S. states including Hawaii, California, Washington, Texas, Tennessee, Oregon, and Nevada. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 65,000 people of Chamorro ancestry live in Guam and another 19,000 live in the Northern Marianas. Another 93,000 live outside the Marianas in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States. The Chamorros are primarily Austronesian, but many also have European and Southeast Asian ancestry.
context_section_description: The Chamorro are commonly believed to have arrived in the Marianas Islands from Southeast Asia circa 2,000 BC. They are most closely related to other Austronesian-speaking natives from the Philippines, eastern Indonesia (specifically in Maluku and Sulawesi), Taiwanese aborigines, as well as peoples of the Caroline Islands to the south (in particular the outer islands of the Federated States of Micronesia state of Yap). They were expert seafarers and skilled craftspeople familiar with intricate weaving and detailed pottery-making. The latte stone, a megalithic rock pillar topped with a hemispherical capstone, was used by early Chamorros as foundation for buildings and has since been appropriated as a national symbol.
  Chamorro society was based on what sociologist Dr. Lawrence J. Cunningham termed the “matrilineal avuncuclan”, one characteristic of which is that the brother(s) of the female parent plays a more primary paternal role than biological male parent of a child.
  
  Native Guamanians, ethnically called Chamorros, are of basically southeast Asian (probably Indonesian) descent with a considerable admixture of Spanish, Mexican, Filipino and other European and East Asian ancestries. Chamorros and other Micronesians constitute about half the population.
caption: Chamorro girls in the 1930s
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