NA' TAOTAO TUMANO'

 

FIESTA SCHEDULE FROM 1977

NA' TAOTAO TUMANO' is a Chamorro term used on Guam for the communal meal served to the faithful who attend a parish fiesta or feast.

To understand the concept, one must think of the olden days when people traveled on foot or by bull cart from one village to another, many times taking many hours to reach the destination.

The feast of Saint Joseph in Inalåhan is a good example. Being such a popular saint, and patron of the men, many people from Hagåtña went down to Inalåhan for the feast (called the Patrosinio) in March. Due to the distance and the long travel time, going to the Patrosinio was a whole 2-day commitment. People had to spend the night in Inalåhan, sleeping at relatives or friends' homes.

People did the same when it came to all the southern fiestas. Even Hågat and Sumay, which were closer to Hagåtña, took some time to get to.

So the people of the village receiving these guests from other places felt obliged to feed the people when the religious services were completed. They wanted to feed the pilgrims.

A pilgrim is someone who makes a journey for a religious purpose.

The Chamorro word for "pilgrim" is taotao tumano'. The Chamorro word na' means "food."

Na' taotao tumano' means "food for the pilgrim."

TUMANO' comes from the Chamorro word for "land" or TÅNO'. People traveled by land to get from village to village, so to tumano' means to travel by land (tåno').

Nowadays, it takes less than an hour, and many times less than twenty minutes, to go from home to the church holding the fiesta, but many people still call it the na' taotao tumano'. I hope we never lose the term. It reminds us what a pilgrim is.

FAMILIA : CELIS

The center of the CELIS family is Saipan, but there is a small branch on Guam.

It all began with a man named AGATÓN CELIS from the Philippines. Records are not consistent in telling us where in the Philippines he was from. Some records say he was from Malate, a district of Manila. Other records say he was from Camarines Norte, a province in the Bicol region. It's possible he was born in Camarines Norte then later moved to Malate, Manila.

Agatón was a soldier under the Spaniards in the Philippines but, in 1843, he was found guilty of some crime, it seems likely a military rebellion, and exiled to Guam. He was on good terms with Governor Santa María of Guam, who employed him in the Government in Hagåtña. It seems he was engaged in clerical work, as he talks about using his pen.

Later he was assigned to Tinian, when that island only had a temporary community of a dozen men who did some animal husbandry for the Guam market, the income being spent on the care of lepers.

Then he was assigned to Saipan as a teacher for the Carolinians, and assisted in teaching what they needed to know to become Catholics. In 1856, he petitioned to have his case pardoned and to receive a salary for his teaching. It was a petition supported by the Chamorro mayor of Saipan and the Spanish priest of Saipan, as well as the Spanish Governor of the Marianas based on Guam.

While in Saipan he married a Carolinian woman in 1857 by the name of Enriqueta Antonia (Aurora). Records about her origins are also not consistent, some saying Eauripik and others saying Lamotrek. Her Christian names are also not always consistent. Sometimes Aurora is added to her names. She would have also had a Carolinian name from birth. Lasiguerag is mentioned as her Carolinian personal name.

Agatón was such an early settler in Saipan that a stream, spring and valley in the Tanapag area are called Sadog As Agatón, Bo'bo' As Agatón and Kannat As Agatón respectively. Sometimes people skip saying the "As."

It's possible that these areas were named after Agatón Celis because he owned land here.

The As Agaton area just south of Tanapag was used as a village or camp for Samoans exiled by the Germans to Saipan in 1909 until the Japanese sent them back to Samoa.

Agatón and Enriqueta had at least these three children that I know of :

IGNACIA, born in Saipan in 1858. She had a son Felipe, born in 1892 with no father stated in his birth record. Felipe married Ana Díaz Castro, daughter of Rodrigo and Luciana. Ana was born in Guam but moved with her parents to Saipan as a child. From them came Celis descendants.

Ignacia had a daughter María who had children out of wedlock, some of whom carried forward the Celis surname.

CARMEN, born in Saipan in 1860, married Simeón Muña Camacho, son of Juan Camacho and Francisca Muña, two of the earliest settlers of Saipan from Guam.

JUAN, born in Saipan in 1865, married María Garrido Iriarte of Guam. It seems Juan lived on Guam at times because a son, José Iriarte Celis, seems to have been born in Guam sometime in the late 1880s. Another son, Joaquín, seems to have been born on Guam around 1891. Joaquín never married. Neither Juan, nor his sons José and Joaquín, appear in the 1897 Guam Census, leading me to believe that they moved back to Saipan, perhaps because María had died, since Juan married (again) in 1896 in Saipan with a Carolinian woman named Nicolasa Huarong. No children seem to have come from this second marriage.

José and Joaquín reappear in the Guam records after 1900 so they must have left Saipan for Guam and settled on Guam for good, with José eventually marrying Nieves Namauleg Tuncap, the daughter of Jaun de Ocampo Tuncap, a Filipino, and Escolástica Angoco Namauleg from Aniguak. Their descendants spell the name CELES, but in the past spelling was inconsistent and both Celis and Celes were used across the board. So the Guam family spells it Celes, but they are of the same clan as the Saipan Celis.

A small, village street in Tanapag, Saipan is named after the founder of the Celis family, Agatón Celis.

Sometimes the Celis family is known as familian Agatón, even though there is only one Celis clan in all the Marianas.

HOW TO SAY "DULCE NOMBRE"

 

The name of Guam's cathedral-basilica is a Spanish one. Dulce Nombre de María, which means "the Sweet Name of Mary." It's been called this since the beginning, when Sanvitores built the first Catholic church in the Marianas more or less at this present site in 1668 (it was dedicated on February 2, 1669, but construction began earlier).

Being a Spanish name, some people wonder how to pronounce it.

Well, there's more than one answer to that question, but there aren't dozens of answers to it. There are a few correct ways to say it, and many more incorrect ways to say it, depending on what language has borrowed the Spanish original.

In this video, I'll cut to the chase and start off pronouncing it the standard way of saying it as said by the majority of Spanish speakers, which is the way it was said on Guam (and still should be).

Then I will say it using two other possible pronunciations, and finally I will explain how one pronunciation is a confusing of Latin/Italian pronunciation and Spanish and should not be followed.

LISTEN....

A WRONG WAY TO SAY IT

Many years ago, someone started mixing up Spanish and Latin (or Italian).

He probably did this because there is a Latin hymn to Mary (the Salve Regina) which ends with the words "DULCIS Virgo Maria." 

Latin was the language of ancient Rome and is the historical language of the Roman Catholic Church. The Spanish word DULCE is based on the Latin word DULCIS, and they both mean the same - "sweet."

But Latin and Spanish have different rules of pronunciation. In Latin, a C before I, E, OE or AE is pronounced like a CH. So, in church Latin, DULCIS sounds like DULCHIS.

But this is not so in Spanish.  In Spanish, a C before an E or an I is NOT pronounced like a CH. It is pronounced like an S, among the majority of Spanish speakers, or in northern and central Spain, like a TH.

So that person was confusing Spanish with Latin (or Italian, which has a similar pronunciation of C before E or I). Hearing the Salve Regina week after week (it is traditionally sung in church on Saturday mornings), he got used to hearing the Latin pronunciation and started using it with a Spanish word. I have no other way of guessing why he made this switch, but it all began with him. I never heard anyone ever say DUL - CHE Nombre de María until he started saying it that way. But since he was holding a microphone, a lot of people went along with it. 

JUST LISTEN TO THE AUDIO and you'll be OK.

FINO' MAN ÅMKO' : WHAT GOES AROUND

 

Todo håfa bidå-mo siempre un binisita.

Everything you do will surely visit you.

This is one Chamorro way of saying "what goes around comes around," or "you reap what you sow."

This way of phrasing it seems a little scarier!

We all get unexpected visitors, especially the unwelcome ones.

They knock on the door and we want them to go away, but they don't. We can close our eyes and pretend not to hear the knock, but they keep knocking.

This sounds more similar to the expression, "It will come back to haunt you."

You can control some things, but you can't control who looks for you; who knocks on your door or who comes to visit you. They just won't go away.

So it is with some of our bad decisions. We think we can get away with it, but at some unexpected point in time, catching us totally by surprise, justice comes to pay us a visit.