William Pritchard Coe
William Pritchard Coe was a half-American, half-Samoan businessman adventurer who, for whatever reason, moved to Guam right after the American capture of the island. For two weeks, he served as Governor of Guam when a passing Naval officer dismissed the Governor at the time and appointed Coe instead. But Captain Richard P. Leary was just two weeks away from Guam and, when he arrived, Leary took over the government.
Coe remained on Guam and was captain of the port of San Luis de Apra for part of his time on island. As captain of the port, Coe was in charge of the comings and goings of boats and ships in and out of Apra.
On October 24, 1900, Coe saw a boat leave Cabras Island, headed for Piti. In those days, Piti was the actual point of disembarkation for people arriving at Apra. Thus, there was a pier built at Punta Piti (Piti Point), more or less opposite the Cabras Power Plant today.
Cabras Island and Punta Piti in the 1800s
"Pantalán" means "pier"
When the boat landed at Punta Piti, Coe observed three men, namely Joaquín Martínez of Hagåtña, José Martínez and José Finoña, both of Piti. Their boat was laden with lemmai (breadfruit). Coe asked the men if they were aware that the lemmai was government property, since all of Cabras was government property. The men replied that they had the Governor's permission to harvest at Cabras.
Coe filed a formal complaint with the government, anyway.
William Coe's signature in 1900
Coe left Guam for good around this time, and may have even been gone by the time the court issued this final decision.
Lemmai
(Breadfruit)
CABRAS? OR APAPA?
CABRAS? OR APAPA?
The original Chamorro name for the island is Apapa.
Cabras is the name Spaniards gave it, and the name means "goats." I suppose goats were raised there at one time. The last name Cabrera comes from cabra. It means "goatherd," a tender of goats just as "shepherd" is a tender of sheep.
Nowadays, no one calls it Apapa and fewer still even know the name. Most people don't even call it an island anymore!
Påle', not sure if you already wrote on this topic, but I've been trying to find out how we got the word kinilu for sheep. I come across the words oveja and cordero, but nothing that resembles kinilu.
ReplyDeleteIt is probably based on CORDERO but you have to do some verbal gymnastics to get to KINILU but it does happen. For example, CRISTIANO became KILISYANO and TRUECA became TULAIKA but if you follow the changes step-by-step it becomes clear. So 1st change in CORDERO is the COR which becomes KOT. Then DERO becomes DELO. So we now have KOTDELO. When we place the definite article I (THE) in front of KOTDELO it can become I KETDELO (just like Spanish CORRAL becomes KOLLAT but I KELLAT). You can just imagine I KETDELO becoming I KINILU because it's easier to say. This is not proof but a guess but based on known patterns in Chamorro pronunciation.
ReplyDeleteWOW! Actually, that makes sense. Being that it's a reference to something in the Bible, it would've probably been one of the first words the early Chamorros attempted to say. Like KILU'US for CRUZ, the early Chamorros probably found CORDERO hard to say so it probably did end up being more mangled than if it had been introduced more recently. If the word had been more recent, then I believe we would've been saying it more like KOTDELO. I understand you're making an educated guess, but I'll take it. I've seen it happen with other words and judging by the minimum sounds I was looking for, it fits. I was actually looking for Spanish words like...QUINILO, QUINIRO...or maybe we had nominalized QUIRO or QUILO with affix IN. Anyway, GOF dangkolo na si Yu'us ma'åse' for taking the time to respond. Hu SEN agradesi!!!
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