The Stone Money of Yap - Smithsonian Institution

Accounts of Foreign Voyagers
Yap Is Sighted by the Foreigner
Unlike some emerging areas, such as those in
Central Africa, Yap has been known to the Western
World for over four centuries. Any available account
of the Yapese and their early outside contacts are
those of foreign observers. An account of early Pacific
history by Wilhelm Muller, a German anthropologist
who studied in Yap between 1908 and 1910, constitutes
the accepted version of Yap's discovery. 5 He
recites that a Portuguese captain, Diego da Rocha,
representing his own country and Spain, was trying to
find a way to curb the Turkish blockade of the spice
route. During 1525-1527, while sailing among the
Molucca Islands, he was driven off course and sighted
Yap. This account of the original discovery, however,
is still obscure, and there is a dispute as to whether
Rocha's "Islands of Sequeira" were either Yap or
Ulithi. 6 There is also a question relative to a second
"discovery." Muller states that this was made by the
first Spaniard to become associated with Yap,
Alvaro Saavedra (or de Sayavedra). He set out from
the harbor of Siguantanejo in New Spain on 31 October
1528 bound for the rich Moluccas in Indonesia.
William Lessa of the University of California, Los
Angeles, states that Saavedra stopped in the Northern
Marshalls and on his second trip sighted islands in
the Eastern Carolines. 7 Muller mentions that
Saavedra, on his way to the Philippines, had reached
Ulithi in the Eastern Carolines, which he termed
"Los Reyes". These early inquiries become even
more confusing when one reads that Ruy Lopez de
Villalobes, in January 1543, was met on the island
of Fais with the greeting "Buenos dias, metelotas." It
was reported that he was also met either on Yap or
Ulithi with the same greeting. 8 Where knowledge of
European languages may have been acquired is
questionable considering that this occurred only 22
years after Magellan discovered the Marianas. 9
Andrew Sharp, writing about the Pacific Islands,
places 15 February 1626 as the date of the first
clearly established European contact with Yap.
This encounter was made by the Nassau Fleet under
Gheen Hugo Schapenham crossing the Pacific from
New Spain to Guam. Sharp points out that the
early sequence of two islands lying south of Guam
near the latitude ten degrees north, could "only be
Fais or Ulithi for the first island and Yap for the
second." He concedes that this atoll probably was
discovered earlier by the sixteenth-century visitors
mentioned above. 10
Early Accounts of Rai
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, Yap was cited by Jesuit missionaries who
had heard accounts of these islands from natives of
other island groups. 11 One, Father Clain, S.J., working
in the Philippines, met people who had drifted westward
from Fais. Another missonary, Father Cantova,
writing from Guam, was told of the western islands
and their valuables by native visitors to Guam:
The same Indian tells me, which I find hard to believe that
there are on his island silver mines, but they take only small
quantities from it for lack of proper metal instruments for
digging in the ground where they are found and that when
they do find a piece of puie silver they try to round it off and
make a present of it to the Lord of the Island; and that he
has enough of it to serve him as a throne. . 12
The phrase "mines of silver" rings a strange note.
The description of "rounding off" the pieces (i.e.,
final quarrying procedures) is interesting in light of
stone disks as we know them, although the account
indicates that the pieces collectively served as a
throne.
More specific accounts of the Yapese did not
appear until the nineteenth century when various
powerful countries sent expeditions to the Pacific. In
the early portion of that century several accounts
testify to the existence of the stone disks. Little comment,
however, is given to the economic phenomenon
which accompanies the stones. It is interesting to look
at the various early accounts in order to assess the
changing place and values of the stones within the