Chamorro

Chamorro, Indigenous people of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The ancestors of the Chamorro are thought to have come to the Mariana Islands from insular Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippines) about 1600 bce. It is estimated that in the early 17th century there were between 50,000 and 100,000 Chamorro in the Marianas, but the disease and violence wrought by the Spanish reduced the Chamorro population to about 1,000 by 1820. During this period the Spanish eliminated the Chamorro on Saipan and relocated the Chamorro from across the Marianas to Guam. In the early 2020s nearly 160,000 Americans claimed Chamorro descent. The Chamorro language, which is spoken by more than 61,000 people, is not a Micronesian dialect but a distinct language with its own vocabulary and grammar. It is still used in many homes on Guam, though English is the island’s official language. The Chamorro are predominately Roman Catholic.