104 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
inordinately vain, considering themselves to be men of the greatest 
genius and wisdom in the world, in comparison with whom all other 
nations were contemptible. They attached great importance to caste, 
ound had sharply defined lines between families of high, low, and middle 
extraction, This led the early fathers to imagine that they must be 
descendants of some polite nation. ‘Thus it is seen,” says Padre 
Garcia, ** how Pride, banished from Heaven, dwells in all parts of the 
“urth, going in some nations clothed and in others naked.” Under 
no consideration could a Chamorri, or noble, marry a girl of common 
vaste, though she might be rich and he poor. In ancient times it was 
even customary for kinsmen to killa noble who for love or for gain 
should diserace his family by such a marriage. People of low caste were 
not permitted to eat or drink in the houses of nobles or even to come 
near them. If they wished to communicate with them, they must do so 
from a distance. This custom was especially marked among the nobles 
living at Agata, where, on account of the excellence of the water and 
for other advantages of the site, lived the nobles of the highest rank, 
They were regarded by all the rest of the island with fear and respect. 
In this town there were 53 houses in which the nobility lived. The 
rest, about a hundred and fifty, belonging to the common people, 
occupied a position apart and were not considered as a part of the 
town or of the court. The prejudice of caste was one of the first 
difficulties encountered by the early missionaries. The chiefs did not 
consider it seemly that people of low caste should share with them the 
benefits of baptism, saying that so noble an institution as the fathers 
taught them to regard it should be enjoyed only by the nobility and 
not by plebeians; and, indeed, the fathers had great difficulty in over- 
coming the fear of the common people, so firmly rooted was their 
feeling of abasement in the presence of their betters.? 
SOCTAL INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS. 
Marrtacr.— Though more than one wife was permitted, yet a man 
had, as a rule, only one. Marriage between relatives was strictly 
forbidden, The wife was essentially the head of the family. Adultery 
on the part of aman was punished in various manners. Sometimes 
the injured wife would call together the other women of the village, 
and putting on their husbands’ hats and arming themselves with spears, 
they would go to the house of the adulterer, destroy his growing crops, 
and, making a demonstration as though about to spear him, they would 
drive him from his house. At other times the injured wife would 
punish her husband by deserting him, whereupon her relations 
would assemble at his house and carry away all the property, leaving 
“Garcia, Vida y Martyrio de Sanvitores, p. 199, 1683. bIdem., p. 219. 
