112 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
when he baptized them took away from them their ‘‘ idols” or figures of 
their ancestors, to which they paid certain veneration, and burned them, 
‘in order that by the light from these fires they might see more clearly 
the truth of our holy faith.” On his first visit to Guam he caused a 
goodly pile of these little idols (idolillos) to be burned before the holy 
cross on the day of its triumph, July 16, 1668, and for this victory 
which the cross gained over the devil he named the village, which before 
was called Pigpug (Peepog), ** The Triumph of the Cross.” He made 
them bury the skulls of their ancestors in order that they might be 
considered people of God.“ By his zeal there were established on 
the island of Guam the customs and Christian ceremonies of solenn 
masses, sermons, processions, Offices of holy week, and the other prin- 
cipal feasts of the year, according to the capacity of the villages. Thus 
he availed himself of all the means and attractions possible to win the 
love of the Marianos for the Christian faith. In order that they might 
go the more willingly to mass and to school for instruction in the doe- 
trine, he gave them some slight presents, so that not only the people of 
the village of Agaiia but many others of outlying villages flocked to 
him. At Christmas he made an altar of the nativity, and people from 
nearly all the villages of the island came, attracted by curiosity, and he 
ullowed them to see it on the condition that they should say the creed, 
the commandments, the act of contrition, and other prayers: and the 
same father testifies that he reaped much fruit from the Christmas 
ceremony. On the death of Kipuha, the chief who received them on 
the island, the father determined to give hinva solemn funeral: he con- 
quered many difficulties in order to bury the dead chief in the church, 
going for him to his house with a trumpet and the banner of San 
Ignacio and San Francisco Xavier, and he said his vigil (wake) and 
chanted mass and caused to be performed for him the ceremonies 
which were wont to be performed for one of the Society of Jesus, 
which pleased the people of Agata, who at first were opposed to the 
new manner of burial, so that they now asked whether when they 
should die they would be buried in the same way.” 
Superstitions. ~The natives took care to spit when no one was 
looking, and they would not spit near the house of another nor in the 
morning, which seemed to be connected with some superstitious fear.” 
This superstition was probably of the same nature as that of other 
islands of the Pacific and of the East Indies, where it is feared that 
some evil charm can be worked upona person by one getting possession 
“ See also Garcia, Vida y Martyrio de Sanvitores, p. 221, 1683. Some of the natives 
resented the desecration of the bones and images of their ancestors, threatening to 
kill the fathers and their assistants with their spears; but this did not deter them 
from burning the images amid the jeers of other natives, who did not share in their 
veneration. 
bTIdem., p. 408, 409. 
¢Idem., p. 198, 
