The life and landscape of Guam in the early 1800s

In November 1817, the Russian Navy brig, Rurik, under the command of Otto August von Kotzebue visited Guam during its voyage around the world.

Although the visit lasted for less than a week, it gathered important information about CHamoru life and language at the time. On board the Rurik was naturalist Adelbert von Chamisso, who collected a vocabulary of 181 CHamoru words used at the time and recorded them along with their German equivalent. As part of this research Chamisso also documented the four cardinal directions, North, South, East and West in CHamoru, which may have been used by seafarers of the past, but no longer today.

In addition to the linguistic and biological data collected, the expedition also captured images of the life and landscape of Guam in the early 1800s, including this one of a CHamoru family.