Yap

Yap was a group of four islands in the western Carolines, home to chiefdoms linked by the sawei maritime trade and tribute network. Canoes from outlying atolls gathered at Ulithi to carry tribute to Yap.

In 1528 Álvaro de Saavedra’s Spanish expedition made the first recorded European sighting. A Jesuit mission led by Juan Antonio Cantova was destroyed in 1731, and Spain left the Carolines alone until 1787. Yap’s chiefdoms and tribute network endured into the early nineteenth century; islanders also sailed to Palau to quarry and transport the limestone disks used as stone money.