Refaluwasch

The Refaluwasch, or Carolinians, are a Micronesian people of the central and western Carolines who speak Carolinian, a Chuukic language. Their name means people of the deep sea. They sailed inter-island sea-lanes from memory in large outrigger canoes and paid tribute to Yap under the sawei network. Their society was organized along matrilineal lines.

They traded with Guam, but the Spanish-Chamorro wars cut the link until the navigator Luito reopened it in 1778. Carolinian canoes returned to Talofofo Bay for iron in 1788.

After typhoons wrecked Elato and Satawal, chiefs Aghurubw of Satawal and Nguschul of Elato led some nine hundred people in a hundred and twenty canoes to Saipan in 1815, founding Arabwal under Spanish permission. Further groups joined them, and by 1837 the Refaluwasch lived between their old Carolinian atolls and new Marianas settlements, voyaging the sea roads between them.