Refaluwasch

Refaluwasch, meaning people of the deep sea, is both the self-name of the Carolinian people and their language, a Chuukic member of the Micronesian group spoken on Saipan and the other Northern Mariana Islands. It forms part of a dialect continuum reaching back to the Caroline atolls.

For centuries its speakers sailed the sawei tribute route to Yap, until the Spanish conquest of Guam broke the habit; the navigator Luito reopened the sea road by reaching Guam in 1778. On Guam the official Luis de Torres studied the language between 1795 and 1797, leaving the earliest written records.

In 1815 a typhoon ruined the atolls of Elato and Satawal, and their chiefs Nguschul and Aghurubw led about 900 people in 120 canoes to the nearly empty island of Saipan, where they founded the village of Arabwal.