Saipan

Saipan is a high island in the southern Marianas, with a reef and lagoon along its western shore. Chamorro communities occupied the island long before the Spanish mission arrived in the archipelago in 1668. Its people resisted the missionaries and soldiers who sought to establish Spanish rule.

In 1670 two missionaries were killed on Saipan. In the years that followed, fighting spread across the Marianas as Spanish forces sought to suppress resistance. Fourteen years later the Spanish commander José de Quiroga invaded the island, defeated its defenders and established a church. Subsequent forced removals concentrated Chamorro survivors on Guam. In the early nineteenth century voyagers from the Caroline Islands settled Saipan, bringing their own seafaring traditions to an island reshaped by conquest and displacement.