To begin our journey, first we must look at the Pacific Ocean and single out the Micronesian region. The Micronesian area is in the North Pacific, a term that does not conjure up exotic images yet all the idyllic islands clichés fit perfectly to each of the islands. The Micronesian islands has warm aqua waters lapping at pristine bleached sands, swaying coconut palms, lush tropical jungles, tumbling waterfalls, and a totally unique underwater world that mesmerizes the senses of those courageous enough to wade into the clear waters.
The islands of Micronesia are spread within a vast expanse of sea stretching from east to west. Hundreds of islands of Micronesia are scattered over an ocean area larger than the Continental United States but contain all together, the islands make about 1,260 square miles of land area, a total land mass that is less than the smallest US state of Rhode Island. Many world maps do not even bother dotting them on the maps.
Micronesia entered the pages of history in the year 1521, when Magellan stopped in the Mariana Islands, a chain of islands connecting to the island of Guam. Micronesian islands lie scattered between the Hawaii Islands, the Philippines and the large island of Papua New Guinea. Beginning many thousands of years ago, dark-skinned Stone Age people from Asia began venturing across the watery immensities of the Pacific. They eventually colonized nearly every one of the South Pacific’s vast numbers of habitable islands and atolls. Micronesia, called the small islands, is one of three regions in the Oceanic Eden aside from Polynesia and Melanesia.
Few countries in the world are so little known and so seldom visited as the lesser islands scattered over the expanse Pacific Ocean and yet no other land is more pleasant to travel to than the richly endowed island known as Palau located on the western region. Hardly anywhere does the nature lover find a greater fill of boundless treasures and mysteriously strange sights than on this world of luscious sanctuary of exotic beauty.
Underneath the charm, real for all its superficiality, lies another world, all too little known but far more significant. It is a world isolated from the currents of continental life but developing through thousands of years of fascinating array of cultures adapted to varying environments that included material things man possesses, the techniques utilizes, and the institutions participated in goals, rituals and beliefs.
For the past two to three centuries, and recently with quicken tempo, all this has been undergoing profound modifications introduced mainly by foreigners. Missionaries and traders, whalers and planters and many others have brought extinction to some, ruin and despair to others, and change to virtually all these cultures and the people who were their inheritors. It is both a sad and a fascinating journey that has much to teach the Palauans if they have the wit to understand the coming tides beyond the horizon.
The Republic of Palau, called Belau by her inhabitants, lies between the Republic of the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and the Territory of Guam. The island consisted of more than 200 islands that extend along a 400-mile stretch from Kayangel atoll in the north to Hatohobei atoll in the south with at least 9 of the scattered rock islands inhabited.
The big island is called Babeldaob, meaning upper sea, and is Micronesia’s second largest island after Guam. The previous capital of Belau was Koror State across the bridge to the south of Babeldaob. The capital was moved to the big island, in particular to the area known as Ngerulmud in Melekeok State, in the latter months of 2005 to its newest capital building structured in the image of the United States’ Capital Building in Washington DC.
Palau is comprised of 16 states from Kayangel to the north, and Ngerchelong, Ngaraard, Ngiwal, Melekeok, Ngchesar, Airai, Aimeliik, Ngatpang, Ngeremlengui, and Ngardmau on the big island of Babeldaob to Koror across the bridge and Peleliu and Angaur farther south through the rock islands and Sonsorol and Hatohobei about a day or two boat ride far south toward the Indonesian border.
According to a story from the island of Angaur, Palau was formed from the body of UAB, a giant of a boy who ate huge meals until he grew into an enormous colossal of a man that the people had to destroy before the food ran out. When the body of UAB toppled, his body broke apart and became Palau’s many islands. UAB’s body became Babeldaob while his legs became the rock islands (The stories of the island were compiled into a booklet titled Legends of Palau).
Bones of ancient inhabitants of the island of Palau documented by the National Geographic Channel in 2008 illustrated small modest bodies of early Palauans in two separate areas that mystified even the best of anthropological minds. The islanders live in a world of their own making and therefore their island legends deserve recognition that may very well explain what science fails to perceive.
How or when the people arrived on the island is not known for sure but the island’s first settlers who travelled thousands of miles of ocean are believed to have reached the island from the surrounding areas of Asia down to New Guinea and Australia many thousands of years ago. However, carbon dating of artefacts discovered on some of the oldest identified village areas place civilization as early as 1000 BC. The mystery of the Palauan people’s past is merge in folklore, myths, and legends as they left no written history other than orally transmitted accounts of their culture.
The islands of Palau were sighted by the Spanish and Portuguese seafarers in the middle of the 1500’s. However, for the next two centuries, the islands were lost on the pages of history until 1783 when Captain Henry Wilson and his men were stranded on the island of Ulong on August 9th after their ship, the Antelope, was wrecked on the reefs that encircled the islands.
Two canoes sailed to the island of Ulong two days after the wreck. Koror chiefs RECHUCHER IOULIDID and RECHUCHER-RA-TECHEKII led the entourage. Along with their men, they were completely naked and their skins were copper colored and glossy under the morning Sun from oils extracted from coconut. Both leaders stood tall and straight with muscular limps well formed and tattooed a little above their ankles to the middle of their thighs. The men’s long dark hairs were tied and rolled up behind their heads as they row in unison toward the island and the foreigners standing on the white sandy beach of Ulong island.
Wilson and his men befriended IBEDUL, the High Chief of Koror and his people and with the help of the people of Koror, another boat was built from scratch and named Ulong as tribute to IBEDUL’s people and the island of Ulong. When Captain Wilson left Palau, he took with him IBEDUL’s son, Lbuu, to England where he became a treasured friend to many Englishmen before his dead by smallpox in 1784, two days after Christmas. Lbuu was believed to be at the tender age of 20 years old.
Over the centuries, four powerful countries colonized Palau. After the Spanish the British were the dominant presence up until 1885 when the Spanish once again took control of the island. Spain sold her control of Palau to Germany a year after the Spanish-American war in 1898.
After the outbreak of World War I, Japan laid claim to Palau under the League of Nations and established Koror as the administrative center of its Pacific possessions. Than after World War II in the Pacific, Palau became one of the United Nations’ Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under the US Administration which was to improve Palau’s infrastructure with the goal of her becoming a self-sufficient island nation.
The island’s First Constitutional Government took off as a democratic system of government in 1981 with three branches, the Executive, Legislative and the Judiciary. However, it took 13 years sailing through choppy waters and enduring harsh winds for Palau to finally gain her Independence on October 1st in the year 1994. The island continues to maintain ties with the United States through the Compact of Free Association.
The Republic of Palau, after achieving Independence, became the 185th member of the United Nations and the 200th member of the National Olympic sending her players for the first time to the 27th Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia in the year 2000.
From July 21 to August 1, 2002, Palau participated in the Fifth Micronesian Olympics hosted by Phonpei of the Federated States of Micronesia. The Second Micronesian Traditional Leaders Conference was also held in Pohnpei in the same year. The First Micronesian Traditional Leaders conference was held three years before in Palau in 1999. Members of the First Micronesian Traditional Leaders Conference are Palau, Yap, Guam, Saipan, Chuuk, Phonpei, Kosrae, Marshalls, Kiribati and Nauru. Yap of the Federated States of Micronesian hosted the third MTL conference in 2005 and the Republic of the Marshall Island hosted the fourth MTL in 2008. Palau will host the next Micronesian Traditional Conference either in 2010 or 2011.
The new capital of the Republic of Palau was moved from Koror State, the previous capital, to Melekeok State on Babeldaob at a site known as “Ngerulmud” on October 1st in the year 2005. Most government agencies are currently in Ngerulmud except the essential departments such as the Tax Offices, Bureau of Public Safety, the Hospital, Bureau of Immigration, Labor Division, etc… retained offices in Koror State to serve the large population.
