The Island of the Colorblind

There had been some controversy about the local cycads for two centuries or more. John was interested in the history of Guam and had copies of documents from the early missionaries and explorers, including a Spanish document from 1793, which praised fadang or federico as ‘a divine providence,’ and Frey-cinet’s 1819 Voyage Autour du Monde, in which he described seeing this harvested on a large scale in Guam.[48] He described the elaborate process of soaking and washing the seeds, and drying and grinding them to make a thick flour ideal for tortillas and tamales and a soup or porridge called atole – all this is illustrated in his account. It was well known, Freycinet remarked, that if the seeds were not washed sufficiently, they might still be highly poisonous:

A bird, goat, sheep or hog that drinks from the first water in which the federico has been soaked is apt to die. This does not happen with the second, much less the third, which can be consumed without danger.

Although this washing of the seeds was supposed to be effective in leaching out their poisons, several governors of Guam were to express reservations, especially when federico became the main article of the diet (as happened, typically, after typhoons, when all the vegetation was destroyed except for the tough cycads).

Thus Governor Pablo Perez wrote, in the famine of 1848, that

…not having sweet potatoes, yams and taro, food staples destroyed by the storm, [the Chamorros] have to betake themselves to the woods to seek there the few fruits which are left, which, though noxious, they use as a last resource…This is now their chief staple of food; and notwithstanding the precautions with which they prepare it, all believe that it is injurious to health.

This was echoed by his successor, Don Felipe de la Corte, seven years later, who singled out federico as the most dangerous of all the ‘fruits…of the forest.’[49]

Kurland, a century later, having found no clear evidence for an infectious or genetic origin for the lytico-bodig, now wondered whether some element of the Chamorro diet might be the pathogen he sought; and he invited Marjorie Whiting, a nutritionist working on Pohnpei, to come to Guam to investigate this. Whiting had a special interest in indigenous plants and cultures of the Pacific islands, and as soon as Kurland outlined the problem to her, she was fascinated and agreed to come. On her first visit to Guam, in 1954, she spent time in two very different communities – Yigo, which is close to Agana, and part of the Westernized, administrative center of the island; and Umatac, where she lived in a traditional Chamorro household. She became very close to the Chamorro family, the Quinatas, with whom she lived, and often joined Mrs. Quinata and the women of the village in preparing special dishes for Umatac’s frequent fiestas.

Cycads had never particularly attracted her attention before (there are no cycads on Pohnpei) – but now everything she encountered seemed to direct her attention to the local species, so common on Guam and the neighboring island of Rota. Cycas circinalis was indigenous, it grew wild, it was free, it required only the labor of collection and preparation.

I had met Marjorie in Hawaii, on my way to Micronesia, and she had told me some vividly personal anecdotes from her time on Guam. She had gone out to do field studies each day for six months, coming back each evening to her Chamorro family – she only discovered later, somewhat to her chagrin, that the rich soups she had been served every day had all been thickened with fadang. People were well aware of its toxic properties and the need for very elaborate washing, but enjoyed the taste of fadang, and especially prized it for making tortillas and thickening soup, ‘because of its peculiar mucilaginous quality.’ The Chamorros sometimes chewed the green outer seed husks to relieve thirst; when dried, the husks were considered a tasty sweet.