Sapwuahfik Atoll

Ninety miles south of Pohnpei, one inhabited islet rides a ring of nine. In its meeting houses the dances are set to chants in old Ngatikese, the language of before 1837, passed down phonetically ever since the year that broke the island's history in two.

In 1837 the crew of a trading ship, British and American seamen with Pohnpeian allies, killed all the adult men of Ngatik, as Sapwuahfik was then called. The community that rose afterwards descends from the surviving women and children, some of the sailors, and the Pohnpeians and castaways who followed; out of that history came Ngatik Men's Creole, a men's speech register now severely endangered and held mainly by older men. None of this is a performance, and a guest does not ask for one. What a visitor actually finds is a working atoll: five sections of one islet that compete against each other in dance, coconuts counted with pride, canoes on a quiet lagoon, and the old chants sung when the calendar calls for them. A small aircraft reaches the airstrip with a short boat transfer to follow, the government ship calls on its atoll runs, and lagoon days are arranged with local guides.