© Traders' Ridge Resort
Known as the Mysterious Isles of Stone Money, Yap is perhaps the most traditional of all the Micronesian Islands.
Stone Money is still used today as a means of exchange in Yap. While these huge disks rarely move location ownership will change through marriage or according to other traditions.
They were quarried in Palau hundreds of years ago and brought in open outrigger canoes to Yap. Their value is determined by the peril of the voyage not by the actual size. Kept in Stone Money Banks the people of Yap know who owns each piece and the story behind it.
The people of Yap are warm and friendly, but tend to be a little shy. As a sign of respect younger people will wait for their elders to initiate a conversation and the same holds true for visitors. Just wave and say hello and you will be answered with a warm smile and friendly attitude.
Traditional dress is common in Yap. When you step off the plane men wearing thuus and women in colorful hibiscus skirts will greet you. Toplessness is common in Yap but women are required to cover their thighs, so please ladies no short shorts in town. Men carry woven baskets since the thuu has no pockets for their beetle nut and other essential items.
Yap is a rich blend of past and present achieving a harmony between an ancient culture and the new millennium.
Anthropological theories suggest that Yap was settled over 3,500 years ago by seagoing voyagers migrating eastward from either Indonesia or the Philippines. The ancient Yapese empire was a large, powerful and highly organized society. At the empires peak, the central islands of Wa'ab may have had a population of more than 50,000.
Huge meetinghouses, stone amphitheaters and Men's Houses dotted the shorelines. Inland majestic family houses sat atop raised stone platforms called "dayif," and their thatched peak roofs jutted out between coconut palms over an intricate winding network of stone paths.
The first foreigners arrived in when the Portuguese explorer Diego Da Rocha landed in Yap, probably Ulithi, and stays for four months. Over the next two centuries more than twenty other explorers and traders of Spanish, British, Dutch and American origin passed through the Yap Islands.
In 1869 Germans establish the first permanent trading station, Godeffory & Son, under management of Alfred Teten. By 1874 its holdings included 3,000 acres of land, a cotton plantation and ship repair operation.
In 1871 David Dean O'Keefe, an American Sailor on a pearl diving expedition aboard the Belvidere, is shipwrecked on Yap and rescued by the Yapese people. He was later taken to Hong Kong on a German trading ship.
In 1914 World War I begins. British shelling destroys theGerman communications center. Japanese Expeditionary Squadron occupies the island on October 7, in a bloodless takeover. In 1919 a secret treaty agreement between Japan and Britain guaranteeing Japanese control over all Pacific islands north of the Equator announced to the world at the Treaty of Versailles.
The Japanese occupation ended in 1944 and Yap was under United States administration until 1986 when it became an independent State in the Federated States of Micronesia.
The people of Yap are proud and secure in their culture and traditions, which have been incorporated into daily life in the 21st century.
Village
life centers around majestic Men's Houses where the local Chief conducts village
meetings. Cooking is done over open fires with meals of reef fish, yams and
bananas as the staples.
Dance is a living art form in Yap with each village presenting dances to the High Chiefs on Yap Day (March 1) that they have practiced for months upon months. Dancers in richly appointed costumes of hibiscus and flowers perform exciting and graphic tales of the culture and history of Yap Stone money and Shell Money are still used in traditional exchanges and a council of High Chiefs still yields great influence and respect among the people.
