Taotao Mona
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Taotao Mona - Chamorro: 'ancient people' - Ancestor spirits believed to haunt the mountains and wild places of the island of Guam, Micronesia.
With the Spanish conquest of Guam in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the resultant destruction of the old way of life of the native Chamorro people, went also the practice of the worship of native gods and ancestor cults. The folk memory of these is kept alive on Guam with the Taotao Mona.
Taotao Mona are believed to inhabit any secluded natural place on the island - particularly in the south of the island - and despite the modernity of most Guamanians, there is still a healthy respect for them. It is thought that if they are offended, they can cause bad influences in a particular location or towards a particular person.
No particular stories exist regarding these spirits, and it is likely that they represent a degenerated form of the old, pre-Catholic Chamorro gods and ancestor cults.
