The period between Fernando de Magallanes’ initial landfall in Guam on March 6, 1521, and the establishment of a permanent Spanish presence in Hagåtña on June 16, 1668, is sometimes called the contact period in the archaeological literature of the islands, although the material record of such early interaction is quite sparse (Figure 8.1). Earlier maritime contact with mainland Asia or the islands of Southeast Asia before 1521 has been hinted at over the years (Farrell 2011:109), as suggested by the brisk exchange of food and freshwater by native Chamorro inhabitants for bits of Spanish iron to be fashioned into utilitarian tools (Quimby 2011:3). Guam historian Robert Rogers has noted that “there may also have been sporadic foreign contacts by boats blown to the Marianas from Japan, China, and the Philippines. The arrival of the Chinaman Choco from the Philippines during a storm in 1648 is documented in the accounts of the San Vitores mission” (Rogers 1995:33). So there can be little doubt that culture contact between indigenous inhabitants and settlers, both peaceful and bellicose, continued throughout la reducción from 1672 to 1698. Initial contact between Chamorro and Spanish visitors until the arrival of the Jesuit mission in 1668 was largely restricted to brief provisioning stops by vessels en route from Acapulco to Manila (Barratt 2003:71), most often in Umatac Bay, where Miguel López de Legazpi laid formal claim to the archipelago in the name of the Spanish Crown on January 26, 1565. In June of that year, Legazpi sent his relative Felipe de Salcedo to return to the New World from the Philippine island of Cebu with a cargo of cinnamon, Chinese porcelain, and silks. While arriving behind one earlier ship with no cargo from the Philippines (Farrell 2011:130), Salcedo’s pilot Andrés de Urdaneta is credited with pioneering the use of the Kuro-Siwo/Kuroshio current to return to Mexico, placing Guam and the Mariana Islands securely on the map of the returning Manila galleons from Acapulco.