Before the Return: The Making of the Hornbostel collection of objects and ancestral remains from the Mariana Islands at the Bishop Museum (Part 1)

Écrit par Alba Ferrándiz Gaudens

Latte removed by Hornbostel on display in the central courtyard of the Bishop Museum in June 2024. ©Alba Ferrándiz Gaudens

In August 2025,  the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi announced the ethical return of over 10,000 artefacts to the Mariana Islands. The announcement took place after the Bishop Museum’s Board of Directors unanimously voted to deaccession the pieces. This return is among the largest of its kind in terms of the number of items involved. A small ceremony at the museum  in Honolulu on the 9th of August marked the beginning of this process. The ceremony was attended by political and cultural dignitaries from the two political entities that make up the Marianas Archipelago: Guåhan (the Indigenous name for Guam) and the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as by members of the Chamorro diaspora in Honolulu and representatives of the Bishop Museum and the Governor of Hawaiʻi. This important moment marked the beginning of the return of the artefacts, which were removed in the 1920s by amateur archaeologist Hans Hornbostel.

How did the controversial Hornbostel collection of over 10,000 artefacts end up in the stores of the Bishop Museum? What institutional and political processes have shaped efforts to secure the return of these artefacts to the Mariana Islands? In this two-part article, I will outline the lives of the Chamorro objects and ancestral remains collected by Hans Hornbostel in the 1920s. The first part traces how Hornbostel assembled his extensive collection from the Mariana Islands, while the second examines the repatriation efforts and processes of return surrounding this collection over the past 25 years.

On the left, map that shows the geographic location of the Mariana Islands in the north Pacific region. On the right, a map of the 15 islands that make up the Marianas Archipelago. ©ANU Maps.

The Mariana Islands are a tropical archipelago located in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The archipelago is comprised of fifteen islands, listed from south to north: Guåhan (Guam), Luta (Rota), Aguijan (Goat Island), Tinian, Saipan, No’os (Farallon de Medinilla), Anatåhan, Sarigan, Guguan, Alimågan (Alamagan), Pågan, Agrihan, Asuncion, Maug, and Uråcas (Farallon de Pajaros). While the islands form one archipelago and their people share a common identity, the Marianas are politically administered as two jurisdictions. The largest island in the archipelago, Guåhan, has been an unincorporated United States territory since 1898, while the remaining islands are part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands also known as CNMI. The political status of the Mariana Islands is complex and has long contributed to divisions between the Chamorros of Guåhan and those of the Northern Mariana Islands. Owing to their strategic location near Asia and differing political arrangements, the islands hold significant importance in global geopolitics, particularly for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), a geopolitical importance that has been associated to the islands from the onset of the 20th century. On Guåhan today, the DOD controls about one-third of the island1, while in the NMI, substantial portions of Tinian and Pågan are leased to the U.S. Government, with additional military buildup planned in the coming years.2 In response to the effects of heavy militarisation, many community organizations such as Hita Litekyan, the Tinian Women’s Association, Tåno Tåsi yan Todu, the Micronesian Climate Alliance, and Guam Green Growth have emerged, advocating for both decolonization and demilitarisation of the islands.

Gertrude and Hans Hornbostel. Andy Airriess collection. ©Guampedia, https://www.guampedia.com/gertrude-and-hans-hornbostel/

The making of the Hornbostel collection cannot be disassociated from the processes of colonisation and militarisation in the Mariana Islands outlined above. Chamorro scholar and Curator of the Guam Museum Michael Bevacqua says that ‘depending on who you ask or what you are asking about, the name Hans Hornbostel means very different things in the history of the Marianas, Micronesia, and the Pacific’. 3 In general, Hornbostel is regarded as an obscure and controversial figure. Born in 1883 in New York, Hornbostel left Harvard before graduating to join the Military and become a U.S. Marine. He first arrived in Guåhan in the early 1900s. In 1922, he resigned from the Marine Corps and was hired as an amateur archaeologist by the Bishop Museum to systematically collect ancient artefacts and ancestral remains in the Mariana Islands, particularly in the Northern Marianas. 4 At the time, the Northern Mariana Islands were occupied by the Japanese (the Japanese occupation lasted from 1914 to 1944), whereas the island of Guåhan was administered by the U.S. Navy. It is believed that Hornbostel’s collecting activities, which granted him access to the Japanese-occupied Northern Mariana Islands, were a cover for his real role as a spy, monitoring the Japanese for the U.S. military. As a Marine, Hornbostel served as Guam’s Chief Forester, a role that let him travel the island and study its natural history. 5 It is also believed that Hornbostel, who was fluent in German, was spying on the Germans living in Guåhan, and that those activities led to him meeting Trudy Costenoble, who would become his wife. 6 Gertrude, known as ‘Trudy Alemån’ in Guåhan, was a Swiss woman who settled in the island as a child when her parents moved there and was a known figure in the Guåhan community. Her fluency in the Chamorro language played a crucial role in enabling her to compile one of the most extensive collections of Chamorro legends and oral history of that period. 7

Photograph of the pictograph from As Quiroga Cave collected by Hans Hornbostel in the 1920s, on display at Guam Museum in September 2025 after its return. ©Uriah Aguon/Pacific Daily News, https://www.guampdn.com/news/once-again-home-collection-of-chamoru-artifacts-on-temporary-display-at-guam-museum/article_4205c229-21f6-4f6e-85cf-7555d8ec857e.html

Hornbostel amassed one of the largest ethnological collections kept at the Bishop Museum. In fact, it makes 1/8 of the total collection of the museum. 8 At one time, the collection was comprised of approximately 10,000 ancient Chamorro artefacts, 6 latte (megalithic stone constructions unique to the Mariana Islands) 9 and around 300 ancestral remains. He also assembled a collection of maps, diagrams, and descriptive notes of ancient burial grounds, caves, latte sites, fishing grounds and other locations. Hornbostel conducted several archaeological excavations at latte and other burial sites in the island of Guåhan and the northern islands of Tinian, Luta and Saipan. In addition, he was granted permission by the Japanese government to examine and select ancestral remains that had been unearthed by the construction of Japanese infrastructure in the Northern Marianas, and to take them to Honolulu. 10 He made at least two trips to the northern islands, in 1922 and 1924. As an amateur archaeologist, his work often prioritised the accumulation of material over methodological rigour, with detailed provenance information recorded only in some instances. In this way, he collected thousands of slingstones, pieces of pottery, shell burial beads, sinahi (half-moon shaped necklaces), other body adornments, as well as stone chisels, shell adzes and other tools or implements used for carving. 11 While he mostly excavated burial sites, he also chiseled and removed a pictograph from the wall of As Quiroga cave in Talo’fo’fo’ in Guåhan.

It is unlikely Hornbostel got permission from the Chamorro people to conduct his excavations and acquire the artefacts and remains, as the disturbance of ancestral sites is considered deeply disrespectful in Chamorro culture.12 Additionally, it is likely the Hornbostels leveraged Gertrude’s network of connections to the Chamorro community to gather information on ancestral site locations and, at times, manipulate or persuade locals into sourcing the artefacts for them. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of his collecting practices, however, was trading movie tickets to Chamorro children in exchange for ancient artefacts. It is documented that Hornbostel and the Bishop Museum devised a program that incentivised young Chamorros to bring in artefacts by offering movie tickets in exchange to boost the levels of collecting. Also, there are several photographs depicting him arranging human remains and positioning skulls on latte to produce striking images, which he subsequently disseminated publicly to attract media attention to his work.13

With the technical and economic support of the Bishop Museum, Hornbostel systematically collected and shipped thousands of artefacts and ancestral remains to Hawaiʻi. The way in which Hornbostel was able to remove and transport the latte to Honolulu remains uncertain, particularly given that some of these stones weigh over 2270 kilos. The latte were removed over a span of thirty years, with the earliest ones being removed in the 1920s and the latest ones all the way into the 1950s. All of the latte, along with the ancestral artefacts and human remains, were sent directly to the Bishop Museum. They have remained in the museum since then (with the exception of the ancestral remains, which were repatriated in the year 2000, as we shall see in part II of the article). The objects have often been hidden from public display, like in the case of the latte stones that were for a long time kept in the back courtyard of the museum, a part of the facility that is difficult to access. For many years, members of the Chamorro community have repeatedly requested the return of the remains, artefacts and latte back to the Mariana Islands.14 While the ancestral remains made their way back home in 2000, for many decades it seemed unlikely that a full return of the remainder of the collection to the Marianas would be possible. Recently, however, these conversations have finally started turning into concrete commitments of continued collaboration between the Mariana Islands and Hawai’i. I will explore how this process has taken shape in part II of the article.

Alba Ferrándiz Gaudens

1 CAGURANGAN, M., 2022. ‘Military size on Guam quietly grows ahead of the Marines’ influx’. Pacific Island Times, 6 October 2022, https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/post/military-size-on-guam-quietly-grows-ahead-of-the-marines-influx

2 FRAIN, S., 2022. ‘Fanachu Famalåo’an: Women are Emerging as Leaders in the Community-wide Resistance to Militarization in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’ in A. BURRELL and K. BUNTS-ANDERSON (Eds.) A Marianas Mosaic: Sings and Shifts in Contemporary Island Life. Mangilao, Guam, University of Guam Press, pp. 259-282.

RAO, N., 2025. ‘On Tinian, residents weigh in on the costs of a U.S. military build-up’. Public Radio Guam, 30 April 2025, https://www.islapublic.org/news/2025-04-30/on-tinian-residents-weigh-in-on-the-costs-of-a-u-s-military-build-up

3 BEVACQUA, M., 2023. ‘Bevacqua: Hans Hornbostel’. Guam Pacific Daily News, 28 September 2023, https://www.guampdn.com/opinion/bevacqua-hans-hornbostel/article_b9b9f990-5dc3-11ee-a0cc-3b7e54256ecf.html

4 TAITANO DELISLE, C., 2010. ‘Civilizing the Guam Museum’. University of Michigan Working Papers in Museum Studies, n° 4.

5 Ancestral Remains Task Force, 2000. Report on the Disposition of Ancestral Remains aka “Hornbostel Collection”. 12 December 2000.

6 ‘Getrude and Hans Hornbostel’. Guampedia, https://www.guampedia.com/gertrude-and-hans-hornbostel/

7 FLORES, J., n.d. ‘Gertrude Costenoble Hornbostel’. Guampedia, https://www.guampedia.com/gertrude-costenoble-hornbostel/

8 WILLIAMS, D., 2025. ‘Bishop Museum will return latte, artifacts to Guam and CNMI’. Public Radio Guam, 7 August 2025, https://www.islapublic.org/news/2025-08-07/bishop-museum-will-return-latte-artifacts-to-guam-and-cnmi

9 For archaeological details see Carson, M., 2012. ‘An overview of latte period archaeology’, Micronesica 42 (1/2), 1-79.

10 BALLENDORF, D. A., 2000. ‘Testimony at public meeting of the Ancestral Remains Task Force. Thursday, 12 October 2000, 6:30pm at the Tamuning Gymnasium, Guam’ in Ancestral Remains Task Force Report on the Disposition of Ancestral Remains aka “Hornbostel Collection”.

11 Bevacqua, M., 2023. ‘Bevacqua: Hans Hornbostel’. Guam Pacific Daily News, 28 September 2023, https://www.guampdn.com/opinion/bevacqua-hans-hornbostel/article_b9b9f990-5dc3-11ee-a0cc-3b7e54256ecf.html

FURUKAWA, J., 2024. ‘Reclaiming what belongs to Guam: Hornbostel Collection final report nearly complete’. Pacific Island Times, 18 July 2024, https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/post/reclaiming-what-belongs-to-guam

12 BEVACQUA, M., 2024. ‘OPINION Bevacqua: We sing, so they will find their way home’. Guam Pacific Daily News, 28 June 2024, https://www.guampdn.com/opinion/opinion-bevacqua-we-sing-so-they-will-find-their-way-home/article_21dc78c0-344e-11ef-8123-87c53d7849d4.html

13 All of this information is gathered in BEVACQUA, M., 2023. ‘Bevacqua: Hans Hornbostel’. Guam Pacific Daily News, 28 September 2023, https://www.guampdn.com/opinion/bevacqua-hans-hornbostel/article_b9b9f990-5dc3-11ee-a0cc-3b7e54256ecf.html

14 Pacific Island Times News Staff, 2025. ‘Correcting 'historical injustice:' Archaeological riches whisked away in 1900s finally returning to Guam, CNMI’. Pacific Island Times, 11 August 2025, https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/post/correcting-historical-injustice-archaeological-riches-whisked-away-in-1900s-finally-returning-to

Bibliography

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