Northern Mariana Islands

The Northern Mariana Islands, formally called the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is a U.S. territory that is not incorporated into the country. It includes the 14 northern islands of the Mariana Archipelago in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Guam, the southernmost island in the chain, is a separate U.S. territory. Until 1990, the United Nations listed the Northern Mariana Islands as a non-self-governing territory. Over the colonial period, the islands were ruled at different times by the Spanish, German, and Japanese empires. Following World War II, they were part of a United Nations trust territory administered by the United States. They officially became a U.S. territory in 1986, and their residents were granted U.S. citizenship at that time.

The territory covers 183.5 square miles (475.26 square kilometers). In 2020, the population was 47,329. Most people live on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. The other islands in the chain have very few residents; the most notable of these is Pagan, which has been mostly empty since a volcano erupted there in 1981. The administrative center is Capital Hill, a village in northwestern Saipan. The current governor is David M. Apatang, who took over from lieutenant governor on July 23, 2025, after Governor Arnold Palacios, who had held office since January 2023, died in office. The legislature consists of a nine-member Senate and a 20-member House of Representatives.

People first settled the islands around 1500 BC, as various groups migrated there. Spain claimed the islands in 1521. In the 1700s, the Spanish forced the northern Mariana islanders to relocate; when they returned, new groups of people had moved in. In 1899, Spain sold the Northern Marianas to Germany under the Spanish-German Treaty of 1899, while Guam went to the United States. After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the islands became part of the Japanese Mandate under the League of Nations, starting in 1918. The islands were liberated from Japanese control during the Battle of Saipan in 1944. After the war, they became part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI). Over time, proposals to merge with Guam were rejected, and the islands eventually left the TTPI to join the United States in 1986. They then became the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and their residents are U.S. citizens. In 2009, they gained the right to elect a non-voting delegate to the U.S. Congress.

The Mariana Islands were the first islands in Remote Oceania to be settled by humans. This settlement was also the first and longest ocean-crossing voyage of the Austronesian peoples, separate from the later Polynesian settlement of the rest of Remote Oceania. The first settlers arrived around 1500 to 1400 BC from the Philippines. A second migration came from the Caroline Islands around the first millennium AD, and a third from Maritime Southeast Asia (likely the Philippines or eastern Indonesia) by 900 AD. After first contact with the Spanish, the islanders became known as the Chamorros, a Spanish word related to Chamori, the name of the upper division in the indigenous caste system. The ancient people of the Marianas built colonnades of megalithic capped pillars called latte stones, on which they raised their homes. By the time the Spanish arrived, the largest of these was already in ruins, and the Chamorros believed the ancestors who built the pillars lived in an era when people had supernatural abilities. In 2013, archaeologists suggested that the first settlers of the Marianas may have made the longest uninterrupted ocean-crossing voyage in human history at that time. Archaeological evidence also indicates that Tinian may have been the first Pacific island to be settled.

The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for Spain, arrived in 1521. He and his crew were the first Europeans to reach the Mariana Islands. He landed on Guam, the southernmost island, and claimed the whole archipelago for Spain. Spanish ships were met offshore by Chamorros, who brought refreshments and then took a small boat from Magellan’s fleet. In Chamorro tradition, little property was private, and taking something needed—like a boat for fishing—was not considered stealing. The Spanish did not understand this custom and fought the Chamorros until the boat was recovered. Three days after being welcomed, Magellan fled the archipelago. Spain considered the islands annexed and later made them part of the Spanish East Indies in 1565. In 1734, the Spanish built a royal palace, the Plaza de España, in Guam for the governor. The palace was largely destroyed in World War II, though parts remain. Guam served as an important stopover for the Manila galleon trade route between the Philippines and Mexico. In 1668, Father Diego Luis de San Vitores renamed the islands Las Marianas in honor of his patroness, the Spanish regent Mariana of Austria, widow of King Felipe IV. Most of the native population—90 to 95 percent—died from European diseases brought by the Spanish or married non-Chamorro settlers under Spanish rule. New settlers from the Philippines and the Caroline Islands were brought in to repopulate the islands. The Chamorro population gradually recovered, and Chamorro, Filipino, and Refaluwasch languages and ethnic groups remain in the Marianas today. During the 17th century, Spanish colonists forcibly moved the Chamorros to Guam to encourage assimilation and conversion to Roman Catholicism. They were eventually allowed to return.