"Cargo Cults fascinate me partly because Christianity itself is in many ways a cargo cult." - Nick Laird
Cargo cults have been in existence since the 19th century, this was when first written record of them was found. However, they came to notoriety during and most notably after WWII for reasons, outlined below. The Cargo Cult that gained the most notoriety and garnered the most attention was the Cargo Cult worshipped by the people of the Melanesian islands. A Cargo Cult in its most basic form is a misinterpretation by the isolated people of these islands that the soldiers who landed on these islands during the war, were not men but deities. Deities, sent with unusual foods, drinks, clothing, machines, automatic weapons and all manner of different equipment that the Melanesian people had never seen before. The soldiers were landing on the islands to better position themselves for attack on neighbouring islands, or in some cases to rest and plan assaults, they would carry out elsewhere. However, whilst, on the island, they shared some of their rations with the inhabitants. This coupled with the aircraft that dropped off the soldiers, which they believed to be metal birds, was a shock on the senses for the Melanesians and in their eyes inexplicable. They were unable to rationalise what was unfolding in front of their eyes, and attributed this to the Gods. The only way they could rationalise what they were witnessing was supernatural. How else, could sense be made of huge metal birds that dropped hundreds of men from the sky.
As well as this, the food and drinks that the soldiers shared with the people were badly needed, and very much appreciated in a time of need. They too saw this as an offering from the Gods. Over the course of the war, the soldiers would continually be dropped off and would treat the inhabitants with kindness as they knew, the Melanesians were not the enemy and were not a threat. This carried on for the duration of the war. During, the war and while fighting was continuing, the Melanesians, continually prayed for the soldiers to return with more treats, and of course they did. Obviously they did, as it was a strategic landing spot for the military. Therefore, at all times the Melanesians, prayers were answered. They began to worship, the soldiers as mythical Gods and continued to do so throughout the war. However, when they war subsided and the military no longer needed the island as a base, the army were withdrawn. The prayers of the Melanesians were no longer being answered. This is when the bizarre cult behaviour came to prominence and culminated in what we know Cargo Cults to be today.
With the end of the war, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers, deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc. The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the military personnel use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles. The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.
In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and cut new military-style landing strips out of the jungle, hoping to attract more airplanes. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches. Cargo cults were typically created by individual leaders, or men of stature in the Melanesian culture, and it is not at all clear if these leaders were sincere, or were simply running scams on gullible populations. The leaders typically held cult rituals well away from established towns and colonial authorities, thus making reliable information about these practices very difficult to acquire. One man that is worshipped by the Melanesian people is 'Tom Navy', during World War II, the Americans helped to keep the tribe at peace during a time when the tribe was fighting. "Tom Navy" is described as an African American serviceman who helped the tribe during this time. During their visit to America for a documentary the tribe had wished to meet Tom Navy to thank him for his help, provided during hard times. The most plausible explanation is that back during the war there was a man by the name of Tom, who was from the Navy and his name was understood by the tribe as being Tom Navy.
However, the most notable case is that of 'John Frum' a God that the islanders worship. He became the light that his worshippers needed in times of darkness and uncertainty. Frum is a mythic figure associated with cargo cults on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. He is often depicted as an American World War II serviceman who will bring wealth and prosperity to the people if they follow and worship him. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy.
But the venerated Americans never came back, except as a dribble of tourists and veterans eager to revisit the faraway islands where they went to war in their youth. And although almost all the cargo cults have disappeared over the decades, the John Frum movement has endured, based on the worship of an American god no sober man has ever seen. Many Americans know Vanuatu from the reality TV series “Survivor,” though the episodes shot there hardly touched on the Melanesian island nation’s spectacular natural wonders and fascinating, age-old cultures. Set between Fiji and New Guinea, Vanuatu is a Y-shaped scattering of more than 80 islands, several of which include active volcanoes. The islands were once home to fierce warriors, among them cannibals. Many inhabitants still revere village sorcerers, who use spirit-possessed stones in magic rituals that can lure a new lover, fatten a pig or kill an enemy.
Local leaders say that John Frum first appeared one night in the late 1930s, after a group of elders had downed many shells of kava as a prelude to receiving messages from the spirit world. Kava is a beverage or extract made from the Piper methysticum plant. In the South Pacific, it's a popular drink that is used in ceremonies for relaxation. The name "kava" comes from the Polynesian word "awa," which means bitter. Kava affects the brain and other parts of the central nervous system. Chemicals called kavalactones that are found in kava are believed to be responsible for its effects. People commonly use kava for anxiety. It's also used for stress, withdrawal from drugs called benzodiazepines, sleeping problems, and many other purposes, but there is no good scientific evidence to support many of these uses. Chief Kahuwya, leader of Yakel village speaking of Frum said “He was a white man who spoke our language, but he didn’t tell us then he was an American,” an interesting description. John Frum told them he had come to rescue them from the missionaries and colonial officials. “John told us that all Tanna’s people should stop following the white man’s ways,” Chief Kahuwya says. “He said we should throw away their money and clothes, take our children from their schools, stop going to church and go back to living as kastom people. We should drink kava, worship the magic stones and perform our ritual dances.”
The economy of most of the islands is very backward. Native agriculture produces little for the world market, and even the European plantations and mines export only a few primary products and raw materials: copra, rubber, gold. Melanesians are quite unable to understand why copra, for example, fetches 30 pounds sterling per ton one month and but 5 pounds a few months later. With no notion of the workings of world-commodity markets, the natives see only the sudden closing of plantations, reduced wages and unemployment, and are inclined to attribute their insecurity to the whim or evil in the nature of individual planters. Europeans who have witnessed outbreaks inspired by the cargo cults are usually at a loss to understand what they behold. The islanders throwaway their money, break their most sacred taboos, abandon their gardens and destroy their precious livestock; they indulge in sexual license or, alternatively, rigidly separate men from women in huge communal establishments. Sometimes they spend days sitting gazing at the horizon for a glimpse of the long-awaited ship or airplane; sometimes they dance, pray and sing in mass congregations, becoming possessed and "speaking with tongues."
Observers have not hesitated to use such words as "madness," "mania," and "irrationality" to characterize the cults. But the cults reflect quite logical and rational attempts to make sense out of a social order that appears senseless and chaotic. Given the ignorance of the Melanesians about the wider European society, its economic organization and its highly developed technology, their reactions form a consistent and understandable pattern. They wrap up all their yearning and hope in an amalgam that combines the best counsel they can find in Christianity and their native belief. If the world is soon to end, gardening or fishing is unnecessary; everything will be provided. Of course the cargo never comes. The cults nonetheless live on. If the millennium does not arrive on schedule, then perhaps there is some failure in the magic, some error in the ritual. New breakaway groups organize around "purer" faith and ritual. The cult rarely disappears, so long as the social situation which brings it into being persists. Meaning, there will be an infinite number of John Frums or Tom Navys to worship. The cycle is infinite.
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