CARGO CULT BELIEVERS DISILLUSIONED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 15

CARGO CULT BELIEVERS DISILLUSIONED

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) PORT MORESBY, August 19. Native plantation workers in the Morobe district of New Guinea were returning to work yesterday disillusioned because the world did not turn upside down and shower them with gifts. The strange cargo cult be lief in the area had predicted that the world of the white man would end yesterday. Cult believers had expected

the positions to be reversed |and they would receive all white man’s cargo, motor cars, food, money and machinery. The deputy district commissioner for the Morobe district, Mr D. N. Ashton, said native workers first began to have doubts several days ago when the world was not I plunged into darkness on August 12 as predicted by one I section of the cult. The story was that after six days of darkness the world would light up again today and trucks laden with cargo would drive to the tiny village of Insi. about 80 miles from | Lae, where there had been wholesale slaughter of pigs for

huge feasts and neglect of food gardens as the day selected—August 18—approached. But harrassed administration officials, working hard to stem cult beliefs, have been neither able to prove nor disprove these stories. Penalties for anyone found guilty of spreading cargo cult rumours are severe and it is difficult to prove, Mr Ashton said. When natives were confronted they always claimed the story had been twisted. The story of the end of the world is believed to have been propagated at a meeting of Insi villagers on Wanaru plantation on July 16. Labourers from other plan-

tations were also at the meeting and some were swayed by ■cult predictions. Early this month many pigs were slaughtered for a big feast at Singitsrumpum village near Insi. Early reports said the cult was also active in that village, but natives there maintained that the killing of the pigs was for a wedding feast. Other villagers said the pigs had been killed because they were eating out the gardens. Other versions of the end of the world were that people buried in the ground would come up “on top,” that on August 18 the ground would open up and all the good gardens would go down

- a big hole for the dead people. In return, out of the hole | could come cargo. Mr Ashton said yet another story was that should withdraw their money ; from banks by today, but ' very few seemed to have done , this. Mr Ashton said the adminis- , tration was concerned about the cult activity in the Morobe district and was deter- ; mined to discourage it. He said this order had gone I out to all officers and they : seemed to have convinced I most of the people that the ! world would not end yesteri day.