Cargo Cult

[Baker, John]

        The OED has 1949 for "cargo cult," but anthropologists have traced the term back further.  From 1945, and believed to be the first use of the term in print:

>>Stemming directly from religious teaching of equality, and its resulting sense of injustice, is what is generally known as "Vailala Madness," or "Cargo Cult." . . . In all cases the "Madness" takes the same form:  A native, infected with the disorder, states that he has been visited by a relative long dead, who stated that a great number of ships loaded with "cargo" had been sent by the ancestor of the native for the benefit of the natives of a particular village or area.  But the white man, being very cunning, knows how to intercept these ships and takes the "cargo" for his own use . . . .<<

Norris Mervyn Bird, "Is There Danger of a Post-war Flare-up Among New Guinea Natives?" Pacific Islands Monthly 16(4, Nov. 1945):  69 - 70 (quoted in Lamont Lindstrom, Cargo Cult:  Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond 15 - 16 (1993)).


John M. Baker