"Cargo Cult"

“ Jonfrum ” is New Hebridean "Cargo Cult"

Part II of an article translated by H. E. L. Friday, Part I of which appeared in January issue

THIS did not end the movement, how ever. In December, 1941, Resident Nicol reported an anti-British feel ing in Tanna. The natives had had wind of Pearl Harbour and were saying, “Britain he lose, Germany he win.” He recommended expulsion of the hostile element, and asked for a permanent police force. During the next year 20 natives were sent to Port Vila as disturbers of the peace. A message from Vila was in tercepted and translated by Dr. Arm strong. It was from a Tanna police boy in Vila, Joe Nalpin, addressed to a chief of the West coast and two others. Nalpin was serving a nine months’ sentence for some breach of trust, but pretended he was trying to unmask Jonfrum. Mr. Nicol regarded him as more dangerous than Manehivi.

In January, 1942, three so-called “sons” of Jonfrum, named Isaac, Jacob and Lastuan were active at Ipikel, Sulphur Bay, a model village with its own foot ball ground. The rumour ran that they had been landed by plane at Siwi, a beach near the volcano. (The natives had noted the passing of the Australian Catalinas based on Vila, out on patrol).

There were junketings by night and day and the claim was put forward that they were to govern certain parts of Tanna.

They were going to America, it was said, to meet their father, the “king” of America (the Americans were just making their first appearance in the Group).

The natives were told to use up their English money and there was again a run on the stores, one store taking £3OO in January from natives who previously bought very little. Meat, sugar, rice, knives were bought.

Again Mr. Nicol intervened, questioning young girls who had been waiting on the “sons” of Jonfrum. They agreed that a young Sulphur Bay native named Siaka was the “son” who called himself Isaac, and he and three others were sent to Vila for a year’s detention.

“Vila,” went the new rumour, “is full of Americans. They are coming in large numbers to Tanna. These Americans are black, and their dollar is our new money. They are going to rule us, free our prisoners and pay their wages.” This rumour accounts for the good response in August, 1942, when the Americans asked the Tanna men to go and work for them in Vila. Mr, Nicol reported that nearly

all the Tanna men were ready to go.

They were certain that Jonfrum was on the way from America and Mr. Nicol felt that only time and a stay in Vila could rid them of the idea Certain of his 1941 prisoners were set at liberty and he agreed to their return to Tanna, with the exception of Mahehevi (alias Jonfrum), Karaua

and Joe Nalpin, whom he regarded as undesirables but who where engaged at Vila as free workers with the US Mv Force. The natives were still absenting themselves from the Tanna missions, holding dances and kava parties, especially on the East coast. Before handing over his duties, for three months,

to Mr. A. Rentoul, former Papuan official, Mr. Nicol sent a few away to Vila “to think things over.”

FORMER Jonfrumists in custody asked Mr. Rentoul to let them out one Sunday to attend a Presbyterian service, and receiving permission they went along in their Sunday best. On October 6, a hundred West coast native notables asked permission to visit the Residency to “make it up with the Government.”

On October 11, Mr. Nicol returned on the Morinda from Sydney, and a few days later he was cabling Vila; “Important.

New Jonfrum demonstration in the North of Tanna. The police, sent to make ar rests, received by eight natives armed with guns and others with clubs. Send reinforcements.”

On the 18th, Vila received another message: “Jonfrum, alias Loiag, in prison. His supporters feverishly occu pied building an airfield for the Ameri cans. Please send 20 police boys and a US staff officer to convince them that their work is quite unnecessary. Loiag completely mad.”

Later the same day another message: “Loiag supporters number about 250.

Natives forced to run away to avoid being pressed into work on the airfield. Five who resisted have been wounded. Natives of the region are hostile and can’t be counted on. Have been forced to take action at Whitesands against natives try ing to free Loiag.”

On the 19th, another message: “Position becoming untenable. Nearly the whole island making common cause with Loiag supporters. Send 100 men as soon as pos sible.”

Two days later the Echo reached Tanna from Port Vila with police reinforcements and two US officers.

The next day, Nicol led an expedition

to Ikolau, in the North, where the natives were levelling their landing field for the arrival of the alleged Jonfrum planes. About 200 men were working there. They and a number of natives hidden in the vicinity were surrounded.

Eleven guns were taken from them. Eight of Loiag’s supporters were arrested, and 42 told to account for their actions to the authorities the following day. Major Patton, one of the US officers, spoke to the assembled natives in Pidgin English, which was also translated into Tanna dialect. He said: “The Americans don’t recognise Jonfrum and do not need an airfield on Tanna. Americans, British and French are fighting together against Japan. Fighting is going on to the North of the New Hebrides.”

The police then gave a demonstration of Tommy-gun fire which blew to bits a Loiag-Jonfrum announcement nailed to a tree. Alarmed by the fire the natives ran into the bush. Finally the police set fire to the hut specially built for Jonfrum.

Next day a so-called court of inquiry was held.

On the 18th Mr. Nicol, after arresting Loiag, had been menaced by natives try ing to set him free, Loiag, the new Jonfrum, was a man in his thirties from the village of Lomaper, Nossim (Tanna). He pretended that he was the “king of America” and that he had been charged by the Americans to construct a landing-field which would enable his father to fly in with all sorts of trade-goods. The airfield, he said, was urgently needed so that everybody was needed to work for him. He had a police force of his own numbering 45 whom he authorised to round-up native labour, and he threatened that his planes would come along and bomb them if they did not set to work at once.

As proof of his mission, Jonfrum II pretended that, although an unlettered heathen—he had never attended mission school—he could read the New Testament and was able to write. This pretence had damaged his reputation among literate natives, for it was noticed that when he paid a visit to a school of his own that he had started, his pretended know ledge consisted only of mumbling the ABC and counting up to 9.

At all events the Tanna natives of Greenhills had had enough of school, Jonfrum or Presbyterian. What attracted them to the movement was the prospect of uninhibited love, kava drinking and the dance.

On October 25, the Echo left for Vila with 46 prisoners. Loiag was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; ten of his disciples to one year; and the rest to three months. Loiag also was found to be mentally unbalanced. Later, he was to escape from custody, spend three years in the Efate bush living on taro and wild pig. and then, on April 29. 1948, give ?, lm self up. He was sent to the asylum on lie Nou, Noumea (New Caledonia), as a pad case of acute mania; and is reported to be there still.

MR. NICOL ended his October 1942 re port on the Tanna voodoo outbreak with the words: “There is no ques tion the Jonfrum movement being only that of one man or of a single small tl 2r e 7T l t is the subject of general belief affecting the whole island.”

In 1943, Mrs. Armstrong tried to restart the mission classes at Lenakel. but these were not attended as well as formerly.

Scarcely 50 children could be collected in a district numbering 2,500 persons. But beyond-the-pale dances, orgies of kava drinking and communal junketings went on unchecked. The villages lost their clean appearance, becoming untidy and dirty. After Mr. Nicol died in 1944, the French, for the first time, appointed a representative on the island, whose Eng lish representatives were now Messrs.

Gordon White, Johnson and Peter Colley.

Monsieur Jocteur, in February, 1945, sen tenced two natives named Malouine and Nemarka as Jonfrumist agitators; and his colleague, Mr. Johnson, in September, 1946, notified his chief in Port Vila of a revival of witch doctoring. The Port Vila prisoners were still in touch with their supporters in Tanna, and others exiled to Malekula were causing trouble for the district officers on that island.

On April 11, 1947, the Anglo-French officers on Tanna learnt that natives of Locafi and Latabu villages, in the Waisisi district on the East coast, had raided Mr.

Bannister’s store at Whitesands, climbing

over the counters and tearing off the price tickets on goods. Mr. Bannister had caught one native named Nakomaha with

a fist full of these tickets and had asked him what he was doing with them.

It was an order from Jonfrum, was the reply. “All tickets all the same blood (red), all same sick (blue), all same death (yellow) me take away. Jonfrum say so. Jonfrum like black now white, that’s all.”

The local officers, English and French, left Lenakel during the night with what police boys they could muster, and were at Latabu next (Saturday) morning at 9 o’clock. Here they arrested 14 natives in volved in the raid on the Bannister store.

One of the 14 was Jonfrum 111, a new pretender, whose name was lokaeye. He and two companions named Nakomba and Keyasi got five years prison. Their ac complices got two years to be followed by five years’ banishment. All 14 had been involved in the disturbances of Oc tober, 1943.

This prompt action nipped the move ment in the bud, and the British officer, Mr. Colley, thereupon practised a policy of calm and appeasement. He called the chiefs together and pointed out to them the impossible nature of their Jonfrumist aspirations. Before they left he bound them over to be of good behaviour.

But towards the end of 1947 the banished Jonfrumists tried to revive the movement. On September 7 of that year, Mr. Colley found that the Ipekel villagers of Sulphur Bay were renewing their il legal activities. The Tanna exiles at Port Sandwich, Malikolo, through natives at Port Vila, had sent their Tanna sup porters four coconuts with instructions that they were to be planted on the sites of four houses at Nampas, Mailes, Ne marka and Namaig demolished on orders of the Europeans. Questioned, the Tanna men involved tried to make Colley be lieve that the coconuts were a new species sent to improve the local plantations.

They were, in fact, a sort of message to the effect that, “Even if our bodies are at Mallicolo our spirits are with you at Tanna. Go on with the good work.”

Colley therefore had the coconuts dug up.

THE Catholic priest, Father Patrick O’Reilly, visited Lamap in October, 1948, and learnt a great deal about the exiles, who were in charge of the

French District Agent, M. Jean Guedes, He had given them gardens on mission ground. It was clear that they had been carrying on Jonfrum propaganda on Mal licolo since their arrival. Lists of sup porters had been compiled, there had been secret nocturnal meetings with .voo doo and dance. They had also built a meeting hut of their own three miles away.

To check their activities they were for

bidden to wander more than a mile from the mission. It seems too, that the people of a Presbyterian village named Curo on Ambrym, who used to visit Port Sandwich, were being used as proselytes of Jonfrum ism. They had put up notices outside the village: “Stop!” “Mouia!” and created their own village police; had built a hut where, they said, they would store the goods which the Messageries Maritimes ship Polynesien was to bring them. Their belief that a ship was to bring them un

told wealth which the white man wanted to rob them of, was the same as the Cargo Cult beliefs of tribes in Bou gainville and other of the Solomon islands —the frustrated Melanesians’ conception of a coming era of liberty or licence free from white man’s leading-strings; a vision of a future Melanesian terrestrial para dise.

Father O’Reilly, who has collected all the evidence possible, written or verbal, on the Jonfrum events in Tanna, remarks

that to get to the heart of the matter is difficult for a white investigator. With one exception, that of Dr, Armstrong, all those from whom he was able to ob tain information, no matter what may have been their clear-sightedness, their knowledge of the natives and of their psychology, were able to communicate with the natives only in Pidgin-English.

None knew the native language or had lived among them; none had gained their confidence outside of their official capacity.

What struck this keen inquirer, is that Jonfrum is not a movement influenced by one man, but a communal state of mind, brought about, it seems, by a longing to return to the ways of paganism. The missions have too strictly applied their “Thou shalt nots.” The natives have had enough of being deprived of their dances, their kava, their feasts —the new Messiah must restore the isle and its people to a state of ancestral liberty.

Father O’Reilly notes that it has not been the real heathens, nor the most fervent Presbyterians, who have been the most involved, but those who have come in contact with mission ways without having altogether abandoned heathenism.

And as it has been the Europeans who have introduced the “school” and its re strictions, the movement became one of “Tanna for the Tannanese.”

They denounced the Convention of 1912, by which the Tanna chiefs accepted the Condominium. The chiefs in 1912 had received a certain sum in gold, in recog nition of their loyalty. This money was restored to circulation at the start of the Jonfrum movement, as though the natives wanted to resume freedom of ac tion in the spirit of: “Here is your money back—now release us from our pledge.”

“I am convinced,” writes Father O’Reilly, “that outside influence is negli gible in this affair. It is a spontaneous native movement. There are, to all in

fents and purposes, no Tonkinese, Javanese, or Chinese on Tanna. On board the ships where they sign on as crew, the Tanna men may sometimes meet up with an Australian trade-unionist or communist, but that does not explain the Jonfrum demonstrations.

“Jonfrum must be linked, however, with the prophetic and xenophobe movements reported from the Solomons and New Guinea before and since the war: and which has again manifested its force on Malaita in the last few years. It is hard to see how these different manifestations of unrest are connected. They seem to possess the character of a common origin and, without doubt, some connection exists. There is a common basis of native life in the different parts of Melanesia, a common interpretation of the happen ings that come within his orbit, things which strike him because they appear extraordinary. In this connection the planes, the war, the Americans. He some times mixes his observations with a touch of craziness. From all this comes these fundamentally native demonstrations, containing something mysterious which emerges from time to time in primitive communities. The best reply to them is sane education, united to political and economic development.”