ABSTRACT
Although exploration of the north coast of New Guinea began with the Portuguese and Spanish navigators of the sixteenth century, it was not until 1871 that the first European settled there and became known to local people. Yali’s movement can also be contrasted with the smaller cults in terms of its general structure. While the distribution of power within the latter is largely ad hoc, in Yali’s movement it is institutionalized in a number of offices. Over time the activities of Yali’s movement have become regularized and centrally regulated, as those of the smaller cults are not. Yali himself attributed the support of Madangs to their long history of cargo cult. The members were told to perform traditional dances, and to carry the boxes to sacred spots in the forest and then back again to the cult house. The scale of the cults is linked to the way in which when they were new they spread from village to village.
