Island natives?

Question

A friend of mine was telling me a story about natives near the island of Guam in the 60's. His father was stationed there when he was 16 and he has all kinds of cool memories about all sorts of people from the time. These particular natives hunted by throwing stones, and building decoys of the animals they intended on hunting.

Well B-52 bombers use to take off from Gaum and overfly these peoples island before forming up and heading off to Vietnam. They would leave in the mornings, and return in the evenings.

Anthropologist studying the hunting habits of these people noticed one day that the natives had built a 30 foot replica of a B-52 on a cliff. They would hide in the bushes around the model and wait in the hopes that one of the planes would be lured in close enough for them to knock it out of the air, and pelt it with rocks.

You know humans are clever, and he has all kinds of stories to prove it. Do you have any stories of how modern tech may effect primitive people?

Answer 1

I don't have any stories I'm afraid. But I did see on TV the situation you described. I thought these native people got their mock plane idea from WW II though. And the planes were B-17s accompanied by a squadron of fighters.  I might be wrong on this. Very fascinating never the less. The Americans befriended these people and shared with them what they had. Whereas, the Japanese were always very brutal towards native peoples. The island was a temporary air base. As the war progressed, and moved on to other parts of the Pacific, the air base was abandoned. These natives missed their guests and hoped to lure them back with the mocked up airplane. Kind of a happy sad predicament. The sad part is, if they actually spent any time in America now, they'd probably be pretty dam glad to get back to that island.

Answer 2

Yes, there is a class of religions, called "Cargo-religions". It's when members of a higher technology enter an environment of a primitive technology, and leave some (usually synthetic), piece of equipment there...

When the people from the higher technology leave, the artifact left. is often worshipped with special religious reverence.

When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Himalayas, everywhere I went, my aluminum & nylon backpack was "cherished" for its strength and durability, and spoken about, as if it came from another world!

Since the time of Captain Cook, evidence of these religions have been recorded, due to the frequency of exploration!