 In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc.The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies.In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the military personnel use.