I was reading about Cargo Cults forming as a result of air dropped supplies reaching native populations in the Pacific, and how they drastically changed those cultures. Obviously when the war ended the air dropped supplies stopped. Did the indigenous people revert to their previous practices? Did they think their God's had abandoned them? Did they all have a western/foreign figurehead? How did these societies adapt, or did they?
Thanks
I don't know if there has been a systematic historical study of all or even several of the "Cargo Cults", but they have not all died out. The most vibrant one that I know about is the "John Frum movement", but I think others made the transition to permanent movement as well. Interestingly, on the same island, there's also the complimentary "Prince Philip Movement".
You could see parallels to these movements in sightly more familiar religious movements, like Selassie in Rastafarianism (remember, "Ras Tafari" was Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia's title/name before he stepped up to the throne... and he was a Oriental Orthodox until he died; he seemed rather confused by what the Rastafarian movement made him out to be).
One of the more well known case study's of cargo cult comes from the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. It's called the John Frum cult. The John Frum cult originated in the 1930s and is still present today. The evolution of this cult is a well documented one. There are numerous documentaries and memoirs from anthropologists online.
In short, the islanders slowly built a religion about this character named John Frum. They hold parades for this man in the hopes he will return to the island and bring wealth to the islanders.