CHIEFTAINSHIP 315 



against morality or social custom, leads in war and 

 conducts negotiations with neighbouring peoples. 

 Many serious mistakes have been made in the past 

 owing to the fact that among many peoples, hardly 

 one of these functions falls to the lot of those whom 

 the people regard as chiefs, i.e. as the most important 

 members of the community. Among many peoples 

 those who are called chiefs have no more part in 

 the administration of justice or in negotiations with 

 neighbouring peoples than any other member of 

 the community. If they are prominent in these 

 departments of social activity, it is because they 

 are personalities independently of their chieftain- 

 ship. Among many peoples the duties of chiefs are 

 mainly religious, their most important social func- 

 tions being the arrangement of ceremonies and the 

 furnishing of feasts. The newly arrived ruler who 

 seeks a chief as intermediary between himself and 

 the people will, if he is ignorant of the nature of 

 their chieftainship, probably follow one of two 

 courses. He will either treat as a chief one of those 

 whom the people themselves regard in this light 

 and impose upon him functions to which he is 

 wholly strange and for which he is perhaps quite 

 unfitted. Or, and this is the more frequent case, 

 he treats as a chief one whom the people do not 

 regard, and never have regarded in this light, some 

 man of superior address or intelligence who may 

 combine these qualities with others which lead to 

 the unscrupulous use of his new position to exploit 



