ABSTRACT
The crux of the chiefs' 'coming out' was a redistribution of power and of land. And one must pause in the description of the ritual cycle to discuss the relation between chiefdoms and villages and the land, and to consider more closely the balance of power between successive generations. Tradition makes it clear that the heroes came to a sparsely occupied country and that their descendants gradually spread out as their numbers increased. When a colony is established several miles are left uncultivated between it and the parent chiefdom. Although a chiefdom was surrounded by pasture land with unoccupied savannah forest beyond it, when the heirs 'came out' their fathers moved. Age, territorial, and kinship grouping interlock in a complex fashion. Each village is occupied by an age-set and men are emphatic that age and friendship, not kinship, are the basis of a village, but the villages of fathers, sons, and grandsons commonly.
