ABSTRACT
It is a striking fact that, with the one exception of Ndifaw, all the ancestral founders of the largest politically corporate groups (village groups or villages) are claimed not to have come from elsewhere but to have lived always where the community associated with their name has continued to exist. Insistence upon this fact (and in many cases elders have insisted somewhat tenaciously upon it, sometimes in the face of contradictory evidence) would seem to be based upon each group’s claim to independent status and implies an ultimate link between residential and genealogical continuity. In Besongabang village two new small settlements have been established by residential secession since the village was first consolidated at the beginning of this century. Both settlements were first established in the mid-1920s when touring British administrative officers informed Banyang that they were free to build where they wished.
