Ceremony on Birth.
There is no ceremony on the birth of a child, except in the case of the first-born of a chief. On this occasion the women of a neighbouring community are invited. They come in their full dancing ornaments, and armed in both hands with spears and either clubs or adzes. They rush into the village, first to the chiefs house and then to his emone; and at each of these they make a warlike demonstration, actually hurling their spears at the buildings with such force that the spears sometimes go through the thatch of the roof. Then follows a distribution of vegetables among the visitors, after which one, two, or three village pigs are killed under a chiefs burial platform or on the site of a past one, cut up in the ordinary way, as at the big feast, given to the visitors and taken away by them, and the ceremony is over. There is no singing.[1]